Scythe Zipang

Value

With its poor thermal performance and frankly tortuous mounting system, you might of guessed where this review was heading, but not before we call the Zipang to account for its price, which for the performance produced is frankly terrible. We wouldn't be happy paying £20 for this, let alone the near £40 asking price!

This is more expensive than every other cooler we've looked at using out current test setup, and yet delivers performance far below what we would call acceptable for an after market heatsink half its price. We could list coolers which offer better value, but frankly most of them do, although we'd still point you in the direction of high flyers like the Thermalright Ultra 120 eXtreme for performance, Noctua for silence, or the Akasa 966 for the sweet spot between the two at a reasonable price.

Scythe must know how poorly the Zipang performs, and is simply selling it on its admittedly impressive appearance and technical specifications. However, as with the body kitted chav wagons that rule the late night streets of Bracknell, looks are deceptive and underneath all those heatpipes and cooling fins is the heatsink equivalent of a Vauxhall Nova, easily out performed by everything else we've reviewed using our new test setup.

The high price tag is likely due to the sheer amount of raw materials used in the construction, but if they don't give any performance advantage, what's the point of using so much copper and aluminium in the first place? The Zipang is all thunder but no flash, all talk and no trousers, all bark and no bite. It looks like it's the business but in reality it's a sub standard heatsink in every way bar it's noise levels, which while excellent just aren't enough to save this cooler from the scorn it so richly deserves.

Final Thoughts

While the Scythe Zipang isn't broken, its abysmal thermal performance combined with a Hulk-like rage inducing fitting procedure and a price tag steeper than Nvidia's stock decline make this one of the worst coolers we've looked at in recent memory. It fails on almost every criteria on which we judge a heatsink, and while it is very quiet, so are Noctua's coolers, which are not only cheaper, but perform 9°C cooler. The Zipang's dimensions also mean you'll struggle to fit it inside an HTPC, which is the only real task we think it could possibly be suited for.

Last week we looked at the superb Akasa 966, and it was pretty much everything we want from a CPU cooler. Quiet, easy to fit and offering great thermal results, it was an easy cooler to recommend. The Zipang is almost the polar opposite. Ridiculously oversized, underpowered, over priced and a pain to fit - the Zipang is a poor cooler from the get go, and certainly proves that looks can indeed be deceiving.

• Features
• x
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 5/10

• Performance
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 4/10

• Build Quality
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 4/10

• Ease of Use
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 4/10

• Value
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 2/10

• Overall
• x
• x
• x
• x
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• -
• 4/10

What do these scores mean?