First of all, I've been waiting for this review for quite a while, so thank you!

Mini ninja review

Why isn't the Mini Ninja review on the main page? I noticed it has a 09/02 date. I would like a place to comment the review.

Once again, a great review!

EDIT BY ADMIN: IT's now officially posted and linked on the front page.

Time travel!

front page or not, I'm wondering why there are no tests with a 92mm fan.

Also can you use a Scythe "KAZE-JYU" 100mm on it and if so does it work noticeably better than the equivalent 92mm fan at the same decibel level?

All of these are questions those of us with a larger case like say an Antec Solo/P150 would like to know.

Yeah sure you could just say buy a regular Ninja if you have the space but there are those of us that would prefer to avoid the bigger ninja.

Wow, the date is changing... I guess it's a work in progress, though I personally can't find the differences.

ooops pay no attention to the man behind the curtain.

Great review! I'm using my Ninja Mini "passive" in my NSK2400 case with a Gigabyte GA-G33M-DS3R motherboard. For case exhaust, I am using two 800RPM Noctua NF-S12-800 120mm fans.

This CPU cooler is a perfect fit for the NSK2400.

From the pictures with the cooler mounted in the case, it seems that it goes over the mainboard a little, (seems like 1cm) in the direction of the fans. Is this true?

One of the computers I intend to use it on is in a silverstone LC13 and the PSU is very close to the mainboard. I initially figured that is good news because it's fan would pull air right from the cooler and i would have one less fan. (actually the only fan) but now i'm a little worried it won't fit.

Anyone else has had the impression that the cooler goes over the mainboard? It might be about the position of the cpu on the mainboard but i think that's standard or at least it's very close to mine.

The little heatsink that could. I'm in agreement, it would be good to see some 92mm fan data. Does SPCR have a reference 92mm fan?

92mm nexus would be cool to see on it.

i have a feeling that the length of the tower did not much to cool the bigger boy. interesting.

i like it. I will actually buy it now. rare that I say that!

Hello,

What I would love to see from Scythe, is the same heatpipe arrangement -- and the same set of brackets, on the full-sized Ninja!

Me too!

Damn, I'd been waiting for SPCR to put out HSF recommendations for HTPC's. I just went and ordered a Ultra-90 two days ago This Mini Ninja might have been a better deal.

How tight a fit was the Mini in the Antec Fusion with the cover on? The images are all taken at an angle so it's a bit hard to see. Is the mounted Ninja higher than the small pci slot 'ledge' where the graphic card (and others) screws into?

The reason I'm asking is that I might consider one for my old Coolermaster ATC-620 (scroll down a bit), which has roughly the same height as the Fusion (140mm), but the damn support beam is probably in the way

This sounds like a great upgrade for the Fusion Black I just built using AMD stock cooler & Antec stock fans. Thanks to SPCR for making the choice easy, I was coming here to do searches to try to figure out what would work best/fit, and you gave a review using nearly my setup (though I have a MSI K9AGM2 board). I'm really excited about the idea of totally losing the CPU fan, it seems like the design of the case (big 120mm case fan right next to the CPU socket) is perfect for getting there with this cooler, I was wondering how effect that stock cooler's fan was anyway with the fan flowing straight up into the low ceiling of the case.

After I get this bad boy swapped in I'll figure if I need to go further to get noise down, and where (the Antec Tri-Cools or the stock fan on the SU430 PSU -- my hunch is the PSU fan, but I have no idea what would be a good replacement candidate there).

FYI newegg has it for < $36 shipped right now, supposedly $10 discount from their normal price, if anyone else is looking.

Fabool when I get it I'll let you know, but it won't be until at least next weekend, sorry.

great review, been waiting for this one a while now.

id also like to see 92mm reference fan results.

did you notice any issue's at all with the 775 mounting that you see in the new revision of the ninja? Would you say it gets enough pressure now on the mini ninja on a socket 775?

It seems like around an 8c increase in temps between the 2 ninja's on the smaller version with an 80mm fan. Id really like to see if a 92mm could close that gap a bit. If it gets close enough, i may just use mini-ninja's from now on over the big one, especially if the socket 775 mounting on the mini is improved.

The 775 mounting is the same as Ninja's. It's using those stock Intel cylinder "clips". I don't like them, but can deal with them, and generally they work fine. If you clip/unclip lots of times, one or more of the cylinder clips can get looser, which probably can cause less than perfectly even pressure. One of the clips on our sample did not seem to clip as cleanly as the others, but there did not seem to be any visual unevenness and the temps seem perfectly good. IMO, these comments applies 100% to both the Ninja and the Mini.

A 92mm or 80mm fan would make no difference in temp if both are running at the same airflow. The increase in blade area is so small as to be virtually insignificant, especially at lower rpm. Let's put it this way: The Mini is a very good cooler, almost regardless of what fan you put on it, when you consider overall airflow/performance. It was not mentioned in the review, but you could even clip a 120mm fan if you leave the first 2 ram slots free. You can easily see how.

