Cooler Master GeminII M4 - CPU Cooler with 4 Direct Contact Heat Pipes (RR-GMM4-16PK-R2)

That was a question before it became a statement.The backstory: I had a recent PC upgrade and my still quite powerful Intel Q6600 became redundant. Instead of having it "waste" in my guest/tester PC, I decided to upgrade my HTPC which was running an E2200. This presented a few challenges; first of all, the board it was in is ATX. HTPC cases that fit ATX boards are indiscriminately big and chunky (I don't know why). It's as if manufacturers feel that users want 10 fans running in their HTPC. I searched high and low but could not source a SFF full ATX case. I have an Athenatec Evo and that fits the board, but as I mentioned, it's tall and frankly I wanted to move to something smaller. Since I couldn't source a case to fit my needs, my only solution was to source a microatx board which could fit the Q6600 and also contained all the features I needed from the Abit IP35 Pro I had - specifically, 4 DDR2 RAM slots. I had a microATX XFX board which would fit the Q6600, but like most microATX boards made in 07/08', it only fit 2 DDR2 RAM sticks. The final challenge was to source a new case as well. I thought maybe it'd be better to buy new guts, but an Intel solution would have cost upwards of $300 to match the Q6600, new board and 8GB RAM while an AMD solution would have been $250 - these costs aren't including the case or fan. I ended up purchasing an Intel microATX board, a Silverstone Milo ML04 and this fan to cool the Q6600, since not just any stock fan can quietly cool this beast.The board came and has a huge heatsink right by the CPU socket so I got pretty scared. Even with measurements, it didn't look like it would work - but it did! I ended up saving 200+.The point: Even if it looks big and wide, check it out. Measurements don't do it justice. If it can fit in the Intel DG45ID, it has to be able to fit almost any microATX board. I will say that you'll need to watch RAM height. It doesn't affect my board but I can see RAM with tall heat spreaders being an issue for some boards.The function: Works well. Works VERY well. It is almost silent and cools the chip better than my Zalman CNPS9700NT, which is quite annoying since that was such a big, heavy fan to deal with. I'm a Cooler Master guy now I think. Between this and the Evo 212, I don't think I need to go with any other brand unless I get into extreme cooling. To give you an idea of the full size, the fan and the board totals roughly 80mm tall. The ML04 has a height of 105mm and is one of the thinnest microatx housing HTPC cases on the market right now.The recommendation: I fully recommend this fan for anyone needing to cool older CPUs or ones that run hot, quietly. I could have used a stock Intel cooler but the stock coolers are pretty loud compared to this and they're also not fun to install. You can get away with a loose push pin on celerons and pentiums but not on quad cores or anything running 100w or higher.This one takes 5 or so minutes to install, less if you can follow instructions properly quickly and has a very rigid and solid fit to the CPU and board. I generally take my time to make sure I get it right the first time, but since I had experience with the Evo 212 on a 1155 chip, this was very easy and very quick for me.

The stock fan in my desktop was allowing CPU temps to exceed 100C under any serious load (Intel Core i5, with an LGA 1155 socket).This new fan has not let the temperature go over 50C under any load.Very pleased. The fan is VERY quiet.I chose this one because the PC case is very narrow and there would be no room for one of the very tall heat sink/fan types. This one does slightly obstruct access to the first memory slot, but if you have a memory chip installed, it does clear the top of it by a sufficient margin. If you plan on adding something to that slot, then you should do it before you install this fan. The fan can be mounted in any orientation, and I chose to put the heat pipes so that they would be horizontal when the case was in its normal upright position. Some YouTuber said that was more efficient. Don't know if that is true, but I have no complaints.I had to remove the motherboard to install this, as it needs a mounting plate on the backside of the MB - as many fan/heat sink combinations do. That was not difficult. Use an ANTI-STATIC wrist strap the whole time you are working on this project. Better safe than really sorry.I also got the Arctic Silver and ArctiClean kit. The ArctiClean worked very well to remove the old thermal paste and clean off the CPU surface. The fan kit does come with its own thermal paste, but the Arctic Silver kit was only a few dollars and I wanted to get the best contact I could. I put on several small dabs, then spread it evenly over the entire CPU surface with a small piece of plastic, leaving as thin a coating as I could.The only glitch in the installation was in placing the mounting plate on the back of the motherboard. The plate has an insulating covering that is supposed to go against the motherboard. The tabs on the mounting plate are angled up from the plate. Unfortunately, my motherboard (ASUS P8B75-M) already has a plate on the back into which some screws attached from the CPU mount. That means that putting the fan mount on as instructed left the tabs for the fan screws too far away from the MB so you could not put the nuts onto the fan mount screws. The solution was to flip the fan mounting plate over and put some insulating material onto what was now the side facing the MB. This put the tabs for the fan mount screws directly onto the MB surface (with some insulating tape on them). The screws then had plenty of room for the nuts and all was well.