i was expecting more. mabey the ninja really is the end all of quiet, low airflow heatsinks.

typo patrol:

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Nice heatsink, but too heavy. Like Thermalright have said, any idiot can cool better by simply throwing more metal at the problem, the challenge is to cool smarter; Scythe need to start thinking outside the "bigger is better" tower heatsink box.

Less is more, as it would seem!

in the end, it all boils down to "what you're looking for" question - you want to go for uncompromised silence, you go for the ninja (talking about air cooling), and when your OCed CPU needs to be cooler, you just go for infinity to get advantge of a few, sometimes crucial, degrees

http://zenfist.pl/pelen.php?id=78

a link to another vs test, this time in Polish

but hey, figures and numbers stay the same

Sigh, I was looking at buying another Ninja. I had a couple places that still showed they had stock but not anymore. Least I have one. Kind of put off that the Ninja is discontinued and replaced, in my opinion, by an inferior product. From the looks of the Infinity and comments from the reviewer it doesn't look like a passive solution is possible. And that much weight in a tower design, sheesh that's a lot. I was worried back in the day putting that much weight on the board in the form of the Zalman 7700cu. Is the weight listed just the heatsink itself or is that with the fan? Will look elsewhere for a heatsink on my next build then. Sorry Scythe.

It's interesting how much better than the Ninja the Infinity did in this review. Makes us wonder again about our sample. Maybe we need to retest the Ninja...

Whoa, seriously? Is this only because Scythe is supposedly about to introduce a socket AM2 compatible Ninja, or is it really going the way of the buffalo?

That's what I was thinking to (about AM2). But I don't know, I've seen people at a few places now saying it's actually discontinued. Just seems strange that they would pull inventory everywhere if they were just doing an "upgrade" to it. I hope it's the case that they are "upgrading" it for AM2 compatiblity. Maybe someone in "the know" could chime in with some info.

Even if the Ninja is not discontinued, then it will be harder to get. Most retailers don't carry all Scythe models (they just have to many). The Ninja and the Infinity are fairly close (looking from the POV of the masses) so newer is better.

irony is... a typo in an editor's note: variiance for the wiin.
:)

good review as usual, but i cant understand why the old CPU was used when all of the new CPU cooler reviews are done with your warmer running Intel 520?

I hear ya. Tr is the Rolls Royce of HS isn't it?


If it really isn't as good as the Ninja it would be stupid of Scythe to discontinue a brilliant low flow cooler with an high flow cooler now when we see a trend to cooler chips (e.g. C2D, Amd EE and 65nm) .

But I think I actually saw a german site were the infinity also beat the Ninja and was the best performer they had ever tested (MANY coolers were tested incl. TR Ultra 120). Well it really should as the Infinity has more the size of a 120mm fan than the Ninja and thus gets more airflow.

Can't remember the site though...

Perhaps SPCR should obtain a new sample of the Ninja in order to check for sample variance. It is strange that the Ninja fares so much better than almost everything thrown at it, which usually is not seen in reviews from other sites.

Ninja is not discontinued. I asked from Scythe and they said that they'll start selling Ninja Plus rev.B "end of this month or early next month". It will be AM2 compatible and it will have a different mounting mechanism.

Uh uh...

Because the newer test bench has failed. We're in the process of building a new test bench, but there's a lot of ideas being thrown around. The older test bench was used as an interim measure.

I'd never dare putting almost 1 kg worth of HSF on my mobo. I'm using my case as a footstool, and sometimes the case gets a little bumping from my legs/feet.. aren't mobos designed for something like half a kilo as the maximum weight for HSF's? Or are newer mobos designed to be able to handle more weight? I guess the mobo warranty is pretty void if you put too heavy a HSF on it, or are "maximum HSF weight" numbers only recommendations that won't void warranty?

Agreed, heavier and heavier heatsinks is a big step backwards. I was initially considering an Infinity for my planned socket AM2 purchase, but I guess I'll have to summon the patience to wait for the new Ninjas, which hopefully don't weigh any more than the old ones.

