Cooler Master GeminII: Performer or Poser?

Noise

For many enthusiasts upgrading cooling the goal is maximum stable overclock, and they will live with the inconvenience of a louder system. For other users silence is the most important factor, and these users will forgo maximum overclocking if that increases system noise levels.

There are virtually no power supplies that do not include a fan. While Zalman and a few others do make an expensive fanless power supplies, we have not seen a fanless unit larger than 500W, or one that would be used for seriously overclocking a system. With that in mind the noise level of the system with all fans turned off except the power supply was measured. The power supply used for the cooling test bed was the OCZ PowerStream 520, which is one of the quieter of the high performance power supplies.

We have also measured the Corsair 620-watt and Mushkin 650-watt power supplies which are reported to be quieter than the OCZ. Both the Corsair and Mushkin are indeed quieter at idle or start up speed. However, as soon as load testing begins and the PSU fan speed kicks up the measured noise level is almost exactly the same as the OCZ PowerStream 520 watt power supply.

We are currently in the process of evaluating "quieter" power supplies for an update to our cooler test bed. We will make changes to that test bed as soon as we are confident in the noise measurements and test procedures with a variable speed quiet PSU. We plan to evaluate additional power supplies and configurations in our upcoming 120mm fan roundup, at which point we will complete the transition to a revised and lower noise cooler test bed.

The noise level of the power supply was 38.3 dbA from 24" (61cm) and 47 dbA from 6" (152mm). The measured noise level of the test room is 36.4 dbA, which would be considered a relatively quiet room with a noise floor slightly below the OCZ PowerStream 520 PSU.

We measured noise levels with the GeminII in four fan configurations ranging from relative quiet to high-output and somewhat noisy. Results were then compared to the other coolers/fans tested in this category.



Measured noise levels in this chart should be considered worst case. Measurements were taken with an open side of a mid tower case 6" and 24" from the HSF. Real world would be a completely closed case resulting in a further reduction in noise.

The measured noise levels at 6" and 24" are below the system noise floor with dual Noctua fans to a less than quiet 50 dBA plus with the 110CFM+Scythe SFLEX configuration. The GeminII is very flexible in the fans that can be used with the cooler, but it did not deliver better cooling with higher output and much higher noise fans. Our advice would be to combine this cooler with medium output low noise fans. This should give the best balance of cooling and noise. However, if performance cooling is your goal with a new HSF you will likely be happier with the performance of a top Thermalright, Tuniq, Scythe, or Noctua cooler.