Scythe Andy Samurai Master vs. Thermaltake MaxOrb

Conclusion

As the numbers in our CPU cooler tests have risen, certain conclusions have become more obvious. After testing some 23 separate coolers and many more configurations the heatpipe tower has emerged as the best performing design among the coolers. A tall heatpipe tower with horizontal fins attached to a number of vertical heatpipes is the best air-cooling performance you can buy these days. These towers all use side-blowing fans to further dissipate the heat. Most are designed to use a single fan, but some can use two or more fans in a push-pull configuration.

Top air-cooler performance solidly belongs to the Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme at 3.94GHz, with the Tuniq Tower 120, the regular Thermalright Ultra-120, the Scythe Ninja B Plus with SilenX fan, the OCZ Vindicator with SilenX, and the Scythe Infinity with dual push-pull Scythe fans all right behind and tied at 3.90GHz. This is a remarkable group of performers that definitely deliver value for your money.

We have tried to keep an open mind about the supposed advantages of down-facing fans. The arguments and logic are persuasive - a fan or fans blowing down should also cool your motherboard components better, and that should mean better performance. The argument is logical enough, but unfortunately the execution leaves a lot to be desired. So far we have tested three down-facing designs - the Cooler Master GeminII, Scythe Andy Samurai Master, and Thermaltake MaxOrb. That's quite an illustrious group, but none of these three could really compete with our top tier of coolers.

We are left to ask the question if down-facing cools better, then why can't these down-facing designs compete with the best heatpipe towers in performance? We have no auxiliary cooling in our test bed, so the down-facing designs should shine in better performance. Unfortunately they don't.

It is sad to say that we considered the Cooler Master GeminII performance disappointing in our last review, when it is definitely the best of the down-facing coolers. That is not praise for the GeminII; it is just an example of what a disappointment this design really is. The GeminII turned out to be the best of a group of underperformers.

There are definitely good things to say about the MaxOrb and Andy Samurai Master once you get past the disappointing performance. The MaxOrb is elegant and exceptionally light for a top cooler. This means it should travel well in a LAN Party PC for example. The MaxOrb also has one of the slickest and best-working installation systems we have seen. You can truly mount the MaxOrb without any thought of having to remove your motherboard. We can't say that about many of these big high-end coolers.

The Andy Samurai does not fare quite as well. It is much heavier and not a cooler you should use in a computer on the go. Replacing the medium output quiet Scythe fan does absolutely nothing to improve performance. Fans with double the airflow still leave the Andy Samurai Master at a maximum overclock of 3.81GHz. Mounting is also supposed to be a snap without removing the board, but we found the wide overhangs made it almost impossible to mount the Andy Samurai Master without removing the motherboard from the case. Fortunately Scythe has two other heatpipe tower designs that do make it to the top of our performance charts, so you can always buy one of those if you are set on the Scythe brand.

In the end the only conclusion to be reached is that the heatpipe towers with side fans are a superior design to the down-blowing coolers. They cool to lower temperatures and allow higher overclocks than the down-facing designs - even those with super high-output fans and their own heatpipes. The conventional wisdom and logic for down-facing fans just doesn't pan out in real-world performance.

The real advantage of comparative testing in a consistent test bed is you can see patterns like this emerge over time. This is easily missed with tests that use a different test bed for almost every review, or that only compare a few items on the same test bed. Large numbers consistently tested allow you to look more deeply at a group as we are doing here with CPU coolers on a Core 2 Duo test bed.

The down-facing coolers are just fine for routine cooling. Some perform very well indeed at stock speeds. Others compare well if noise is your first concern. However, in the important cooling performance and overclocking areas, the down-facing coolers are consistently outperformed by heatpipe tower designs. The best values in cooling performance and overclocking are the heatpipe towers with side fans that top our performance charts.