Review on Scythe Shuriken Profile 120Mm Cooler by Mario Beckwith

As many of us ITX fans know, finding the right air cooler for your system can be difficult. We need good thermal performance, good acoustics and the right physical compatibility. Personally, I'm still too paranoid to switch to water cooling. And installing an air cooler seems easier to me in a small build. I've also recently become interested in thin cases like the Silverstone FTZ01E and the Nouvolo Steck. My previous build featured a Cryorig C1 on an ATX motherboard in a mid-tower case. And I was hoping I could use this big 140mm ITX cooler in a new ITX build. However, after some research and testing, it turned out that the heatsink was too big for the cases I was considering. Either ram clearance became an issue on ITX boards, or the heatsink was being pushed against the sides of the case. I looked at other options for large 140mm and 120mm low profile coolers with decent sized coolers but found that there would be compatibility issues. or poor cooling. I have tested many builds on PCpartpicker, Youtube and various tech forums. I looked at offers from Raijintek, Be Quiet, Thermalright, Noctua and many more. Then I saw that Scythe released Big Shuriken 3 which supports AM4 socket. And I was fascinated. Your claims about full RAM compatibility, low cooler height and good cooling performance got me excited. So I looked at some Youtube reviews, read the odd article and then ordered it. This baby was tested on an ASUS B450 ITX motherboard with Gskill TridentZ RAM in a Silverstone FTZ01E case. Absolutely zero fit issues. The cooler was designed so that when oriented with the heatpipes bent upwards, the cooler hangs over your rear I/O. A large ram like TridentZ is 100% compatible. The cooling was damn good. My 2700X processor maintained temperatures around 45°C idle and 79°C under full load on the second floor of a fairly warm house. This is a few degrees cooler than the more powerful Cryorig I've used before. Keep in mind that the Cryorig was a 140mm cooler that was slightly heavier than the Scythe and also had an additional heat pipe. Somehow, however, Scythe outdid him. And the sound of the Scythe fan isn't too bad. But I prefer Noctua. So I replaced it with a thin 120 mm fan (cooling capacity was the same). All in all, the Big Shuriken 3 is a high-performance, high-compatibility CPU cooler that is worth checking out. I could really see this thing becoming a popular choice in the ITX and SFF community. I'll try to share some photos later. PS - Scythe's customer service is great too. I had a small issue with the plastic mounting bracket spacers being too tight and they sent me a replacement for free. Installation and removal has definitely been simplified.