Product Review: Scythe 5th Anniversary Edition Ninja Copper

The Ninja Copper CPU Heat Sink Fan assembly is Scythe's 5th Anniversary product and what a stylish way to celebrate.

Ease of Use, Performance: 24/25, Look & Feel: 25/25,
Features 23/25, How much I enjoy 25/25

Total: 97/100

The Scythe 5th Anniversary Edition Ninja Copper is a great performing heat sink fan assembly for a variety of processor motherboard sets. The all copper heat pipe and fin design makes for a striking good looking heat sink assembly inside the case but outside it's a work of art.

It seems a shame to hide the Ninja Copper inside a case but with side windows it shows off your own touch of class nicely with its bright copper finish for all the stuff you can see. The heat pipes are made of pure copper with copper fins and a nickel plated copper base heat sink.

The Ninja Copper fits Socket 745, 939, 940, AM2, AM2+ for the AMD side of processors and Socket 478 and LGA 775 Intel processor motherboards. The heat sink assembly is 120 MM wide and 150 MM tall for a very good sized heat dispersion area. The Ninja Copper is rated at many of the higher processor types and even the Quad core of both Intel and AMD types.

This CPU heat sink assembly comes with all the mounting hardware for the types of motherboard and processors it attaches to as well as some thermal paste and a 120 MM 800 RPM silent Scythe cooling fan with attaching clips. The fan clips on easily but may protrude a bit in certain case situations so using it will be a case by case basis.

It is also not really necessary for lower temperature situations like stock speeds of many processors, you may not need the extra cooling the fan provides depending on your case and situation. I used this and compared it to the Andy Samurai Master I reviewed a while ago, but using current temperature readings.

In my case I have an AMD Athlon 5000+ Black Edition overclocked at 3 GHz on a Gigabyte GA-M57SLI-S4 motherboard. I was getting temperatures of 36 degrees Celsius at idle and 42 degrees Celsius using Prime95 to stress the computer with the Scythe Andy Samurai Master heat sink assembly.

With the Scythe Ninja Copper but with a fan I am getting 33 degrees Celsius at idle and 40 degrees under the load of Prime95. This is taking readings in a room that is 68 degrees Fahrenheit or 20 degrees Celsius. The Ninja Copper without any fan on it also does a decent job of cooling with a temperature of 35 to 36 degrees at idle and 43 degrees at load using the Prime95 program.

The Ninja Copper performed almost as good as the Andy Samurai Master without the fan assembly and much better with a fan. This size of heat sink fan may not be a good fit for some cases and situations so be sure you have the room for this large heat sink assembly.

The only complaint I have about the Scythe Ninja Copper is not really a complaint but you might have to figure out some way of getting your fan onto this thing as it is large. Installing it was very easy but I still do not like the clips that this particular fan uses.

The Ninja heat sink uses the clips that push on and you have to kind of bend them out a bit instead of using a lever type of installation clip. I prefer the lever types but the push on type does hold the heat sink on more securely as the previous model did vibrate a bit more than this one.

When installed and running with the fan on the Andy Samurai Master tended to wobble a little bit, not much but noticeably. The Scythe Ninja Copper is rock steady inside my case without any movement detectable as well as keeping my overclocked 5000+ Black Edition cool.

In my case setup I have the fan on the heat sink right next to the case fan at the rear of the case. This may not be a great set up but with the fan on the other side over the memory sticks I was concerned about heat build up on my memory which does get hot when gaming.

The Ninja copper is a great heat sink assembly and using the fan ensures maximum cooling with my system. I do have it overclocked some and tried the maximum steady overclocking on this heat sink with great results.

The most temperature I had out of the Ninja Copper heat sink and fan assembly on my system with the processor clocked at 3.3 GHz was 50 degrees Celsius but I would not be using my system at this speed for regular use. If I did use at these higher speeds I would probably add some more case cooling as my case does not have a lot of fans on it right now.

The Scythe Ninja does a great job of cooling and it installs so easily that I am giving it my Blue Ribbon for Excellence award. The Scythe Ninja Copper is truly a work of art in the computer field and a fantastic cooler.