From the quick compare with previous air coolers tested it's no surprise that the Scythe Ashura has got the best cards on paper. The large cooling surface and high flow 140mm FAN make this cooler shine versus the other three air coolers. At IDLE we see the new Scythe Ashura outperforming the rest. Best of all this is cooling performance comes at no noise cost at all. The 140mm Glide Stream fan is topping it all off.

Once we start to prime our hexacore CPU we see big differences pop up. The Thermalright True Spirit 120m with the smallest cooling surface has a hard time to keep things under control. Both the Alpenföhn Matternhorn Pure and Zalman XPS14 got pretty slow spinning fans and lack the airflow the Scythe 140mm Glide Stream fan produces.

Next step is to Overclock our i7-3970X to 4500MHz, by increasing the multiplier to 45X and setting the VCore at 1.35V. At idle we hardly spot any differences now between the air coolers, the 140mm FAN rotates at an inferior speed versus the other tested air coolers. Even tough the All In One Liquid coolers in the chart cool better, the noise level is already more pronounced then the Scythe Ashura.

When running the Prime95 test things heat up fast. The Scythe Ashura remaining the top performer of the listed air coolers. The Ashura is closing the gap between the Hydro units listed in the chart. while it might not look impressive at first glance it's the last chart that tells the difference.

The 140mm FAN shifts some serious air, yet remaining very comfortable for the ears. We measured 28dBa at 1 meter distance form the inlet, which is a great result. Especially comparing with the fans from e.g. the Hydro 80 unit. Even the 140mm version Fans from Corsair's brand new Hydro90/110 are clocking in at 34dBa.