Conclusion

I have t admit that I expected a bit more from Scythe Zipang 2 solution than it actually demonstrated today. Less expensive Scythe Kabuto cools the CPU a little better. The only thing that the new cooler is really good at is quiet operation. Our earlier experience proves that giving advice to cooling solutions makers doesn’t always work, because in most cases the manufacturers prefer to disregard what we have to say. Nevertheless, I would like to make a few recommendations for Scythe, which should help us better understand the reasons behind its defeat today.

First of all, the cooler design doesn’t seem to be well-finished. To achieve the fastest heat transfer between the cooler base and its heatsink, they should remove the additional heatpipe curve. Besides, more efficient heatpipes layout inside the heatsink (if the two central heatpipes lead to the best cooled heatsink arrays) will lower the CPU temperature even more. At the same time, why not bundle Zipang 2 cooler with Scythe Slip Stream 120 fan? The tests showed that the cooler worked more effectively with this fan than with Kaze Maru. Moreover, this change doesn’t require any modification of the fan retention and won’t cost anything extra.  And an additional benefit will be slightly lower weight of the assembled Zipang 2.

We should specifically dwell on the retention mechanism for LGA775 and LGA1366 mainboards. To begin with it doesn’t provide as good and secure hold (compared with screw-on retention). Moreover, it is so inconvenient to work with on a large and low Zipang 2 cooler that you won’t ever want to install this cooler more than once. Yes, it must be very simple and inexpensive to make, but we have to admit that retention is currently the weakest spot of Zipang 2 cooler. On our part we would like to ask Scythe if they could include a new LGA1156 retention instead of the outdate Socket 478 one, as it might come in handy in the future. We also hope that it won’t take long before we see the next revision of the cooler of the Rising Sun and there will be a worthy rival to XILENCE Black Hawk COPPER at a reasonable price.