Initial test show it's around 5-7°C cooler than the XP120 with same fan and same fan speed. However, ambient temp is 2°C cooler so i just took the offset. XP120 was 44°C @ 24°C amb. Ninja is 36°C @ 22°C amb.
fan spins at 367rpm. And since the temp is lower and the fan is T-Balanced, it may spin a bit slower than on the XP120 test. Which makes it even more impressive.

About mounting it. I never had any problems with mounting the XP120 and this is a similar procedure. However, mounting the fan was a real butch. I needed at least one extra hand.

Will hopefully show some pics today in general gallery.

Exactly my experience too.

While it is easier to mount to the motherboard than the XP-120, the extremely difficult (and somewhat unsafe, with all the force [leverage] that needs to be applied to the heatsink 5" above the motherboard) fan mounting procedure more than offsets that small advantage.

If I had to choose between the two, I'd go with the XP-120, even though the Ninja cools a few degrees better.

I tried mounting a fan to the Ninja just to see what it would be like. It is difficult, but unnecissary for most people. Pretty much anyone with an A64 setup can get away with a case fan in the vicinity.

But the noise from a fan at the edge of a case will escape easier.

At the same time, a fan mounted to a case can be soft-mounted. While the mounting point on the Ninja is not only hard, but right up against the fins.

Instructions for mounting a 120mm fan on the Ninja:

1. Loosely attach one of the wire clips to the fan, and slide the long "bar" into the notches on the upper side of the heatsink (near the power supply).

2. Pull the fan around the heasink so that the fan is flush against the heatsink, and the single clip is under tension. Hold it in place with a single hand. The remaining steps will be easier if the unclipped edge of the fan is aligned with the edge of the heatsink; this will make the fan slightly off-center, but it can be slid into its proper position once the second clip is in place.

3. Attach the lower end (closer to the motherboard) of the second clip to the fan.

4. Slide the middle of the "bar" of the clip into the lowest notch on the heatsink.

5. Pull the bar up through the row of notches until the clip is aligned properly and keeps the fan in position. This will bend the lowest fin of the heatsink slightly, which is normal. The fan should now be held in place on three of its four corners, and you should be holding the remaining "prong" to prevent the clip from sliding back down the side of the heatsink.

6. The last step is to secure the remaining corner (at the top of the heatsink in the middle of the motherboard where there is lots of room to work) in place. This is the only step where you will need to use much force. Make sure the "bar" of the clip is in the notch on the uppermost fin of the heatsink, and press the L-shaped corner of the clip against the fan until is slips into the mounting hole in the fan. The clip will probably be bowed out and will not stay in the notches of the middle fins. This is normal and is perfectly secure so long as the clip is in the top and bottom notches.

Hope this helps. Let me know if any of this is unclear.

That is quite clear, thanks. Now does anyone have suggestions on how to isolate a fan on this sucker? Dampen any vibrations? Perhaps get it about 0.5cm away from the fins?

Any reputable dealers out there that has the Scythe SCNJ-1000 in-stock?

Also any problems mounting the Ninja on a DFI LANPARTY UT nF4 Ultra-D Socket 939?

Yep, that's exactly how I've been doing it, but I can't figure out how to avoid needing a third hand around steps #5 and #6. All that pushing means the mobo will be sliding across the table and you'll be applying a lot of torsional stress to the heatsink retention mechanism and mobo.

I've done it once or twice by myself, but have given up on that and just have my wife hold the board in place (and support the top of the heatsink a bit, too) while I hold the fan and fasten the clips. It's about 4,000,000 times easier that way, and a whole bunch safer but unfortunately, it's not at all "macho".

Easy ... I've been installing it after I've screwed the motherboard into the case. I think I did do it once on an open bench before I had perfected by technique, but I may have had Mike to help me on that one.

My sempron 2800+ 90nm winnie has been undervolted to 1.05 volts and puts out an estimateed 25 watts. the only active cooling i would like is the seasonic tornado's 12 cm fan.

my question is whether at 25 watts and a seasonic 12cm fan at 800rpm, i could go fanless with the scythe ninja, if it ever shows up as not being sold out.

