Cooler Master GeminII S524 CPU Cooler Review @ Rage3D.com

[Lupine]

Cooler Master's GeminII range offer top down cooling designs, with the S524 the newest edition. Compatible with 120mm and 140mm fans it can offer an upgrade for your processor cooling - and your whole system.

Cooler Master GeminII S524 CPU Cooler Review

[Swiftdeathz]

Nice review. This HSF reminds me of my Thermalright XP-90. Top-down coolers can provide cooling sometimes that rivals tower coolers.

[Lupine]

Nice review. This HSF reminds me of my Thermalright XP-90. Top-down coolers can provide cooling sometimes that rivals tower coolers.

Agreed. Much tidier package than the earlier Gemin coolers, and always appreciated the way this design cools mobo components - I've had several boards over the years that really benefited from the additional VRM cooling when overclocked. The tower coolers and, even more-so, the self-contained liquid coolers (Corsair's Hydro series in my case) simply don't provide that airflow.

This recently bit me with my Asus Sabertooth P67 motherboard, which implemented a unique shroud that, in theory, was supposed to aid in routing airflow across the motherboard ... as well as look very cool. Problem is that it is designed with downward blowing coolers in mind (specifically OEM coolers). With my Corsair H50, mobo temps were terrible, even with the optional mobo cooling fan installed. Ultimately the best solution was to remove the shroud, so that the case fans could aid in mobo cooling. I expect that a cooler such as this GeminII S524 would be a perfect complement to an Asus Sabertooth motherboard.

[gamefoo21]

Just one thing... A program like Coretemp, that gives you a temp reading from each cores thermisistor would have been cool to see. Loaded and idle.

Also, to see max cpu temps, you should toss in a run with a smaller FFT set, to make loading all physical/logical cores easier, a program like OCCT is incredibly useful.

http://www.ocbase.com/perestroika_en/index.php?Download

It also reads directly from the cores and reports the temps, while noting min/max along with cpu load/memory use/etc. It even has 64bit support now!

It's awesome sauce! Make sure you donate if you use it, as it's free and the author does support it. I donated and I'm a cheap bastard!

Otherwise a nice review indeed.

[caveman-jim]

I picked a large FFT size so it would thrash the cache, for more heat. I'll play around with it next time I look at it, thanks for the feedback.

[gamefoo21]

I picked a large FFT size so it would thrash the cache, for more heat. I'll play around with it next time I look at it, thanks for the feedback.

Your welcome, used to pay and be far too involved in this sort of stuff.

As far as I know how it works...

Small: Fits inside the L1/L2, works the cpu hardest.
Medium: Some swapping to ram and L3(if equipped), stresses mostly cpu, but stresses the memory and controller as well.
Large: Takes up a large amount of memory space, very good subsystem test as it stresses everything in a way that's more 'realistic'.

Would be interesting to see what kind of temp differences you get between the three modes.