Originally posted by: Morpheux
I have always liked Zalman's products, using a 7000 and 7700 now, but have a Scythe on order.
How's this compare to the
Scythe SCNJ-1100P for $39?
I was having the same dilemma. All I had heard about the 9500 was that it was fantastic cooling, but the more I researched on the 9500, it was actually relatively noisy compared to the Scythe Ninja and thermalright Ultra-120
I opted for the Scythe Ninja last week and I installed it a couple of days ago on my E6400 at stock clock speed
At stock CPU intel fan, I was getting 33C on idle and 38C on complete load.
With the Ninja, I undervolted a Yate Loon fan to 7v for a virtually silent CPU fan and I'm idle at 37C and 40C on load using Arctic Silver 5. I expect temperatures to drop a couple of degrees as the Arctic Silver 5 settles in.
I tried running the Ninja passively and the temperatures climbed up to 48 pretty quickly on idle. Didn't want to try it under load.
I would recommend the 9500 if you're doing any overclocking as its performance is consistently better than the Ninja, but if you're looking for decent cooling with options for complete silence, the Ninja and the Thermalright ultra-120 are your best bets. Just my opinion and my own personal experience.