Scythe Q&A - High end Air Cooling, Water Cooling and PSUs

Others/Miscelleneous by jmke @ 2006-06-01

In the past years Scythe has become popular with many hardware enthusiasts, both those seeking extreme performance or absolute silent cooling for the CPU could find some excellent products in Scythe?s lineup. We talk with Scythe about their future plans in this Q&A.

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Q&A

Madshrimps (c)


Q1: Hello Scythe, thank you for taking the time to talk to us and answer a few questions about your company. Can you introduce yourself to our readers and describe your function at the Scythe Company?

  • My name is Hiro Komi, my function at Scythe is to manage the Scythe EU GmbH (The subsidiary in Hamburg, Germany) we are responsible for customer support in Europe. Demand for Scythe items from European customers continues to grow so Scythe decided to establish a sales office to provide better support and services.


    Q2: Scythe is a Japanese company, yet you reside in Germany, Europe, are there other sub-offices in the world beside the HQ in Japan?

  • Yes, we have the sales office in Los Angeles, CA (USA), and R&D office in Taiwan & China. We think that it is important to have a sales office near our customers, and also R&D near the production to make sure the quality of our products are up to our quality standard. Also our HQ is located in the heart of electric town in Tokyo (place called “Akihabara” where over 250 electrical appliances and electronics shops of all sizes are located). This means that we are able to gain the access to the newest items & information released from various manufacturers as quickly as possible.

    Madshrimps (c)
    Akihabara electric town in Tokyo, Japan, picture courtsey of this site



    Q3: Which product line in the past years has been most successful?

  • Most of our items are geared towards middle to high-end users, and the most successful item for us has been the high-end line of products, and our items are always Low Noise/Passive solutions.


    Q4: Are there other product line planned for video card/chipset cooling; if yes, how far along are they in development process?

  • Currently, we are working on to finalize the proto-type of video card/chipset cooling shown at CeBIT2006. At this moment, I would not be able to estimate the release date, but aiming to release them before the upcoming Christmas season.


    Q5: Building passively cooled heatsink is always a challenge, the Heatlane technology introduces by Scythe helped to make this possible, how does it compare to the more commonly seen heat pipes ?

  • The Heatlane technology is provided by the Japanese company called “TS Heatronics” and we form a partnership with them to apply their patented heatlane technology onto PC cooling products. The beauty of heatlane is that the cooling fluid (gas, fluid, etc) can travel to any directions (gravity free) whereas the conventional heatpipe has lack in performance for heat transfer for the top heat transfer. For further details of how heatlane works, I would recommend you to visit TS Heatronic’s website as they show the features of Heatlane in graphical drawing for a better understanding.

    Madshrimps (c)



    Q6: At CeBIT 2005 and 2006 we saw a passive water cooling system, however no information has been released on the web about availability and pricing. Is this product ready for Showtime, what is holding it back from going into production?

  • The proto-type shown at CeBIT2005 & 2006 is not ready at this moment, and we wanted to see the market response and customer’s response for the current water cooling market & its potential.

    Madshrimps (c)
    Photo from Matbe's excellent Cebit Coverage



    Q7: Scythe has released power supplies in USA, one we reviewed here, are there plans to release these and other units in Europe and what will be their main goal: extreme performance or silent operation?

  • Yes, we are planning to introduce a PSU into the European market, and some of the proto-type PSUs were shown during CeBIT2006. We aim to offer an extreme performance and low-noise PSU together with an outstanding service and support.


    Q8: In the component cooling sector of the industry we have seen several companies who started out with CPU heatsink develop complete enclosures (Arctic Cooling and Zalman), is Scythe planning similar products?

  • We always have the complete enclosure in our mind in a different way of doing it from other manufacturers.


    Q9: To gain market share and increase volume companies choose to work with OEM system builders, can we find Scythe products in retail systems?

  • Not at this moment as most OEM projects which we have received an inquiry do not meet our product line-ups or price range. However, we are always open for OEM opportunity.


    Q10: With the introduction of the new AM2 socket in June by AMD there will be a change in how heatsinks are mounted onto the socket. Will your current CPU coolers like the Ninja, Katana and others be able to fit on AM2?

  • We are aware of AM2, and planning to develop the compatible heatsink for the new AM2. The current model would not be compatible to AM2 as the mounting mechanism is different, but we have the new VTMS (Versatile Tool-Free Multiplatform Systems) clips which enables the user to choose the appropriate clip for the socket, then install the heatsink. We are working on to add the new clip for AM2, then integrate into the existing VTMS. From the next new heatsink we release to the market, it will be AM2 ready. (Ed.: the Scythe Mine and Samurai Z can be mounted on AM2 using the K8 clips, up to date AM2 compatibility list here)


    Q11: Do you get requests for new products, and what’s the most popular request?

  • We receive quite a number of inquiries for low-noise/passive cooling solution for small factor PC (such as HTPC), so this would be the possible direction where we would move into the next.


    Q12: Thank you again for your time and hope to see many interesting products from Scythe in the near future.

  • Thank you for this opportunity, and we are always open to hear any suggestions from our customers. Please feel free to send us an e-mail at sales@scythe-eu.com (Worldwide) or sales@scythe-usa.com (North America)




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