Scythe Big Shuriken 3 CPU-Kühler for AMD and Intel CPU´s

Product Information

Finally, low-profile coolers have lesser cooling performance compared to regular air and water CPU coolers, which is expected regarding their size. This means your CPU will run hotter than if it were part of a regular-sized PC. This also means that you have to be extra careful if you own a high-end CPU.

Next, I fired up the 3D Mark CPU profile and compared it to my previous run with a 280mm AIO. The worst bench score had the Big Shuriken 3 only 4.7% behind a 280MM AIO and the peak speed was only 25MHz behind the peak speed on the AIO. Didn't manage to test the performance of this cooler due to compatibility issues with my build and case, but I thought I might share my short experience with the Thermalright AXP120 X67. These issues, if you want to call them like that, can affect even the best low-profile CPU coolers. Let’s explain how they affect coolers and at the same time, what to look for when in the market for a low-profile CPU cooler. Clearance and CPU SupportToday we introduce you to the Scythe Big Shuriken 3 CPU cooler, which strangely is not that big as far as coolers go, but as the namesake, Shuriken, I'm not sure I'd want to be throwing these at trees. The reason we say this cooler is not that big as far as coolers go is that Scythe imposed its restrictions on the latest design. Scythe remains a household name in the air cooling segment of PC hardware due to its well-received heatsinks and fans over the years. Today, we have Scythe’s Big Shuriken 3 which is a low profile cooler aimed at small form factor (SFF) builds and touts a “zero interference” claim for motherboard and RAM. Let’s see how well it holds up against a testbed full of tower heatsinks and all-in-one liquid coolers. Specifications & Features Ambient temperature was measured with a Fluke 52 II at ~1 inch from the intake fan(s). Then, subtracted from the recorded temperatures to get ΔT. The fan on this Noctua cooler is an NF-A9x14 92mm that is capable of 1700 RPM. The cooler can be expected to produce about 19,9 dB(A) in terms of noise levels which is extremely quiet by comparison to other offerings. Also, if it doesn't work well, there are things you could do, like reducing the PPT, TDC, EDC settings, to make the 5800X consume less power without losing much performance, and in typical gaming workloads, it's not going to consume much more power than your current CPU anyway. I've tried daily driving my 5900X at "65W TDP" values (88 PPT, 60 TDC, 90 EDC) just to see how it does and I get about 85% of the multicore performance with no loss in single core performance. I don't even notice a difference in games.

One downside of the Big Shuriken 3 is that it’s marketed as a great cooler for HTPC and SFF builds, but its height renders it incompatible with some popular SFF cases. So, make sure you aren’t planning to use one of the following cases for your SFF build: A large product picture along with the company logo, the fan used and the mainboard/CPU compatibility are placed at the front of the box.

Product Awards

Scythe Co., Ltd., (Registered and incorporated in Tokyo Japan) originally started its business operation in Japan's famous "Akihabara Electric Town" located in the metropolitan Tokyo, where visitors can find a variety of products from the latest computer parts to the world's most advanced high-tech electric devices. Scythe Co., Ltd., began its operation and business since November, 2002 as a distributor and the manufacturer of passive and low-noise PC parts. Since then, the company has established the R&D facility in Taiwan & China for production and quality control, and the USA office (in Los Angeles, California) & European office (in Hamburg, Germany) for customer care and sales support. At Scythe, we believe that the best ideas for product come simply from knowing customers' needs and their expectations. Based on this philosophy, the PC enthusiasts working at Scythe know what to develop because that is exactly what we would like to have for ourselves too! We offer products with 100% quality assurance and total pride, and if the product has the Scythe name on it, you can rest assure that its quality will be up to the "Zero Tolerance" standards! Scythe has equipped the Big Shuriken 3 with a Kaze Flex Slim 120 PWM fluid dynamic bearing fan that can hit speeds of up to 1800RPM to produce up to 50.79CFM of airflow and 1.35mmH2O of air-pressure with 30.4dBA of noise. The next step is to apply thermal paste to the CPU, and Scythe kindly includes a tube of paste for those who may not have any. I use the “dot” method of applying thermal paste by using a blob of paste the size of a small pea or so to the center of the CPU and let the pressure of the heatsink spread the paste across the CPU. Once the paste is applied, we can mount the Big Shuriken 3 by using a screwdriver and alternating between screws on the crossbar every few turns to apply pressure as evenly as possible until the heatsink is securely mounted. In heavy threaded workloads the Big Shuriken 3 will reduce performance a bit but still stay easily withing a reasonable temp range at a noise level that is not terrible. At gaming load with headsets, there is no noise worth mentioning and the performance and temps are awfully close to that of the 280mm AIO.