Conclusion

Straight out of the box, the Cooler Master CB5-7KFSA-02-GP Type II BTX Cooler looks like it is ready to get down to business on some serious cooling.  It is well built and heavy duty, and the specifications lead you to believe it will move a good deal of air to cool your CPU.  Unfortunately, things aren't always what they seem.  The fan never reached 50% of full speed despite the temperature climbing into the mid 60s, which is way to warm for comfort.  The fan speed may be one issue, but the pre-installed thermal was another.  It looked too small, and when replaced with some high quality after market paste, the cooling performance improved by about 11 degrees!  That is a substantial increase for just a thermal paste change.

The fact that the system restarts each time to a series of unpleasant beeps and an error detailing a shutdown due to overheating is another (serious) issue.  The system hasn't actually shut down or been unstable at all, but with this cooler installed it can't be convinced otherwise.  I do not like seeing this message (or hearing the grating beeps), and if it means uninstalling the cooler, that is exactly what will be done.

Pros

• Nearly silent
• Heavy duty, well built
• Competitively priced
• Allows longer PCI Express video cards to be installed

Cons

• Fan speed never went much above 3000 RPM, despite being rated for 7000 RPM
• Terrible thermal performance with pre-installed thermal pad
• Doesn't cool as well as a comparable Type I cooler, even with better thermal paste
• No system instability, but upon next start BIOS complains of shutdown due to thermal problems