Tested 15 years ago: Scythe's Zipang came with six heat pipes and a 140 mm fan

15 years ago, the Scythe Zipang (test) followed the motto “build big, don't make a mess” and attracted customers with six heat pipes, a solid heat sink and a 140 mm fan. For 40 euros, customers should get a quiet and powerful cooler that has high expectations.

Table of Contents

1. Massive top blow cooler
2. Not living up to expectations
3. Conclusion

Massive top blow cooler

The Scythe Zipang was an expansive cooler with a top-blow design. The dimensions of the cooler were 145 × 148 × 112 mm (L × W × H) including the fan, and it weighed an impressive 815 grams. A 140 mm fan was used, which worked at 450 to 1,000 rpm.

The Zipang had a total of 68 aluminum fins, which were connected to the nickel-plated copper base plate via six 6 mm heat pipes. The Zipang was compatible with AMD sockets 939/940/754/AM2 and Intel sockets 478 and 775.

As is typical for Scythe, the scope of delivery was comparatively meager: in addition to the cooler with the installed 140 mm fan, the package only contained the mounting material for AMD and Intel, installation instructions and a small bag of thermal paste.

140mm layout

Scythe Zipang: Top -Top quality flow giant

Unusual heat pipe routing: uneven U course

Fan fixation with wire bracket as usual

140 mm silent ventilation

Heat pipe braiding of unprecedented proportions

Nickel-plated base plate

The assembly of the Zipang turned out to be difficult due to the dimensions. A motherboard removal was virtually unavoidable, although the cooler made it possible to mount it on Socket 775 using a push-pin system – a daring approach for a cooler that weighed almost a kilogram. If you wanted to be on the safe side, you could also purchase a Socket 478 retention kit and use it to mount the Zipang on Socket 775 mainboards. Since the actual lamella body only started at a height of about 6 cm, compatibility problems with mainboard or RAM coolers were not excluded, but unlikely.

Didn't live up to expectations

Compared to other CPU coolers with a reference ventilation selected by ComputerBase, the Scythe Zipang did not look good on an Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700. The cooling performance was – with all three reference fans – despite the enormous dimensions of the Zipang at the lower end of the test field. It looked similarly miserable with the supplied fan, both in 5 and 12 volt operation, the Zipang lined up at the very end of the test field. The only consolation: The included 140 mm fan was extremely quiet, which was hardly noticeable even at maximum speed.

In absolute terms, the Zipang did not deliver a bad cooling performance, just Compared to other high-end coolers, the performance was poor – compared to a boxed cooler, the advantages were still enormous.

Cooler comparison with same fans

• Silent: Scythe S-Flex:
  • Thermalright IFX-1469.00
  • Scythe Ninja Cu70.75
  • Noctua NH-U12P71.25
  • Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtr.72,25
  • Xigmatek HDT-S128372,50
  • Scythe Ninja Rev A/B73.00
  • Scythe Mugen73.50
  • Scythe Zipang74.00
  • Enzotech Ultra X74.25
  • Scythe Andy Samurai80.00
• Normal: Pope F2GLL:
  • Thermalright IFX -1465.50
  • Noctua NH-U12P66.75
  • Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtr.67.00
  • Xigmatek HDT-S128367,25
  • Scythe Ninja Cu67.75
  • Scythe Mugen68.50
  • Scythe Zipang69.25
  • Scythe Ninja Rev. A/B69.50
  • Enzotech Ultra X69.50
  • Scythe Andy Samurai71.75
• Power: Sharkoon Power:
  • Thermalright IFX-1462,25
  • Noctua NH-U12P62,25
  • Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtr.62.50
  • Xigmatek HDT-S128363.00
  • Scythe Ninja Cu63.25
  • Scythe Mugen63.75
  • Scythe Ninja Rev. A/B66.00
  • Scythe Andy Samurai66.25

  li>

  • Enzotech Ultra X66.50
  • Scythe Zipang67.00

Unit: °C

Conclusion

At the end of the test, the Scythe Zipang left mixed feelings. It offered good workmanship and, in principle, no bad cooling performance, and it was also extremely quiet. In a direct comparison with other high-end coolers – some cheaper than the 40 euros advertised for the Zipang – it had to give up. In addition, the enormous dimensions complicated the assembly and at least for Socket 775 owners, the push-pin mounting system was worrying.

In the category “In the test 15 years ago”, the editors have been taking a look at the test archive every Saturday since July 2017. The last 20 articles that appeared in this series are listed below:

• The best CPU cooler came from Austria

< li>The Radeon HD 3870 HD X2 as the high-end price king

• Sapphire's Radeon HD 3870 with vapor chamber
• The GeForce 8800 Ultra twitched and sweated in 3-way SLI< /li>
• The Logitech G51 fought with the devil
• What did cheap multi-GPU bring 15 years ago?
• ZEROtherm kept graphics cards loudly cool
• Intel's Core 2 Extreme on 45 nm steroids
• The GeForce 8800 GTS 512 with the secret G92 full expansion
• Scythe Ninja Cu, the limited copper block
• Introducing the Radeon HD 3850, the 135-euro miracle weapon
• With the Zalman VF-1000 vs. Arctic Coolings S1
• ATi made a comeback with the Radeon HD 3870
• Nvidia's GeForce 8800 GT was almost perfect
• Intel's 45 nm process made Penryn fast and economical
• Two towers were not enough for the Thermalright IFX-14
• The best Radeon HD 2600 XT were blue
• Thermalright's Ultra-120 Extreme was the reference
• 249 euros were too much for the Radeon HD 2600 XT X2
• Devil's elegant 2.1 system with excellent sound

More content of this kind and many other reports and anecdotes can be found in the retro corner in the ComputerBase forum.