Scythe Ninja Cu

Verdict: No way near as cool as a real ninja.

The Ninja Cu is massive; it comprises a block of copper fins to which a low-speed fan attaches using two very fiddly wire clips. Despite the 'Cu' in its name and its claims of being a copper cooler, the Scythe Ninja Cu also features an aluminium component. The CPU contact plate, a small heatsink above this and the junction for the six large, U-shaped heatpipes all pass through this aluminium construction.

Like the Akasa Blue Aurora, the Ninja Cu fixes onto a backplate, so you'll need to remove your motherboard to install it. The backplate has an adhesive pad to fix it in place, which aids installation and means that you shouldn't have to remove the motherboard should you upgrade the CPU or want to reseat the cooler. Two mounting bars fit to the backplate, and the four clips of the Ninja Cu clip onto these, much like Intel's Socket 478 mounting method. However, this made installing the Ninja Cu extremely difficult, as it isn't clear which way the mounting bars should be installed - whichever way you do it, they clash with the huge heapipes to some degree. We finally attached the cooler, but doing so warped the motherboard considerably.

The Ninja Cu cooled our overclocked and overvolted quad-core Xeon X3210 to just 1°C lower than the Intel reference HSF. The Ninja Cu may have been extremely quiet due to the supplied fan barely spinning, but Scythe would have been better off including a more aggressive fan. Replacing Scythe's fan with the Akasa Blue Aurora's fan resulted in a further 4°C being knocked off the CPU temperature.

Conclusion

This was one of the most difficult HSFs to install that we've tested. Its low noise level is entirely due to the weak fan, but this also hinders the Ninja Cu's ability to cool a CPU. As such, the Ninja Cu should be avoided at all costs.