Scythe Zipang:

The latest cooler from Scythe is huge. With measurements of 145x145mm, the height is only 112mm, and you would expect that this cooler is incompatible with many boards. Luckily, this is not true. Even with boards with huge Northbridge coolers such as DFI or MSI, the cooler fits perfectly. At the top of the cooler you will find a 139x139x25mm fan that rotates at only 1000rpm. This certainly promises a quiet operation.




The cooler consits of six copper heatpipes, each 6mm, which lack the nickel plated finish. To avoid incompatibilities Scythe's engineers decided to keep the heatpipe slope as steep as possible. This makes the cooler compatible to almost any board available. We have tested with ASUS, DFI, Foxconn and MSI and we found no problems at all. You can mount the cooler with the heatpipes facing the Northbridge or the memory slots and the results stay quite the same. The maximum difference is about 1°C.




The base is pure copper but Scythe decided to nickel-plate it, to avoid discoloration due to oxidation. Of course, it has a mirror finish.
 



The fan is from the 140mm category with only 1000RPM. We have no audio measurement analyzer for human ears, but believe us when we tell you it's very silent. It is rated with 21dB(A).




The box contains all mounting options for any socket currently available, such as 478, 775 and AM2; also a thermal grease is included, but it's not a high-performance one, so you might want to replace it. The box design looks very Japanese, which makes sense since Scythe is a Japanese company.