Scythe Ninja Copper

Path of the Ninja

The Scythe Ninja is a very difficult heatsink to judge fairly, as while it excels in being a low noise, and even totally silent, CPU cooler, it’s very disappointing thermal performance is hard to overlook.

The Ninja copper is outperformed by every other heatsink so far tested in our new setup, even those which cost less than half as much, and in ambient mode it struggled to keep our testing setup within the processor’s safe limits. Had it been a hotter day, we could easily have seen the CPU temperature pass the unacceptable 70°C mark where throttling would begin to reduce CPU performance.

However, it’s important to remember that this is an absolute worst case scenario, with modern Intel processors like the E8200 or Q6600 G0 producing much more manageable 65W and 95W TDPs respectively, compared to our test CPU’s 130W. Using the Scythe Ninja Copper, you could certainly ambient cool any processor currently on the market in a well ventilated environment, although surrounding it with cooling fans would somewhat void the cooler’s low noise benefits.


The key problem for the Ninja Copper lies in the fact that we’ve already tested ultra low noise coolers like the Noctua NH U12P and ThermalRight Ultra 120 eXtreme, and not only were they very quiet, but both performed brilliantly thermally. When you consider that the Ninja Copper is priced in the same region as these top performers, it becomes impossible to recommend as even a silent cooling solution.

The enormously frustrating mounting process for S775 and the fingerprint magnet copper surface are the final shuriken to the heart of the Ninja Copper. Scythe has left the Ninja’s design fundamentally unchanged for over three years now, while its competitors have been releasing more and more advanced coolers, packing in more cooling fins and more efficient heat pipes - this is starting to show now.

While it might be silent, we simply cannot excuse the poor thermal performance and S775 mounting problems of the Ninja Copper, and at over £40, it represents very poor value for money compared to modern competition. Silent? Yes. Deadly? Definitely not.

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• 6/10

• Performance
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• 5/10

• Ease of Use
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• 5/10

• Value
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• 4/10

• Overall
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• 5/10

What do these scores mean?