Scythe Big Shuriken 3 CPU Air Cooler, 120mm Low Profile(69mm Tall), Intel LGA1151, AMD AM4/Ryzen

As many of us ITX lovers know, finding just the right air cooler for your build can be tough. We need good thermals, good acoustics, and the right physical compatibility.Personally I'm still too paranoid to make the jump to water cooling...and popping in an air cooler seems easier to me in a small build. Plus I had recently started taking interest in slim cases like the Silverstone FTZ01E and the Nouvolo Steck.My previous build included a Cryorig C1 on an ATX motherboard in a mid tower case. And I was hoping I'd be able to use this big 140mm ITX cooler in a new ITX build. However after some research and testing...the heatsink was just too large for the cases I was looking at. Either Ram clearance became an issue on the ITX boards, or the heatsink would press up against the sides of cases.I looked at other options for large 140 and 120mm low profile coolers with decent sized heatsinks, but was finding there would be compatibility issues...or lackluster cooling. I checked at a ton of builds on PCpartpicker, Youtube, and different tech forums. I looked over the offerings from Raijintek, Be Quiet, Thermalright, Noctua, you name it.Then I saw that Scythe came out with the Big Shuriken 3 and it supported AM4 sockets...and I was intrigued. Their claims of total ram compatibility, low cooler height, and good cooling performance had me excited. So I looked at a few reviews on Youtube, read an article or two, then I ordered it.Tested this baby out on an ASUS B450 ITX motherboard with Gskill TridentZ ram inside a Silverstone FTZ01E case. Absolutely zero issues fitting. The cooler was made in a way, that when oriented with the heatpipe bends pointing up, the cooler overhangs your rear I/O. So tall ram like the TridentZ are 100% compatible.Cooling was pretty dang good...keeping my 2700X CPU at around 45c idle, 79c at full load in the second floor of a rather warm home. Thats a few degrees cooler than the beefier Cryorig that I previously used. Mind you the Cryorig was a 140mm cooler that was a tad heavier than the Scythe, and also had an extra heatpipe. Yet somehow the Scythe beat it.And the Scythe fan noise isnt too bad...but I prefer Noctua...so I swapped in a 120mm slim fan from them (cooling performance was the same). All in all, the Big Shuriken 3 is a well performing, highly compatible CPU cooler thats worth a look at. I could really see this thing becoming a popular choice in the ITX & SFF community. Ill try to share some pics at a later date.PS - Scythe customer service is also great. I had a small issue with the plastic spacers for the mounting bracket being too tight...and they sent me replacements free of charge. Definitely made installation and removal much easier.

Can't complaint about anything. It's a gorgeous piece, with a very easy to mount setup (no behind the board access is needed like Intel, since it uses the AMD stock backplate), clear instructions, precision fit, and it's virtually silent until 75% load and then it's audible, but it moves air and cools well. Idle around 38C, Prime95 stress will push it to a measly 71C, but AVX2 will (as expected) really heat up. It peaks about 85C after 15 minutes of a continuous 100% AVX2 load, which is great for sff. And I'm rarely running 100% AVX2 load across 16 threads so it's not an issue in normal use. 75C is about peak.Note that I didn't use the provided thermal compound since I don't know anything about it. I stuck with my preferred–if difficult to use–IC Diamond, but I'm sure the included paste would be fine considering the difference between the best and worst is usually like 1-3C at most.One thing to note is that you need to run your system's fan optimization tool or change the curve yourself, as the typical stock minimum duty cycle of 20% for most board makers may not be enough to keep the fan on, as it seems to require 22% minimum duty cycle to keep the bios from barking about fan errors.Also, the Asus x570-i ROG STRIX with its massive VRM cooling cover and the tall chipset/m.2 stack, the cooler can ONLY mount over the RAM, so you will have a RAM height limitation with this board and cooler, though it's just too short to clear the G-Skill Trident Z Neo RGB's heat spreader, pretty much any ram that's shorter than that kit will fit. It really only interfered with 2 tiny areas on one heat spreader, and I could have modified the ram heat spreader to make it fit, but considering I couldn't turn off the RGB due to G-Skill's terrible HAL that they're using now that they stopped with the Aura plugin, I had to return them anyway, so shorter RAM it is.Will definitely be buying more Scythe coolers in the future! Quite impressed with this little (Big) guy!

While I had previously heard of Scythe I had not personally purchased any of their products prior to this cooler. What led me to them were good reviews by normal users, as well as good reviews by scientific based reviewers that showed that this cooler is one of the better performing in the low profile category. Originally I was actually going to go with the Noctua NH-L9i since I have used Noctua plenty and am familiar with their performance and quality...however I was surprisedTo find at least from scientific reviewers standpoints, it wasnt as good a performer as this cooler.I have this cooler running on an i5-9600K that powers my mining rig(yes, thats certainly an overpowered CPU for a mining rig - but I wanted a processor that could be used also for regular usage after my mining days are done) and the performance thus far has been great. Obviously since the rig is used for mining, its not overclocked, its just running bone stock, BUT the temps even when the processor is under load doesnt surpass 67C. Its also important to note that this cooler is just as quiet as it is a good performer.I have used the Hyper 212 Evo, Hyper 212 Black, Hyper 212 RGB, NH-D15 Chromax, and Zalman CNPS9700-NT in the past and all of them have been good performers and this is no different. In fact, the Zalman is still currently running on my Q9450 which is also being used for mining, but because of that coolers size it makes that rig a pain to work on, so im thinking of switching that to the Scythe as well.All in all - im quite happy with this cooler. It checks all my boxes, being well made, a good performer, easy to install and quiet operation even under load. Id strongly suggest it to anyone whos looking for a low profile cooler that are looking to check those boxes as well. Its also a versatile cooler that can be mounted on many platforms including older ones.