Now on to the business end of the heatsink, the base plate. This one is the super shiny variety, and the surface is blemish free and very smooth. With six heatpipes moving the heat away from the base the Scythe Ninja 4 is looking like a well thought out performance CPU cooler.
Installation
Installation was pretty straight forward with no surprises or issues. When it comes to memory clearance however there is a minor clash. With the fan sitting square on the heatsink face it is very close to the DDR4. This is not a deal breaker as you can move the fan to accommodate normal height memory, but unless you are happy with the fan sitting a little high on the heatsink, it’s not going to be compatible with high-profile memory modules.
Test Setup
We tested the Scythe Ninja 4 using our standard i7 LGA2011-v3 setup. We tested two configurations, stock and overclock with turbo selected, however this would only be in effect with the stock test due to the way we overclocked the CPU, using the multiplier.
| Test Platform | i7 LGA2011-v3 |
|---|---|
| Operating System | Windows 10 Pro 64-bit |
| Processor | Intel i7-5820K |
| Motherboard | Asus Rampage V Extreme |
| Graphics | MSI GTX 970 GAMING Twin Frozr V |
| Memory | 16Gb Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2666Mhz |
| Drives | Crucial BX100 500Gb SSD |
| PSU | Corsair HX1000i |
| Chassis | MicroCool Banchetto 101 |
The i7 LGA2011-v3 setup is basically a high end set up that will stress the CPU cooler under stock load conditions and when overclocked. This is our basic test setup for most of our reviews, compatibility permitting.
Scythe Ninja 4 SCNJ-4000 CPU Cooler Review
Package - 8
Performance - 8
Price - 7
Consumer Experience - 8.5
7.9
We have no issues with the Scythe Ninja 4, it's a good traditional CPU cooler with some decent refinements. As with any test using default fan profiles and letting the hardware do the talking, you'll need to understand the Scythe Ninja 4 position in the charts is an "out of the box" view. We think the cooler has a lot of potential and we don't think it would take a lot of effort.