The copper base was covered with protective film, yet it didn’t help against oxidation:

It’s not easy to see in the snapshot, but there are traces of soldering near the pipes which indicates how careful the manufacturer is about a proper thermal contact.

The most pleasant surprise is the new patent-pending tool-free system of fastening the cooler on different processor types (Versatile Tool-Free Multiplatform System –VTMS).

The fasteners for LGA775, AMD K8 and Socket 478 processors, respectively, are shown in the photo (from left to right). Take note of the curious locks on each pair of fasteners. These locks are inserted into the holes in the aluminum heatsink’s sides. They are marked with an arrow below (the LGA775 fastener was installed to make this snapshot):

Replacing the fastener with another one takes just a few seconds: press on the small levers to release the pressure and take the fastener out. Installing the cooler on different socket types is no problem at all. This is a real pleasure after the other universal coolers from Scythe that gave you some troubles during installation.

Well, some troubles occurred even with the new fastener:

Unfortunately, the Scythe Samurai Z didn’t impress me with its efficiency in the tests. It helped overclock the Intel Pentium 4 521 processor to 280MHz FSB (the CPU temperature grew to 73°C at that) and the AMD Athlon X2 64 3800+ to 270MHz clock-gen frequency (the CPU temperature was 65°C).