Rory Buszka
Partition Master
It looks like everything old is new again. At CES, OCZ Technologies showed a new CPU cooler with a tower form factor, a 6-heatpipe cooler with fins spread nicely apart to allow for low resistance to passive convection cooling, though the cooler offers a mounting solution for a 120mm fan. On one hand, I'm pleased that more mainstream manufacturers of coolers are beginning to take notice of low noise CPU cooler design principles...
...But on the other hand, I really wish they could have been more original in their design. Shown below is the Scythe Ninja cooler, which is also a tower-style heatsink with six heatpipes. Now, I'm pretty sure that Scythe did not exhaust all the possible ways that six heatpipes could have been effectively integrated into a tower heatsink.
I think that the new OCZ tower heatsink really looks like nothing more than a direct take-off of the Ninja. OCZ had better hope that Scythe isn't capable of pricing their Ninja substantially lower than OCZ's own cooler, and that their cooler outperforms the Ninja, if they want to have commercial success, since just about every serious PC enthusiast who reads web forums knows about the Ninja. I also want to see a head-to-head comparison between the two coolers, both to show the incredible similarity in design and see definitively which one offers the lowest temperatures. Companies take significant risks when they decide to do a take-off of another company's design, not limited to those in the legal realm. I'll be interested to see which cooler is more of a success.
On the upside, however, more manufacturers are beginning to see the growing market for very large heatpipe-tower heatsinks to achieve passive or semi-passive cooling of processors. Soon, even hard-overclocking gamers won't have an excuse not to pursue quieter air-cooling solutions.
...But on the other hand, I really wish they could have been more original in their design. Shown below is the Scythe Ninja cooler, which is also a tower-style heatsink with six heatpipes. Now, I'm pretty sure that Scythe did not exhaust all the possible ways that six heatpipes could have been effectively integrated into a tower heatsink.
I think that the new OCZ tower heatsink really looks like nothing more than a direct take-off of the Ninja. OCZ had better hope that Scythe isn't capable of pricing their Ninja substantially lower than OCZ's own cooler, and that their cooler outperforms the Ninja, if they want to have commercial success, since just about every serious PC enthusiast who reads web forums knows about the Ninja. I also want to see a head-to-head comparison between the two coolers, both to show the incredible similarity in design and see definitively which one offers the lowest temperatures. Companies take significant risks when they decide to do a take-off of another company's design, not limited to those in the legal realm. I'll be interested to see which cooler is more of a success.
On the upside, however, more manufacturers are beginning to see the growing market for very large heatpipe-tower heatsinks to achieve passive or semi-passive cooling of processors. Soon, even hard-overclocking gamers won't have an excuse not to pursue quieter air-cooling solutions.
Last edited:
