The Scythe Katana

The design of the heatsink is quite interesting. It has a small copper base connected to 41 aluminium fins by two U-shaped copper heatpipes. You can think of the block of aluminium fins as a radiator.

The Scythe Katana

We've seen this type of designs in a few other heatsinks so it's isn't something really new. It's a good design because the small base allows it to be mounted even on motherboards with lots of tall surface-mounted components around the processor socket.

Here's a shot of the heatsink from the side.

Side view

The aluminium radiator is actually fixed at a tangent from the separate copper base. So, when you mount the base on top of the processor, the radiator rises vertically from the base, albeit at an angle.

Both copper heatpipes extend all the way through what appear to be aluminium contact sleeves in the radiator. No, it does not appear that you can actually slide the heatpipes out.

Here's how the cooler looks from the top. As you can see, the top-most fin sports an imprint of the Scythe logo.

Top view

Those four knobs are the dome nuts that cap the ends of the two heatpipes.

On the other end of the cooler is the copper base. Scythe had the wisdom of covering the base with a blue protective sticker.

The heatsink base

This protects the base from being scratched or dirtied during handling and transportation. Because the base is the interface between the heatsink and the processor, scratches and dirt will adversely affect the cooler's performance.

We removed the sticker then to inspect the surface of the heatsink base. We were glad to note that it had a superb finish.

Ultra shiny!

The base had been properly polished and given a mirror finish. It was also completely flat, with no uneven bumps or curves.