Xigmatek Gaia II CPU Cooler Review

Performance

The Xigmatek Gaia II comes in at just under £23 so it is towards the lower end of the market in terms of cost. Let’s see how it performs though.

At stock it doesn’t fare very well compared to its competition, it comes in at the bottom of our table unfortunately. It’s certainly well below the danger zone but I can’t help but think that the fan might be the issue. It just doesn’t seem to perform well at the lower speeds.

When we overclocked the processor we saw similar results when under heavy load. Interestingly though, it performed very well when our overclocked chip was idle, beating a range of other coolers. This shows that the cooler can do a good job when it hits its sweet spot. I do think that if the fan was set to run at 100% and not left to its PWM profile the cooler would be far better. Its build quality is great and I certainly wasn’t expecting these results.

The fan might struggle a little in terms of cooling but it certainly doesn’t with noise.  It’s very quiet.  It would have been nice to see this slightly louder with some more performance.

When overclocked, the Gaia II does drop down the table somewhat. At 45dB under heavy load it is still perfectly acceptable and wouldn’t be anything that would bother anyone, and at 41db at idle its on par with many more expensive coolers.