I just bought one last Thursday from www.performance-pcs.com for 57 delivered. In stock. Actually it's in a UPS warehouse waiting to be delivered on Monday.

Depends on what other components you have in your system. Currently, I have a Scythe NCU-2005 (similar passive performance to the Ninja), and the only airflow through my case is provided by the D12SM-12 @ ~770RPM. I am using mostly low-power components, though, which includes an undervolted Turion64. But it should be similar in power consumption to your undervolted Sempron, if anything maybe slightly less.

As long as you don't have a hot VGA card or many hard drives to dump heat into the system, you could probably get by with it. Just make sure you seal off all intakes except for the front intake, so air can pass over the HDD(s), motherboard chipset, and CPU before leaving the case.

If you have any questions about my setup, please feel free to ask.

hi
well i have a soltek gr with a nvidia 250gr chipset. matrox g450 uses about 10 watts or so. the sempron is undervolted. i am using the sp2004c there is currently only 2 fans cpu fan on retail HSF and seasonic tornado 300.

if i get the ninja then the last noisy component will be gone.

Very similar to my setup, not neccessarily in components, but heat output.

I'm using a DFI NF3 250Gb and a GF4 MX4000 (probably close to the 10w for your G450).

I'd recommend you go for it. If you don't already have one, you may want to consider picking up a larger Zalman passive chipset heatsink for the motherboard. My chipset runs warm, but I have not noticed any problems with stability, so I never really worried about it.

Good luck!

Hi.

Does anyone know if the Scythe SCNJ-1000 Ninja heatsink is compatible with the Asus A8N-E motherboard? i.e no interference with the memory slots like some Heatsinks do. Can't find anything on the Scythe site or at Asus. Has anybody tried these 2 together without any problems?

This impressive review has made me change my mind from an original choice of an XP120, mainly due to the described ease of installation. I'll be using it to cool a AMD64 San diego 3700+ with a Nexus 120mm fan, inside an Acoustic case C6607. Thinking of mounting the nexus fan on the right side of the HS, sucking air in towards the Scythe Ninja, while the rear Case Nexus expels the air out the case. Does this sound like a good idea?

I realise this could cause confliction between the fan and memory modules. Do you think it would clear the memory?

Thanks for any info or links.

Planned PC build.

CASE: Acoustic case C6607b with 2 Nexus 120mm fans (front +back)
CPU: Athlon 64 3700+ san diego CPU
CPU Heatsink: Scythe SCNJ-1000 Ninja + Nexus 120mm fan
MOBO: Asus A8N-E Nforce4 Ultra (939) + Zalman ZM-NB47J NB heatsink
VGA: Sapphire X800xl PCI-E ultimate
PSU: Seasonic S-12 430w
RAM: OCZ 1GB (2 x 512MB) DDR PC3200 EL Platinum REV 2
HARD DRIVE: Samsung SP120 250GB (SP2504C) SATA
OPTICAL DRIVE: Pioneer DVR-A09XL DVD/RW
FAN CONTROLLER: mCubed T Balancer XL Analogue fan controller + 2 extra analog sensors

Mike C,

does Scythe include heat sink compound like Thermalright?

thanks
Dan

No, I don't recall that it did. None of the Scythe models did.

EDIT: OOPS! I forgot, it comes with a tiny plastic bag package of TIM you cut on one end to squeeze out. We never use the stock TIM, so I forgot all about it.

thanks...uh what's TIM stand for?

Thermal Interface Material.

Thermal interface material, a.k.a. goo, gunk, thermal paste, heatsink compound, etc.

While looking for information about ducting I found a couple of documents from intel that I found useful. In "Thermal Airflow Considerations" pg. 11 they make the assumption that at a distance of 1/2 the diameter of the fan, cfm drops to 1/2 of its original flow unless contained or directed as in a duct. http://www.intel.com/design/celeron/app ... 502501.pdf

It seems that the ninja could achieve the same cooling power at lower fan speeds if the airflow were channeled as in the coolermaster hyper 6+. As a semi passive design it probably makes sense to leave the sides open, or for use in the p180, but in a 3000b some air flow containment would probably help performance.

