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Written by Dusan Srbljak
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Wednesday, 07 March 2007 |
From the very beginning of heat pipe technology utility on desktop computers, the biggest “profiteers” were processors. No matter if CPU or GPU are cooled (or anything else) heat pipe always had an advantage comparing to classic cooling manner. The glorious story of CoolerMaster (at least when we talk about heat pipe) has begun with the representation of Hyper6 model. By the time, the industrial race between manufacturers reached such level of competition that it was necessary to continually create newer and more efficient heat pipe solutions. Since CoolerMaster is not the company which has working policy based on “old glory“, thus we are now looking at the latest heat pipe cooler. GeminII (similar to twin) is definitely the largest and heaviest heat pipe cooler ever occurred in our laboratory. It may be ranked as fault, if you own small casing, so, forget it in that case.
This will be the reason for you to check cooler dimensions and casing capacity. We would lie to you if we should convey to you that we were not suspicious about the cooler performances, but, let’s check one by one. GeminII on its layout and construction is most similar to Thermaltake Big Typhoon cooler. Both coolers have six heat pipes. The difference is reflected in arrangement of thermal pipes which are located on one side of GeminII. Base of the cooler is not perfectly polished but it is perfectly flat (just remember our text about polishing coolers and processors). Cooler may be installed on all popular platforms. In order to assemble GeminII on the board, it is necessary to remove the board from the casing.
But, assembly is one of the easiest jobs, looking from the perspective of all coolers which need removing of motherboard. The only tool you will need is cross screwdriver. In first, we didn’t like the fact that CoolerMaster by the GeminII hasn’t packed at least one fan. However, we conceived later that it is much better for you to pick fan suitable for you and by yourself. Our choice was CM Transparent BlueLed fan which, beside attractive look, does not make too much noise (1200 RPM). On the other hand, on 600 RPM they are noiseless but still sufficiently efficient.
Our test platform this time was Asus P5B Deluxe motherboard, E6400 C2D processor and ArticSilver5 thermal paste with one side of the casing opened. Room temperature was 21 degrees C. Testing was reduced on measuring temperature of overclocked C2D E6400 processor on 3.4 GHz on the voltage of 1.45V. We measured temperature in idle first. By maximal number of fan rounds, temperature wasn’t exceeding 41 degree on Celsius scale. When we loaded the processor with “heater” Orthos (prime95) maximal temperature after one hour was 63 degrees. We used CoreTemp program for measuring. The item that puts GeminII far ahead its competition is the fact that this cooler cools complete motherboard and all in it!
Practically, it means that temperature of graphics card was lower for 8 degrees; chipset temperature was lower for 9, and temperature of memory for whole 11 degrees (measured with thermal probe). The best thing is that fan has sliding carrier, thus you can select which component will be cooled. GeminII may be used with or without fan, but it is clever to avoid excessive overclock. At the end of the test we were sorry about the fact that we suspected CoolerMaster`s cooler for processor. Our redemption was in the form of “InsideHW Approved“ 100% earned acknowledgement!
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