Silent and deadly. Can the Scythe Ninja control our CPU heat or will it just stink up the joint?

To say that the modern CPUs run warm would be something of an understatement. While the Athlon 64/FX keeps the heat in check, it does get fairly warm under the collar. For Intel, well, air cooling is rarely an acceptable solution these days.

The retail CPUs include what I would call acceptable cooling solutions for a typical consumer, but for enthusiasts, these heatsink and fan combinations just won’t cut it since they’ll be looking into overclocking the processors. Even at stock speeds, these CPUs run hotter than I’m personally comfortable with.

We have seen a number of high-end air coolers come through our labs, and some of them are well suited to cool the latest from AMD and Intel down. We’ve had some good success with Zalman and asetek, but since our readers have asked for it, today we’ll be looking at the Scythe Ninja CPU Cooler SCNJ-1000. This is the first air cooler we’ve seen where the manufacturer tells you you can run a CPU without a fan using their air cooler.