It is true as the article states that the coolermaster hyper 6 does not allow both vertical or horizontal mounting options, but the newer hyper 6 + allows either orientation. - FG

This article "Intel 840 Chipset Design Considerations" http://www.intel.com/design/chipsets/ap ... 802702.pdf
has a lot of useful information about fans including some information about fans in series and parallel, chassis impedance, etc..

thanks for those pdf frankgehry, that's an interesting find.









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Anyone know if there is a holdup in the production of the Ninja's? Everone seems to be out of stock at the moment.

I found the installation of SCNJ-1000 quite difficult at first. The first time was a test run for clearance. I uninstalled and reinstalled the thing another time afterwards.

The way I found to install the Ninja was to hook the clips on one side of the Socket 478 retention mechanism. This resulted in the Ninja tilted about 35 degress to that side.

Next step was to bring the tilted-up side back down, in order to clamp that side down.

This causes the edge of the Ninja to scrape along the heatspreader as it rotates down. I'm not sure if the Artic Ceramique is being spread unevenly as a result.

Once the Ninja is seated in the RM, the Ninja is off center by a few millimeters. It is off centered towards the side that was tilted up intially (the side that is clamped down 2nd).

Has anyone had success mounting the Ninja using equal force on both sides (all 4 corners) at the same time? The pressure required is enormous to do all clamps at once.

Compared to my old CPU cooler (CNPS7000), the Ninja seems to idle a few degrees higher, but the load temps are a few degrees lower.

IMO installing the CNPS7000 is much easier since it does not require much pressure by hand. It is possible to install that with it being evenly balanced on the socket, while having the screws and screwdriver do most of the work of applying pressure evenly. This allows the TIM to be more evenly spread out.

After the first attempt installing the Ninja (with TIM) it seemed like the top of the heatspreader and the bottom of the Ninja got scratched up a good amount.

I'm dissapointed that my idle temps are slightly higher than before. Not sure if reinstalling the Ninja will help temps more.

I just read a review of heatsinks including the ninja and i found one interesting quote - http://www.xbitlabs.com/articles/cooler ... ol_24.html


Anyone else heard such a rumor?

I believe one was displayed at a show, but there were no plans to release it.

I'm usually not one to even worry about weight issues on my CPU or motherboard.

However, having been an owner of ThermalRight's products, mainly the SP-94 and SP-97, I would have to say that an all-copper version of the Ninja would just be way too heavy. That thing would weigh like 5 lbs!

I don't know how comfortable I would be to have it on my motherboard... and I don't move my computer around at all. However, I bet it would be a pretty good cooler, although I don't know how much of a difference it really would garner over the present Ninja model. Al and Cu are pretty close to the same performance aspects when it comes to disappating heat.

A quick update:

It would appear that the Ninja will be replaced by the Ninja Plus sometime in the future.

According to Scythe's Japanese site, the current model, the SCNJ-1000 has been discontinued, and a new model has been put up in its place, the SCNJ-1000P.

As far as I can tell, the only difference is that Scythe is now including a 120mm fan in the package, so this doesn't seem to be a major change. Hopefully, the fan will be as quiet as the 92 mm fans that have shipped with other Scythe heatsinks. If the sample fans that Scythe sent us are any indication, they should be fairly good fans.

As far as I can tell, none of Scythe's international web sites list the Ninja Plus for sale, so at this point it would appear that the new model is available in Japan only. I suspect it is only a matter of time before the revised product appears in the rest of the world though.

I have read all the reviews and everything, but I didn't ever notice anywhere my following question being answered:

When there is a fan on the Ninja, is there any vibration transferred to the heatsink or motherboard causing a resonance in the case?

It seems to me that this might be the case, and if so, couldn't it cause a great deal of noise, or am I way off on this?

Just checking, as I am contemplating putting a fan on the Ninja I own to see if it can help with airflow in my P180 case.

Thank you.