X-bit labs

I Am Legend: Scythe Ninja Copper Cooler Review (page 2)

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

[ 02/06/2008 | 03:06 PM ]

Design and Functionality

Of course, when you take Scythe Ninja Copper out of the box the first impression is: “oh god, how heavy it is!”. Well, over 1kg (1015g) of net heatsink weight is a rare thing these days. Please understand me correctly, I am not trying to scare you, because mainboard textolite is designed to withstand even more severe pressure and loads. But the new cooler is so heavy that it is hard to simply get it out of the box. The best way to do it is to turn the box upside down and let it slide out, just watch your feet, otherwise you may find out what a kilogram of copper feels like when it falls :)

Just look at this beauty:

Nothing has changed dramatically in Scythe Ninja Copper design, but they certainly made it look much more luxurious by simply replacing the aluminum heatsink array with a solid copper one.

The newcomer is 110mm x 110mm x 150mm big and is based on six copper heatpipes placed in two layers, one on top of the other:

The heatpipes carry 23 copper plates, each about 0.3mm thick, with a 5mm distance between them. It’s been a while since we last tested a cooler featuring an array of copper heatsink plates of that size.

Note that one of the differences between Scythe Ninja Copper and its predecessor is the heatpipes spread out at a distance from one another:

As you remember from our previous review, the heatpipes of regular Scythe Ninja cooler were put together in groups of three. The new cooler has its heatpipes spaced out from one another, which allows not only to more evenly distribute the heat over heatsink plates, but also to reduce the airflow resistance. Strange that Scythe engineers needs over two and a half years to figure this out, because until this day Scythe Ninja was only available with heatpipes set in close groups of three.

The ends of all heatpipes are topped with aluminum caps. So, if you look at the cooler from above, you may get the impression that it features 12 and not 6 heatpipes:

There is an aluminum heatsink at the bottom of the cooler. It is of a little bit different shape than the one of a regular Scythe Ninja:

You cannot remove the heatsink from in-between the heatpipes, but you can unscrew it from the cooler base and lift up a little bit to see that there is no thermal interface of any kind between the heatsink and the top row of heatpipes:

It’s a real pity that a $70+ cooler has an upsetting flaw like that, which we can only see in budget cooling solutions most of the time, and not in the one that tends to be the top choice.