I just bought & installed a Scythe Infinity heatsink on my Athlon64 3500+ and it's cooling it passively no problem (30 deg C) with a 12V Nexus 120mm case fan and a never-ramps-up 120mm PSU fan.

I went for the Infinity over the Ninja as the Infinity is a bit cheaper ($69 vs $89 AU$) and I figured it would be on par or better than the Ninja. I was waiting for SPCR's review but couldn't wait any longer (too keen for quiet)

When it arrived the Scythe 120mm fan had all four arms (connecting it to the fan frame) broken yet the retail box and all packaging was pristine and heavily bubble wrapped. The retailer and I assume poor quality control at factory, but it could have broken en-route to retailer with a large drop onto a flat surface I suppose (funny no evidence of the impact though).

Scythe are sending a replacement fan soon. I am happy to hear the Scythe fan included is good, because I bought 5 x Nexus 120mm fans, and to be honest, the 2 I have tried so far (at 12V) aren't that impressive - quite a lot of thrumming like they are off-balance and wobbling. Could be a bad batch but I thought Nexus cherry-picked YL's?

I really like the Infinity mounting method, but as the review said, I am also a bit concerned at ~1kg metal hanging off my mobo using the stock plastic mount. I am wondering if I should rig up a support cable-tie to a chassis cross-brace nearby.

I also wanted to orient the infinity facing rear and was going to duct the case fan to the heatsink, but with the temps I am getting don't think I'll bother.

I think it is a good quality product and am overall happy with it.

I don't think they "cherry pick" them so much as have YL make them to their specifications (ie lower top speed). Can I ask where you bought them, and whether they are new or secondhand?

"Smart Drive" hyperlink in system specs points to

...drumrolls...

file:///C%7C/Documents%20and%20Settings/Admin/My%20Documents/A%20SilentPCReview/A%20SPCRweb/kamakiri/article23-page1.html

Sorry, I just remembered an old as this world joke/story/urban legend about user hosting picture at C:\my Documents\me.jpg

Wow... now that's a dissapointment. I tought that:

1) the Infinity could be used passively
2) given it's bigger, heavier and all that it would perform better than the Ninja

Glad I bought 1 extra Ninja in prevision for my new computers later this year. They do seem to be harder to find now....

One main advantage of the Infinity is it can be installed on a socket 775 without removing the motherboard.

Again, there's all that weight hanging off the socket without any sort of backplate, though. I'd see about buying a crane and sticking it inside the case to hold the Infinity up. A Ninja is heavy enough.

That's good to hear then.

As for the weight, I found the Zalman was ok because the profile of the heatsink was low. The Infinity though, at 160mm in height, I don't know. Can anyone at SPCR say how the weight is distributed in the heatsink? One thing that initially attracted me to the Ninja was a couple places (SPCR included) commenting how most of the weight seemed to be in the base.

er... am I the only one thinking this but why did they bother even making and selling this if it is a step backwards?!

wouldnt be the first time i saw a company make a new product to replace somthing that is actually worse than the original.

(the 2000 mitsubishi eclipse comes to mind, and P3 slot style processors, and the entire P4 architecture)

well the P4 was more powerful at higher clockspeeds even if less efficient and going down a dead end...

anyways, this thermalright comparison might be of interest to those here
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=286

it kind of begs the question to me: what could the Ultra-120 achieve with pseudo-passive cooling? ie using a fan duct and only the case fan to expel case air via the ultra-120. surely that would be a potentially v powerful solution no? please investigate spcr!

Maybe someone who has a Ninja and someone who has an Infinity could place it on some kind of narrow stick, move it around till it's balanced, and take a picture and measure how far from the base the center of weight is. Would be interesting. If say 50% of the weight is located at the 25% nearest the base, one wouldn't have to be so worried about the ~1 kg weight.