Geometric Future Eskimo Pro 42 Closed-Loop CPU Cooler Review

An unfamiliar brand can bring with it a bunch of unknowns, but a good price can help a new company get a foothold: Available in either black or white, the Eskimo Pro 42 (B or W) fits within the so-called 420mm format (three 140mm fans) and costs about as much as a typical name-brand three-by-120mm unit. The black version we’re reviewing was no longer in stock at any of our common sources, so we’re linking the white version for the purchase link.

We might have expected a radiator this big to be a bit thicker than the 27mm normally associated with smaller units, but it’s not like we haven’t seen this before: The slimness should at least provide a bit more motherboard clearance in cases that have room for a radiator this large to be mounted on the top panel. Also included in the box are the three fans, Intel and AMD brackets, Intel and AMD mounting hardware, a tube of thermal paste, a plastic thermal paste spreader, a PWM fan splitter/extender cable and an ARGB splitter/adapter extension cable.

The head of this cooler includes a pump, ARGB pump cover and copper coldpate (heat exchanger). Power by a 3-pin non-PWM fan header, the pump’s cable is the same 320mm length as the cover’s ARGB lead. The nylon-clad rubber hoses that connect it to the radiator are a bit longer at 450mm.

Also notice the circular plastic rib that surrounds the coldplate: This is the attachment point for the cooling head’s mounting bracket.

The Geometric Future Squama 2503-14B (for “Black”) fans are peripherally lighted with an ARGB strip behind a light diffusing plastic band. The motors use four-pin PWM fan connections, and the PWM cables have passthrough (for daisy chaining), but Geometric Future trims the RPM detection pin from the output side so that motherboards can get an accurate read from the first fan in the chain. The fan’s ARGB lead also features passthrough but uses proprietary connectors, which is why the cooler’s installation kit includes an adapter lead on its ARGB splitter/extender cable.

Most Intel motherboards don’t have cooler support plates, so Geometric Future includes one that goes all the way back to LGA 1366, though it doesn’t include plastic spacers of the appropriate thickness to fit that ancient interface. It does include plastic spacers to fit LGA 1156 through LGA 1851 socket thicknesses though, along with standoffs to fit the threaded CPU cooler mounting plates that come with LGA 2066 and LGA 2011 motherboards.

Eskimo Pro 42 Installation

Like the above-mentioned LGA 2066 and 2011, AMD motherboards come factory-equipped with CPU cooler mounting plates on the back side that use threaded holes. Unlike those Intel boards, AMD’s mounting holes are factory equipped with brackets for clip on coolers. For our installation, we removed the plastic brackets (one is shown beneath the socket) and replaced both of those with standoffs (as shown above the socket).

The Eskimo Pro 42 includes rectangular and square pattern mounting brackets, the former designed to fit AMD socket AM5 and AM4 spacing. After twisting it onto the base of the cooling head, we used the included knurled nuts to secure the assembly over the standoffs. The nuts also have countersunk points that fit a #2 Phillips-head screwdriver, but anyone using those should be carful not to overtighten.

The case of our test system is designed to hold a radiator behind its front mounting plate, and a set of fans in front of its mounting plate, as shown.

The Eskimo Pro 42’s mounting kit includes short screws to mount the radiator to the case, and longer screws to mount the fan to the radiator, which would have worked for us if we’d been able to fit so large a cooler under our case’s top panel. But our test case only has enough space for the radiator’s 465mm length on its front panel, and its front panel mount is designed with only enough space to hold a a fan set on its front side and a radiator on its back side.  Since the Eskimo Pro 42’s fan screws didn’t have the extra 2mm needed to reach the radiator through our fan mount, we had to secure a slightly longer set of screws from one of our other coolers.

We tested our build to make sure all the fans would spin and light up before closing it, only to find that the passthrough connector on the pump cover’s ARGB lead didn’t light up our case’s rear fan. Our case fans also have passthrough, and putting our fan before the pump cover solved the issue.

With all the fans now spinning and lit, we’re ready to test.

Eskimo 42 Pro Performance

System Configuration
Case	Thermaltake Ceres 500 TG ARGB
CPU	AMD Ryzen 9 7900X: 12 cores/ 24 threads, 64MB L3 Cache O/C to 5.00 GHz at 1.25 V Core
Motherboard	ASRock B650E PG Riptide WiFi, BIOS 1.18
RAM	Sabrent Rocket SB-DR5U-32GX2 64GB DDR5-4800
System Drive	HP SSD FX900 M.2 1TB NVMe SSD

The ‘420mm’ Eskimo Pro 42 lead the top-performing ‘360mm’ cooler through most of our CPU cooling test, though the iCue Link H150i RGB did occasionally pass it. Remember, lower is better regarding temperature.

Top panel fans have a big impact on voltage regulator temperature, but ‘420mm’ radiators are too long to fit on our case’s top panel. Putting the Eskimo Pro 42 up front left us with the case’s three front fans removed. Since that forced us to remove the case’s three front intake fans, we put two of those above the motherboard where a smaller cooler would have gone. We had to forgo the third fan, as the radiator was so tall that it crowded out the front portion of our top panel fan mount.

We expected more cooling from a larger set of fans, but the Eskimo Pro 42 instead gave us lower noise for a similar amount of cooling compared to the smaller iCue Link H150i RGB.

Our cooling-to-noise chart shows the actual cooling performance difference of around 1% favoring the iCue Link H150i RGB, but the noise level greatly favoring the Eskimo Pro 42, so that the later has a 12% better cooling-to-noise ratio.

For providing a better user experience (lower noise) at a moderate price, the Eskimo Pro 42B receives our highest recommendation.

Geometric Future Eskimo Pro 42
Pros:	Cons:
Superior cooling-to-noise ratio	Fan screws too short for certain installations.
The Verdict:
If you like the look, the Eskimo Pro 42 will probably deliver all the cooling you’ll need–at a relatively low noise level and price.