Scythe Orochi

Scythe almost doesn’t need introduction here at the site, we started testing their product as far back as December 2003. For those not yet familiar with the company:

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 Orochi

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Scythe Orochi
- Intel S775 / AMD AM2/939 (recently released Rev.B adds S1366 support)
- 1x140mm fan
- 500rpm
- Heatsink With Fan: 1250 gram ( 1150 gram without fan)
- 3-pin Fan Connector
- ~$50

Scythe’s heatsinks have been steadily increasing in size over the years, the Orochi is at the top of the chart in pure mass and is the one of the biggest CPU heatsink ever tested here at the site, weighing in at 1150 gram (without fan) this monster unit features 10 heat pipes which are squeezed in two layers in the copper base. Everything else is made out of the aluminum, you don’t want to imagine a copper Orochi!

Build to be used without a fan the Orochi pushes the boundaries of CPU cooling, to get the best passive cooling results the more dissipation area available, the better, so here we have a monster tower cooler which covers 20-30% of your motherboard.

While it’s nice to boast that you can cool a Core i7 passively, Scythe has also realized that even the smallest puff or forced air through the fins will drop temperatures noticeably, so they included a fan that fits with the design of the heatsink: 140mm.



The 140mm fan (SY1425SL12L) features a 3-pin connector and custom frame to reduce its size and weight. It clocks in at ~488rpm at 12v and is noiseless, even at very close distance; there’s no good reason not to use it.



The copper base features a nickel finish and is polished to perfection. In the middle photo above you can see the Orochi next to the stock Intel ALU cooler… it can fit 4 times in the Orochi and then some!

Mounting on the motherboard is solid, it has to be with this weight, a back plate is used and the clips installed on the Orochi keep it in place. Scythe made sure to clear the direct area around the CPU socket to allow for memory modules to be used on the motherboard, those with fancier memory heatsinks will have to do some improvisation though.



Getting the Orochi installed is a matter of orientation and preparation, make sure your case can handle this heatsink; we used an Antec Sonata 2 midi tower case, it was a close fit. The heat pipes were put horizontal (the only way the Orochi would fit); the 140mm could not be placed on top due to lack of space…



Fitting a normal 120mm fan is possible with the included clips, but only if your fan’s frame is flanged;

The performance comparison will be interesting, we included the Scythe Ninja CU and the Thermalright Ultra-120 Extreme. We equipped each heatsink with the same GlobalWin NCB 120mm fan as well as the stock fans included with the heatsinks.



The outcome is not as good as we hoped, this might be due to the less than ideal orientation of the Orochi which did not line up nicely with the exhaust fan, unfortunately due to the sheer size of the heatsink in many ATX cases it won’t be able to be installed any other way. Equipped with the stock 140mm fan (which is dead silent) the performance is acceptable. Without any fan installed the temperatures rise quickly by ~13°C, not the recommended mode of operation. With the NCB fan results are better, trailing the copper Ninja by a few degrees, the more compact Ultra-120 Extreme is noticeable better overall and comes at the same price (although without fan!)

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In summary here are the strong/weak points of the Scythe Orochi heatsink:



+ Noiseless cooling absolutely possible
+ Good performance/noise balance
+ Solid Installation

- Huge size will cause compatibility issues in some cases
- Passive performance less than stellar