Scythe Mugen 2

Scythe’s third new product in this roundup is the Mugen 2 which is the successor of the Infinity tower heatsink, which was later renamed to Mugen. While the dimensions are similar to their Ninja heatsink, this one has more aluminum fins and a different heat pipe layout;

Scythe Co., Ltd., (Registered and incorporated in Tokyo Japan) originally started its business operation in Japan's famous "Akihabara Electric Town" located in the metropolitan Tokyo, where visitors can find a variety of products from the latest computer parts to the world's most advanced high-tech electric devices.
Sythe Co., Ltd., began its operation and business since November, 2002 as a distributor and the manufacturer of passive and low-noise PC parts. Since then, the company has established the R&D facility in Taiwan & China for production and quality control, and the USA office (in Los Angeles, California) & European office (in Hamburg, Germany) for customer care and sales support.
At Scythe, we believe that the best ideas for product come simply from knowing customers' needs and their expectations. Based on this philosophy, the PC enthusiasts working at Scythe know what to develop because that is exactly what we would like to have for ourselves too! We offer products with 100% quality assurance and total pride, and if the product has the Scythe name on it, you can rest assure that its quality will be up to the "Zero Tolerance" standards!

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Scythe Mugen 2

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Scythe Mugen 2
- Intel S478/S775/S1366 /AMD AM2/939
- Heatsink : 884 gram (772gr without fan)
- 1300rpm 120mm PWM fan
- ~$40

The Mugen 2 is one of the first Scythe heatsink which comes with their new multiplatform mounting kit, which adds S1366 support and does away with push pin installation. The heatsink is made up of 5 heat pipes joined in a copper base which has a mirror finish. The aluminum fins do not span the entire wide of the heatsink, instead they are grouped by 1 heat pipe each. If you take a look at the photo above ^ you can see that cardboard cutouts keep them in their place during shipping.

Scythe includes a 120mm PWM fan (SY1225SL12LM-P) in the box rated at 1300rpm, the tachometer measured 1290rpm at 12v, undervolting this PWM fan did not quite work, best to use the motherboards PWM connector and use the BIOS’s fan speed control.

Inside the package you’ll find a detailed manual, a small bag of thermal paste, the new mounting kit, one set of fan clips for 120x120x25mm fans (you can mount up to two 120mm fans, but only one set of clips is included)



Installation was not as easy as hoped, you have to screw the heatsink in place from the rear of the motherboard, lining up the heatsink with the holes on the motherboard and doing it all proper took quite a bit of time; the final fit provides a solid mounting, but the system can be tweaked a bit for easy-of-use, there’s room for improvement.



We’ll compare the performance of the Mugen 2 to the Ninja 2 as well as the original Ultra-120 (none eXtreme). Both Mugen 2 and Ninja 2 are priced the same so the outcome will be interesting:



The included PWM fan is quite good at full speed, offering a superior performance/noise ratio than our reference NCB@12v. Compared to the Ninja 2 the Mugen 2’s fan is slightly noisier, but the Mugen 2 also cools slightly better. Equipped with our reference fans the results are slightly in favor of the Mugen 2, even at low fan speed the Mugen 2 manages to edge out. Only in the passive test it proves less efficient than the Ninja 2.

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In summary here are the strong/weak points of the Scythe Mugen 2:



+ Good Performance/noise ratio
+ Included 120mm PWM fan is quite good
+ Solid bolt-through multi-platform mounting method
+ Better than Ninja 2 at high and low CFM
+ Competitive price

- Installation can be cumbersome