The Kabuto 3 uses what Scythe claim to be a “hybrid system” consisting of the previously mentioned two 6 mm and three 8 mm heatpipes. Scythe also claim the downward airflow ventilates the heatsink fins of Kabuto 3 and the VRMs, memory modules and other components surrounding the CPU.
The front panel is super shiny and the overhang of the heatsink should obstruct some tall memory modules. Mounting the Scythe Kabuto 3 was uncomplicated, once the central bar and Intel mounting clips were installed, it’s just a case of pushing the plastic clips through the motherboard CPU cooler mounting holes, just like the stock CPU coolers. There’s not much more to it, and we had no issues, and if you mount it away from the memory, you’ll have no clearance issues at all. Have a look at out Lian-Li PC-K5WX Ebonsteel Mid Tower chassis review and you’ll see it mounted in the build section.
On to the baseplate and this is super shiny. It is completely flat with no blemishes or manufacturing marks. As always, we would always advise you rub thermal paste into the baseplate before mounting, this will fill a good number of scratches or imperfections that may cause performance issues. You may not see any but this always takes out the guess work. You could consider lapping the baseplate, this also helps to get the best performance out of any CPU cooler, even the stock coolers.
Scythe Kabuto 3 CPU Cooler Review
Package - 7.5
Performance - 7.5
Price - 7.5
Consumer Experience - 7.5
7.5
The Kabuto 3 hasn't topped any charts in our review, but it hasn't been at the bottom either. It's an uncomplicated CPU cooler, and has performance to offer for most AMD and Intel CPUs. The biggest downsides from our point of view is the lack of LGA2011v3 support, and the slightly stock cooler mounting system.
