Zap
Elite Member
Scythe Katana $33 @SVC
socket 370/462/478/754/775/939/940
92mm 2000RPM fan
Was browsing around and saw this unit for sale. I have to admit that I'm a sucker for stran^H^H^H innovative budget designs and this perked my interest. Think of it as a Thermalright SI-97A that someone took a crowbar to - instead of the fan parallel to the CPU, the fan is at a 70º angle to the CPU, as opposed to the typical 90º angle of other "tower heatpipe" designs. Whatever... being that it looks to be similar to the Thermalright SI-97A, would it perform the same? Dunno. Lack of good reviews but the few I read had it being not much better than stock for cooling, but a LOT quieter. Regarding being similar to the Thermalright, it even uses a similar retension for the fan - this also means you can use any 92mm fan you want if you don't like the included unit. There are two main differences from the Thermalright that I can see, besides angle. One is the mounting is more flexible, allowing for all recent sockets instead of just AMD ones, plus allowing rotation of the unit to face whatever direction you want (90º increments except 180º for socket 370/462). The other is that instead of four distinct heatpipes, this uses two "U" shaped heatpipes, with the CPU at the bottom of the "U" area. My gut instinct tells me that the four distinct pipes would work better, but what do I know?
Similar priced heatpipe coolers are:
Thermalright XP-90 ($25 no fan, $30 w/fan) - known good performance
Thermalright SI-97A ($35 no fan) - as good as XP-90???
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 ($34) - really similar but proprietary fan
Coolermaster Hyper 6 ($25 no fan) - 80mm fan, heavy
Thermaltake Silent Tower ($40) - I own one, not very "silent" when spinning full speed 😛
Thermaltake misc - they have a few different ones in the $30-40 range
Well, I think I may spring for one of these Katana heatsinks, just to try it out. Thinking of creating a plexiglass tunnel from the heatsink to rear case fan, and then not using a fan on heatsink (or other way around).
Couple of other interesting things to see around SVC's site...
Zalman Fatal1ty heatsinks. One of them is basically a 7700Cu, with an LED fan, red colored copper and $20 added to the price.
Zalman 9500 is now available. If it were under $50 I'd probably get one just because it looks snazzy. $73? No thanks.
Thermaltake Golden Orb II - it's BAAAAAAck!!! Looks like a Zalman 7000 series, with a copper core and aluminum extrusion fins. Fins may be all one piece with the copper core pressed in at the bottom - from looking at the pics. The LED fan is a proprietary 100mm unit. On Thermaltake's site there is a Blue Orb HSF that uses a 120mm fan and the extruded aluminum fins split into multiple fins similar to some of the orb style Intel retail box units. Though their fan specs are suspect and performance may not match others such as Thermalright, gotta hand it to Thermaltake for having guys that can dream up funky new designs on a weekly basis.
socket 370/462/478/754/775/939/940
92mm 2000RPM fan
Was browsing around and saw this unit for sale. I have to admit that I'm a sucker for stran^H^H^H innovative budget designs and this perked my interest. Think of it as a Thermalright SI-97A that someone took a crowbar to - instead of the fan parallel to the CPU, the fan is at a 70º angle to the CPU, as opposed to the typical 90º angle of other "tower heatpipe" designs. Whatever... being that it looks to be similar to the Thermalright SI-97A, would it perform the same? Dunno. Lack of good reviews but the few I read had it being not much better than stock for cooling, but a LOT quieter. Regarding being similar to the Thermalright, it even uses a similar retension for the fan - this also means you can use any 92mm fan you want if you don't like the included unit. There are two main differences from the Thermalright that I can see, besides angle. One is the mounting is more flexible, allowing for all recent sockets instead of just AMD ones, plus allowing rotation of the unit to face whatever direction you want (90º increments except 180º for socket 370/462). The other is that instead of four distinct heatpipes, this uses two "U" shaped heatpipes, with the CPU at the bottom of the "U" area. My gut instinct tells me that the four distinct pipes would work better, but what do I know?
Similar priced heatpipe coolers are:
Thermalright XP-90 ($25 no fan, $30 w/fan) - known good performance
Thermalright SI-97A ($35 no fan) - as good as XP-90???
Arctic Cooling Freezer 64 ($34) - really similar but proprietary fan
Coolermaster Hyper 6 ($25 no fan) - 80mm fan, heavy
Thermaltake Silent Tower ($40) - I own one, not very "silent" when spinning full speed 😛
Thermaltake misc - they have a few different ones in the $30-40 range
Well, I think I may spring for one of these Katana heatsinks, just to try it out. Thinking of creating a plexiglass tunnel from the heatsink to rear case fan, and then not using a fan on heatsink (or other way around).
Couple of other interesting things to see around SVC's site...
Zalman Fatal1ty heatsinks. One of them is basically a 7700Cu, with an LED fan, red colored copper and $20 added to the price.
Zalman 9500 is now available. If it were under $50 I'd probably get one just because it looks snazzy. $73? No thanks.
Thermaltake Golden Orb II - it's BAAAAAAck!!! Looks like a Zalman 7000 series, with a copper core and aluminum extrusion fins. Fins may be all one piece with the copper core pressed in at the bottom - from looking at the pics. The LED fan is a proprietary 100mm unit. On Thermaltake's site there is a Blue Orb HSF that uses a 120mm fan and the extruded aluminum fins split into multiple fins similar to some of the orb style Intel retail box units. Though their fan specs are suspect and performance may not match others such as Thermalright, gotta hand it to Thermaltake for having guys that can dream up funky new designs on a weekly basis.
