Cooler Master GeminII: Performer or Poser?

Final Words

One look at the attractive Cooler Master GeminII and it is easy to understand why computer enthusiasts swoon over the possibilities of putting this cooler to work in their system. The GeminII combines an innovative design with the additional promise of cooling all the components on your motherboard. With the ability to use two 120mm fans side-by-side, blowing down from above the cantilevered heatpipe tower, your first thought is surely this is as good as cooling can get.

We were just as excited as our readers to test the GeminII. We also thought this would be cooler nirvana. There were a few cracks in the prospects in that none of the reviews so far had really compared the GeminII to a top cooler like the Thermalright Ultra 120 and the Tuniq Tower 120, but we considered that just an oversight. Perhaps more disturbing was the fact that reviews that only compared the GeminII to the stock Intel cooler did not show us results that caused much excitement. The GeminII is better than stock, but that should be the starting point with cooling upgrades - not the end point.

Now that we have thoroughly evaluated the GeminII there isn't much good to say about it, at least compared to the top coolers we have been testing recently. The GeminII is not a bad cooler; it is just not the great cooler we expected it to be. We have tested 21 cooler configurations in the last few months at AnandTech, and nine of those configurations overclock better than GeminII with the same CPU. That is before we even take in to account the fact that the GeminII uses two fans to, in many case, perform worse than a single 120mm fan.

On the cooling efficiency front, the GeminII is similarly average. Of the 21 measured temperatures, the GeminII is outperformed at idle by nine coolers; at load seven tested cooler configurations outperform the GeminII. Again we are often comparing one fan solutions that perform better than the two-fan GeminII configuration. To be fair, we have been testing the best coolers on the market for the last couple months, but there is no reason at all to expect the GeminII to fall short of the top performers. The fact that it does is disappointing.

We had planned to delve deeply into the purported benefits of a down-facing cooler also cooling motherboard components. That is now a moot point, however. Since the GeminII cannot match other top coolers in cooling efficiency or overclocking, who really cares if it cools your Northbridge better than a Thermalright Ultra 120? After all we are not using supplemental fans in our test case, and evidence that a cooler was cooling the motherboard chipset better would be extended overclocking from lower chipset/board temperatures. We feed significant voltages into the chipset in our overclocking tests, which must cycle at least 30 minutes in a gaming loop to be considered stable. Perhaps we will have better results with the Andy Samurai Master or the Thermaltake Max Orb, which are also top-fan coolers. If so, then we will do more than cursory measurements of motherboard component temperatures.

Perhaps with refinement the GeminII will join the top realm of air coolers. The GeminII concept seems to have merit, but the execution leaves much to be desired. If you look closely only about half the fins extend from the cooler CPU mounting plate to the extended fins on top - the rest merely expand the fin field for the cantilevered fan ledge. More active fins might help. The fin spacing is also too close for real airflow below the cooler. Put a hand beneath a cooler with 173+ CFM on top and you will be shocked at how little air makes its way to the motherboard. Perhaps the cantilever would be more effective at cooling if it was shorter, but then if it were much shorter you couldn't mount memory. There are certainly better minds designing coolers at Cooler Master than we have second guessing them here. We hope they will find ways to make GeminII the cooler we all hoped it would be.

We apologize if we sound overly negative about the performance of GeminII. As we already said, it is a good cooler, but not a great one. It does look great, and we all wanted it to perform as well as it looks. We sincerely hope the GeminII develops into the great performer we think it can be. The potential is certainly there, but for now the Cooler Master GeminII is a poser and not a performer. We expected more.