Scythe Ninja 5 air cooler review - Final Words & Conclusion

Conclusion

The reviewed (dual tower) air cooler performed well and handled both tested processors, including the Core i9 9900K at 5 GHz, but it barely coped when we went above the strictly required voltage level. The two 120 mm fans are reticent. Even at the maximum 800 rpm, the cooler is still almost whisper-quiet. It’s possible to set an even less noisy fan curve (but it doesn’t really make any sense here) – silence is always desired, especially if your CPU is not a high-end model. If you’d like to have better performance, you can install faster fans, but then what would be the point of buying this cooler, right? Other offers bring more power but with an increased noise output.

Aesthetics & Design

Starting with the aesthetics, the NINJA 5 looks nice and elegant. There are no LEDs (so there are no additional cables except the ones for the fans), and the black-grey color scheme makes it blend into the system quite easily. The heatsink’s top cover is luckily painted black (not just bare aluminum), making it look suaver. The installation process is relatively easy, not really standing out of the crowd, neither in a good or a bad way. The only drawback is the size of the thing, as it weighs almost 1.2 kg, so you need to be careful during the installation. The front fan will also conceal your memory modules (which should preferably be of the standard height and without any RGB as it won’t be visible anyway).

The Verdict

The Scythe NINJA 5 costs 59.95 USD. We think that it’s a rather reasonable offer, and it’s worth the money. If you are looking for a dual-tower air cooler that is very quiet (the fans rev up to 800 rpm max) even under load and still brings good cooling performance, it should be on your list. This is the cooler for people who want a quiet system without RGB functionality (even RGB memory wouldn’t be visible under the front fan anyway), looking a bit plain, but overall, that’s not a bad thing. The top cover of the heatsink is black, which makes it look elegant. It would be best if you remembered that the cooler's size is huge, and it weighs almost 1.2 kg in total. The NINJA 5 deserves our “Approved” award because the performance is good. The noise levels are definitely way more than good, with a reasonable price for this dual-tower cooling solution.

Handy related downloads:

• SiSoft Sandra
• AIDA
• CPU-Z
• HWMonitor

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