How much room between the top of the mini and the Fusion cover -- about a cm, perhaps a touch more.

Hey Mike - a question on your test setup with the Fusion: I was interested to see you kept only one of the Antec Tri-Cools in, an interesting idea I haven't tried. As I look at your picture & notice that you just left the grill open where the other 120mm used to be mounted, I started to wonder if this was a good way to do it. Given that the case has the elaborate duct extender setup & all that to try to get the cool air being pulled in from the back to flow through the CPU heatsink before being exhausted by the 120mm, isn't it defeating the purpose (reducing cooling efficiency) of the airflow design of the case to take out that second 120mm fan without somehow blocking closed the opening where it used to be? Isn't that setup gonna just lead to an air pattern where the remaining TriCool is pulling in a significant amount of outside air from the opening right next to it (barely passing through the case & cooling little). And thus less air pulled through the Ninja Mini?

An alternative (maybe superior) to blocking the opening would be to somehow put a barrier between the remianing tricool & the opening where the other used to be, to force any air coming in through there to circulate through the case first. But it seems like the two 120mm openings are just too close together to make that very feasible?

I think you missed this.


Thanks for the review, guys. I was going to post a thread asking what the best HSF for the Fusion is. Your psychic powers are truly amazing.

Running a larger fan at the same airflow isn't the question. The question is how much more airflow do you get and what is the effect on °C/W when you run a medium to low speed 92mm fan on the mini?

If you aren't going fanless and you are using speedfan or another fan control method that is variable you would want to know how effective extra airflow would be so you can decide how fast to run the fan under load. At idle it is simple. And of course you want to know if it is worth the time and money to make the upgrade vs whatever heatsink you are currently using.

According to article695-page2.html#nexus a 120mm fan can approach 50 CFM at a reasonable noise level. article720-page2.html#nexus gives us a 92mm fan that can approach 30 CFM at a similar noise level and the Fander below it shows that you can get to around 35 CFM near the noise level of the 120mm fan. The 80mm reference fan won't do more than 22 CFM and we don't have apples to apples data for the 80mm fan included with the mini (thought it is stated as 25CFM on the scythe web site).

So given that I would use the Ninja Mini with a fan controller that will automate fan speed changes I want to know how well it cools with more airflow than the 80mm fan can supply. What happens at 30, 35, and 40 CFM?

I might just bite the bullet and try it myself but for the sake of the SPCR community I'll ask the question that so many others will think but not bother to sign up for an account or even just login to ask.

Oh, right you are

does this Mini-Ninja fit in the Antec Aria/NSK1300 with default PSU? i've been looking for a better heat-sink than the stock Intel heatsink-fan for it, but i don't know which one would fit in...

I think that it is actually to be expected that the dedicated Graphic card lower the load of the CPU and the memory bus, enough to lower the temperature of the CPU a few degrees, and that countered by the overall increase in ambient temps balanced out with a slightly cooler CPU.

just my general impression.

Doubt running CPUBurn + RTHDRIBL would have allowed the cpu to save any power regardless of a dedicated gpu or not IMHO.

Not even close, the Minja is far too tall for the Aria/NSK. You need something with a clearance of around 65mm or less and less than 110mm width. Very challenging to find, although the zalman cnps7000 just barely fit. Now this assumes you haven't changed out the psu like some people have done with the aria.

i don't think the PicoPSU would do well in the Aria.

i have the built-in video since i only play videos on it most of the time.

so you think it would be a good thing to change the PSU for PicoPSU (if it can do well in it) then use the Ninja instead in it?

What do your mean when you say "do well"? I did TONS of mods to my Aria when I had it; including swapping the fan, opening up the chassis around the PS, and ducting airflow to the critical components. There was simply no way to use the stock PS to build a quiet system. Once I replaced it with a PICOPsu , and used the same 120mm fan as an intake, the system became feasible.

i mean having enough juice to power everything...the PicoPSUs can be connected one on top of another?

I am using a Scythe Ninja in my Asus P4C800 Deluxe motherboard with a P3.4 CPU and 2GB of ram. This is an old system I have had running stable for years. With the Ninja the noise is much quieter, but I have to underclock my CPU to 2.8Ghz to have stability with my 2GB of RAM in 4 sticks. Never had to do this before, but for the noise reduction, it is worth it. Before the unclocking, I'd have random restarts. Everything has been running solid for 4 months now with the underclock.

Cheers,
Philip

might the Minja fit in a Silverstone SG01 case?

Can anyone tell me if the Minja will fit in my system? There's about 2cm clearance between the existing stock P4 heatsink and the PSU and just below the CPU heatsink is a large Northbridge heatsink that sticks out about 2cm from the motherboard.

The motherboard is a Gigabyte GA-8I848PM.