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CoolerMaster GeminII S CPU + Board Cooler
Prime95 Testing
This test was carried out by using Prime95 to saturate both the CPU and the RAM on my test system, in order to generate as much heat as possible. I manually checked the CPU usage level using both Speedfan and Windows Task Manager. The CoolerMaster GeminII S CPU Cooler was configured with the stock fan mounted over the center of the radiator.
Stock Heatsink
| Ambient | 25.4C |
|---|---|
| Unloaded CPU | 30.8C |
| Loaded CPU | 37.6C |
GeminII S CPU Cooler
| Ambient | 25.5C |
|---|---|
| Unloaded CPU | 27.3C |
| Loaded CPU | 30.2C |
The ambient temperature is the temperature of the air in the room. You can't expect a CPU cooler to lower the temperature of the CPU much lower than this number. The ideal CPU cooler would keep the temperature of the processor as close to this value as possible. We can see that the stock Original Equipment Manufacturer CPU cooler has an idle or unloaded temperature of about 30.8C. When you consider that the AMD Opteron 1214 is a server class processor running on a 65nm process, (a process known for high heat generation), this is a very good temperature profile. When the CPU is subjected to 100% loading for ten minutes, the temperature reported by my thermometer rose to 37.6C. A rise of 5.5 Celsius is not too terrible and the processor is left well within the envelope of safe operating temperatures. (I personally don't like my chips to get above 40C). The heatsink compound that is used during these tests is an important factor in the effectiveness of the cooling. In the interest of fairness, the OEM heatsink was placed using the default heatsink compound, while the CoolerMaster GeminII S was placed using the provided tube of thermal compound. This way the results of the CoolerMaster GeminII S can be treated as the results of the whole retail package, not just the cooler and some third party thermal compound.
Conclusions
Apart from the laborious process of getting this cooler installed; testing this CPU cooler was an extremely fun and rewarding process. I used an AMD Opteron 1214, a processor known for putting out quite a bit of heat while under load. The CoolerMaster GeminII S lived up to the marketing hype and the legacy of the other CoolerMaster products. Using the default thermal compound the GeminII S kept my fully loaded processor within 4.7 Celsius of the ambient tempterature while fully loaded. The Stock OEM cooler was only able to maintain a 12.2 Celsius differential making the GeminII S around 60% more efficient.
Overall, I was very impressed by the performance and construction of this product. My board and configuration does not support overclocking, but I would expect that if one were to try this cooler out in an overclocking situation that it would easily allow a 300-800Mhz overclock on just air cooling. These numbers depend of course on many other factors but are a good guess based on the temperatures that I was able to maintain with this cooler. At an average selling price of around $40, the CoolerMaster GeminII S would make a welcome addition to your already hot rig.
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