Scythe Ninja 3 & Scythe Yasya CPU Heatsinks

August 8, 2010 by Lawrence Lee

Revered for its part it in creating and popularizing the tower heatsink paradigm, the Japanese manufacturer Scythe has been neglecting the form recently. Scythe's last big tower cooler, the Mugen-2, impressed us greatly with its high performance and low price-tag, but it's been more than a year since its debut and nothing has since has been released to compliment it. There seems to be a large void in Scythe's lineup since the Ninja series fell out of fashion, having been surpassed by a multitude of ambitious newcomers. The release of two new tower heatsinks may remedy the situation, but with the DIY market currently saturated with high performance PC coolers, the Ninja 3 and Yasya really need to step up to be noticed.

Scythe Ninja 3

The newest scion of the legendary Ninja family retains a distinct resemblance to the original; it is a big, uniform, symmetrical, block of aluminum fins. Ninja 3 features an extra heatpipe on each side and two channels slicing up the heatsink in the shape of an 'X' though small portions have been left intact as bridges holding the four sections together. Its predecessor the Ninja 2 relied on stock mounting systems, but the Ninja 3 utilizes a bolt-thru system with a padded backplate.

Scythe heatsink stock fans have been consistently above par acoustically, and tend to deliver good cooling in relation to the noise . However, to satisfy more performance-oriented and less noise-conscious users, the Ninja 3 ships with a relatively high speed Slip Stream PWM fan rated for 1900 RPM. On the bright side, there's a manual fan speed controller attached.

Scythe Yasya

We're not even going to wager a guess at the origins of the name "Yasya" but with no lineage to live up to the heatsink bearing its name is free to be equally odd. In essence it is a traditional six heatpipe cooler but uses what Scythe refers to as a "Trident Multi Layer Fin" structure. The faces of the heatsink are very angular, with each fin resembling a jagged blade. This unusual design reduces resistance but at the cost of total surface area. The result is a menacing heatsink, not just in appearance. The Yasya is the most physically hazardous CPU cooler we've come across since the Thermaltake SpinQ and caution should be exercised when handling it.

Compared to the Ninja 3 the Yasya is lighter and more slender. Though it's not exactly a lightweight, Scythe deemed it appropriate for traditional Intel pushpins and AMD spring-loaded tension clips. The stock fan is the same as the Ninja 3's.

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