Results:

We tested the Cooler Master GeminII with three different fan configurations with three different fan speeds. Cooler Master supplied us with a pair of SAF-S12-E1 ultra-silent fans that spin at around 720RPM normally - in our Asus P5WD2-E motherboard, the fans spun at 730RPM with fan control disabled.

With fan control enabled, we were able to drop these down to 450RPM to give an almost completely silent cooling solution - you could almost count the number of blades as the fan was spinning to give an idea of how slow they were moving.

In addition, we also used a pair of Noctua NF-S12 fans running with fan control enabled, meaning they were spinning at just 585RPM. Although none of these solutions are particularly "high performance", it should be interesting to see how this performs in comparison to other heatsinks like the Noctua, using the same fans.

Conclusions:

Cooler Master's GeminII heatsink is an interesting take on CPU cooling, but we're not sure it's the right direction to go in. That's not to say the cooler is a bad performer (also taking noise into account here), because it isn't - it's just not as good as other coolers on the market. To be fair, we were expecting a lot more from the GeminII, but given the amount of noise the fan configurations we've tested emitted, it's to be understood.

With the two Cooler Master SAF-S12-E1 fans running at 450RPM, performance was understandably poor, but things improved dramatically with a pair of Noctua's NF-S12 fans running at just under 600RPM. Temperatures were equivalent to the Zalman CNPS9500LED, but there was simply no noticeable noise being emitted - the same can't be said for the Zalman CNPS9500LED. We saw another incremental performance improvement with the two Cooler Master SAF-S12-E1 fans running at full speed, which pushed it ahead of the CNPS9500LED and into close proximity with the Zalman CNPS9700LED at its lowest speed setting.

Arguably the most interesting comparison to be made was the performance difference between the Noctua NH-U12F, which was using only one NF-S12 fan at 600RPM, and the GeminII. The GeminII trailed the NH-U12F by almost six degrees, which doesn't bode well for the GeminII's cooling efficiency. Even though the Noctua NH-U12F has some installation headaches, we don't think that this pitfall outweighs its otherwise very good performance.

I'm sure with more powerful fans, we'll see more incremental performance improvements with the GeminII, but those gains would come at the expense of noise - the same could be said about the Noctua NH-U12F, too. With the fans we've tested the heatsink with here, the Cooler Master GeminII is a reasonably good silent cooling solution, but it's not a great one.

• Ease of Use
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 6/10

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Value
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• 7/10

What do these scores mean?