| Cooler Master GeminII S524 CPU Heatsink |  |
| Reviews - Featured Reviews: Cooling | |
| Written by David Ramsey | |
| Monday, 22 August 2011 | |
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GeminII S524 Detailed FeaturesThis image gives a better idea of the shape of the cooler. The idea here is that air blown down through the fins will also cool motherboard components such as the memory and VRMs.
For the Intel installation, you'll attach these two mounting brackets to the cooler's base. The captive screws at the ends of the "arms" are in slots that allow them to move a few millimeters back and forth; this is how they accommodate the various geometries of Intel cooler mounting points.
Springs on the captive screws provide the clamping pressure that presses the heat sink down on your CPU.
To install the cooler, you hold it inside your system with one hand and hang the back plate on the screws protruding through the motherboard with the other. Four nuts secure the screws; Cooler Master provides a little nut driver head that lets you tighten the nuts with a screwdriver. Having another person handy helps during mounting, but you can do it yourself if you have to. 
Compared to many other third-party coolers, the Cooler Master GeminII S524 looks almost dainty in your case. On my ASUS Sabertooth X58 motherboard, the cooler overhangs the first four of the six DIMM slots. The cooler's fins have 47mm of clearance over the motherboard, so most memory will fit with no problem. However, memory with tall fins won't.
Now that it's mounted, let's see how the GeminII S524 performs.
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Comments
I guess the key question is whether the extended fan mount bezel is flush with the RAM mounting tabs, as on every Z77 uATX board I've seen the RAM tabs' bottom is the exact point where the first PCIE slot starts. Since RAM slot + tabs is probably ~exactly 140MM (RAM I think is about 132MM, but not 100% sure), it seems like a perfectly center-mounted 140MM wide sink (which the GeminII looks like it is because of the extended lip for a 140MM fan) would be exactly flush with the top of PCIE slot 1, and since PCIE graphics cards usually have width to both sides, I'm kind of inclined to think the report I saw was accurate, but I'm also kind of inclined to think that removing the 140MM fan mount bezel/lip would fix it without altering thermals much.
Anyway, if you have any other recs for CPU sinks that would work well uATX and are under 130MM height and closer to 120MM in the top-to-bottom direction, I'm all ears.
I guess there's the Noctua NH-L12 (128MM, rather than 144), but I haven't been thrilled about it. Maybe I should reconsider.
Ironically enough my initial concern was sinks bumping interfering with the first RAM slot.
Still, I concede the possibility of interference. You probably could Dremel away some of the unused 140mm fan flange, but I think a simpler solution would be one of the single-120mm radiator water cooling setups like the Corsair H80. That should remove all your fitment concerns and provide better cooling to boot.
Anyway, thanks for replying, it's probably kind of onerous for you to have an extended comment discussion like this.
I've been looking at the H60 very seriously, actually. My major concern is that I feel that despite the 5 year warranty, the longevity and performance degradation over time aren't clear.
I know that every sink/fan based cooler I've used is still working and could probably keep on going for far longer than the useful life of my PCs and worse case probably need a fan replaced or reapplication of thermal grease, but with water cooling there are horror stories of pump seizures and coolant leaks that make me a little a ambivalent. Likewise, I've heard there's a constant, but minuscule, rate of coolant evaporation -- not sure how much it matters. Maybe I should just take the plunge. I've heard Corsair will replace your whole PC if things really go south, but it'd still be a hassle.
:)