X-bit labs

I Am Legend: Scythe Ninja Copper Cooler Review (page 4)

Category: Coolers

by Sergey Lepilov

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

Installation Tips

Scythe Ninja Copper may be installed onto Socket 478, LGA775 and Socket 754/939/940/AM2 mainboards. The latter one requires a special retention bracket with a lip that needs to be fastened to the cooler base first:

The clip catches onto the standard plastic socket frame that is why Scythe Ninja Copper may only be positioned facing one of the two possible directions. To be fair I have to say that it doesn’t really matter for Scythe Ninja Copper, which way it is facing, because its heatsink is symmetrical. The only thing that comes to mind is directing the airflow through the lower “fake” heatsink, not that it would actually matter that much.

In case of an Intel platform, the installation procedure becomes a little bit more complicated. At first you need to install two retention brackets on the mainboard PCB using bundled screws:

A backplate with soft padding should go on the other side of the PCB:

I have to say that it is very inconvenient to tighten the retention screws, because you have to hold the board, the backplate and retention brackets in place at the same time.

A completely different retention bracket needs to be fastened to the cooler itself:

And then you slide the retention hooks into the slits on the brackets and press the cooler against the CPU until the hooks on the opposite side catch on to the slits, too:

You should keep in mind that this is extremely hard to accomplish inside a system case. The clips are beneath the heatsink, so you will have really hard times trying to get to them when the mainboard is already installed. However, in an open testbed, the whole thing will just take a minute.

Scythe Ninja Copper looks like this once installed into a system case:

Note that I had to remove the memory module from the first and the third DIMM slot in order to install the fan the way it is shown on the photo above. Of course, you can affix the fan on the side facing the mainboard chipset, but what if the chipset heatsink is too tall? You can also put the fan higher up, but in this case it will not cool down the components in around-the-socket area, which is also important for contemporary systems, and especially during quad-core processor overclocking.