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

Product Information

The Big Shuriken 3 is a mid-sized low-profile CPU cooler that measures 122mm in length, 122mm in width and 69mm in height with a weight of 475g. 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: There is no doubt in anybody’s mind that Noctua produces one of the best lines of CPU coolers on the market. Noctua fans are excellent at cooling the CPU while also being very quiet and reliable. Warranty information is printed on the left side and on the right, we see a few words about both the heatsink and the Kaze Flex Slim 120 PWM fan used. 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.

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. Thermalright can easily improve this cooler compatibility if they provide a way for users to install the cooler in Up/Down orientation, which you can't on AM4. 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! 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. Varied Vcore (in BIOS) from 1.125 V to 1.375 V in 0.050 V increments to increase heat. Stopped increasing Vcore once a core reached ~100 °C.

Apple cancelled this, now what?

After plotting the data, I was honestly surprised by how well it performed compared to the other heatsinks. Temperatures are only slightly hotter or even on par in the 1.13-1.275 V range. However, unlike the other heatsinks, the Big Shuriken 3 cannot handle the voltage increase much past 1.275 V without the CPU hitting the TJ max, which would lead to throttling. So, the Big Shuriken 3 performed well in the low to mid heat range, but can’t keep up with the larger heatsinks during high heat loads. Also in confined spaces, airflow is a premium, and not just in how the chassis provides the influx of ambient airflow, but what in the system can be actively cooled. With the C-Style design, you almost get three coolers in one. Many cover some if not all of the memory, of course, they cool the CPU, but they also add direct airflow to the PWM of the motherboard. How many towers or AIOs can say that? Even more importantly, can they fit in an SFF chassis or Mini-ITX system? This is no different for their SFF offering for mini-ITX builds – the Noctua NH-L9. This is a very small CPU cooler with a total height of 37mm (fan and heatsink together) that allows you to have 100% compatibility with RAM and PCIe cards on mini-ITX motherboards. 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 Support

The build quality of the Big Shuriken 3 is quite good, everything works as intended, and even with the minor issues we ran into with a specific set of components, it is unlikely that many will run into what we did in the first place. However, it did have us feeling the pain of any LGA2011.2066 users, where quad-channel memory will need to be standard height. The first thing to keep in mind when looking at the Big Shuriken 3 results is that it’s a low profile heatsink and much smaller than the rest of the coolers tested (no other low profile coolers are included). So, my expectation before testing the Big Shuriken 3 was that it would most likely be the worst-performing heatsink in my lot, and I wish I had more low profile coolers on hand for comparison. Realistically, if you are in the market specifically for a low profile cooler, then you won’t care how well it performs versus tower heatsinks and large AIO units since those wouldn’t fit your needs anyway. Would I reduce the PPT, TDC, and EDC in BIOs? I've never done this before. Could you link me a guide that you find helpful? 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.Today 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. Each Mini-ITX case features a different clearance for the CPU cooler. Some cases can host even regular size coolers while others are limited to the most compact low-profile coolers around. This means that finding a perfect cooler is more than finding one with great cooling performance and relatively low noise. Why estimate sound level instead of measuring at further distances? It’s because the meter I’m using is most accurate between 40-130 dBA, so I needed to measure really close to the source to make sure my readings were within that range to get the most accurate measurements. Results Cooling Performance The sound level in dBA was measured 10 cm from the intake fan with the fan speed set to 100%. Then, the sound level was estimated for other distances using the following formula:

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. I am doing a build with an XProto case and want to keep the slim lines of the default XProto. My goal is to use a Ryzen 5900X with the build but a slim air cooler would have issues handling that chip, wouldn't it? Smaller height usually means limited cooling capability. The smaller the cooler the less performance you can expect. There are some low-profile CPU coolers out there that punch above their weight (or better to say, height) but in most cases the taller a cooler is the better it is at cooling the CPU. The height shouldn’t be an issue if you need a low-profile cooler for a low power CPU, with TDP up to 65W. 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. 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.Five product drawings are located at the rear of the box and are used to showcase the product specifications.

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. All testing was performed on an open test bench, which minimizes ambient temperature and gives a “worst case” scenario for sound level. 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.Cramped space inside SFF cases means less airflow which leads to fans having to work harder to ensure components are running at acceptable temperatures. Higher RPM numbers mean more noise. And some low-profile CPU coolers can be rather noisy when near or at their peak RPM.