Tech Lobby

In-depth Look

Right away the first thing you notice is the sheer size of the heatsink. This bad boy is an amazing 160mm tall with a width of 125mm and a depth of 116mm with the included fan attached. The fan is the only difference between the Mugen and Infinity models. The Mugen comes with a 9-fin fan which is a fraction louder than the 7-blade fan included with the Infinity. In this case the pros outweigh the cons as the 9-blade fan in the Mugen pushes a rated 68.54 CFM of air whereas the 7-blade fan in the Infinity only a rated 46.5 CFM. As with most CPU coolers, if you find the included fan too noisy, you can pick up a quieter 120mm fan to replace it. As another little addon feature, Scythe decided to allow for a total of four fans to be mounted on this heatsink. Note that only clips for one fan are included with the cooler, so you will need to purchase extra clips to mount additional fans.

The interesting thing about the massive heatsink on this cooler is the placement of the fins. Instead of a full-width fin in each row, Scythe decided to “interleave” the fins. This is very beneficial for reducing noise and increasing air flow throughout the heatsink. It also makes the Mugen a good heatsink for use without a fan because of the larger spaces between heatsink fins.

We found the base of this heatsink to be very flat in both axis. The base also has a near-mirror finish as opposed to the rougher finish found in most other heatsinks. There’s almost no incentive to lap the base of this cooler. One unique feature the Mugen has that is quite rare for most coolers is the addition of a small heatsink mounted on the top of the base. This is a great idea as the five heatpipes sit directly beneath the small heatsink, giving heat even more surface area to disperse through.

The Mugen comes with accessories including two fan clips, thermal paste, and mounting brackets for various socket types. As with all coolers, we recommend trashing the included thermal paste and using your own (our personal favorites being OCZ Freeze and Noctua NT-H1). It is very unfortunate that Scythe decided to include the same plastic push-pins on the LGA775 brackets as Intel uses for their stock coolers. These push-pins are well known for how easily they can be broken and their controversial lack of ability to provide enough pressure on the CPU, which is especially the situation on heavier heatsinks, the Scythe Mugen being one of these.

After only a few installations of our unit, one of these plastic push-pins became bent and proceeded to break off. Thankfully Scythe also produces the Universal Retention Kit (model no. SCURK01). This kit can turn your LGA775 mounting on your motherboard into a socket 478 mount, allowing you to use the stronger metal 478 brackets included with the Scythe Mugen.