Scythe's brand new Ashura cooler has proven to be a perfect blend between a high performing air cooler, offering maximum board/RAM compatibility and the great thermal dissipation capacity is not at the cost of any extra generated noise. In typical Scythe style, the retail price of this complete bundle remains pretty affordable too.

With the asymmetrical heatpipe design, the new Ashura is more versatile then comon upright heatpipe design tower coolers. Filling up the 4 dimm banks on our socket 1155 or the 8 on our socket 2011 testbed, did not pose any installation problems.

Due to the width of the cooler, installation on mATX boards can pose a problem (like it did with our ASUS Maximus V Gene board) with the graphics card installed in the first PCI-E slot. However installing a normal sized tower cooler is already pretty limited on the aforementioned platform.

The new retention mechanism is very durable and easy to install. Doing what is designed for, keeping  the big Ashura tower cooler firmly pressed down on your CPU, thus maximising heat transfer.

The 140mm Glide Stream fan is unlike some other silent 140mm versions very powerful and shifts some serious air. In the actual price range including one fan is normal. But it would be nice to see if Scythe would opt to include a second fan in e.g. the Ashura XL. The clips to attach an optional fan are included in the box.

The Scythe Ashura is a welcome addition to Scythes extensive line of air coolers. A new more versatile tower design, improved retention mechanism and big powerful 140mm fan makes the Ashura pretty awesome bang for the buck. While it might not be the best performing air cooler on the market, the combination of the good thermal performance, silent operation and retail price of around 45 euros make it pretty darn good value.

PROS:

• powerful & silent 140mm fan
• retail price (45 euros)
• RAM compatibility
• optional clips included

CONS:

• second fan plz

I wish to thank the following people who made this review possible:

Sven & Rogier from ASUS for the X79 Sabertooth mainboard

Gareth from Corsair for the C70 Vengeance case

eTonix Media PR for supplying the ASHURA sample