Scythe Ninja

Verdict: Passively cool your CPU

Some historians believe that the Ninja were a highly secretive sect of spies and assassins from the Togakure mountains. Here at Custom PC, we know that the Scythe Ninja is a great CPU HSF, and thanks to its sharp aluminium fins, you can use it as a makibishi.

The Ninja is probably the largest CPU HSF ever produced, consisting of 12 heatpipes, a thick copper base and a huge tower block of aluminium fins. The Ninja is so large because it's designed to passively cool Athlon 64 and Pentium 4 processors, although you can mount two 120mm fans in a push-pull configuration. The fans can be fitted to any of the four sides of the Ninja, so hot air is never blown upwards towards the PSU.

Without a fan, the Ninja was unable to prevent our Pentium 4 test chip from overheating and shutting down, but with a quiet 120mm Akasa Amber fan, it cooled the CPU to 6ûC below the reference Intel HSF. The Ninja excels at cooling Athlon 64s; it cooled our overclocked and overvolted test chip to 15ûC below the reference AMD HSF with a 120mm fan, and to 7ûC below without a fan.

As the only HSF in the world that can passively cool an overclocked and overvolted Athlon 64, the Scythe Ninja embarrasses most actively-cooled HSFs into silence.