Scythe Infinity

The one kilogram heatsink mark has been hit. Do you dare attach it to your motherboard?

Scythe has a great reputation, but dear Lord we’ve just reached the point of freaky crazy. I mean, 960g? By the time the fan is thrown on, we’ll have hit the fabled 1kg mark for HSFs. We can hear the poor old motherboard creaking under the stress as the furniture in the room is dragged towards the increased gravitational mass.

We’d like to say the Infinity is the spiritual successor to Scythe’s wonderful Ninja, however since it has just released a revision B that fits AM2 we really can’t. So let’s just say it’s a new cooler then, eh?

What it definitely is though, is a much more rigid and well built version of the Ninja, with five heatpipes that snake up from two of the sides, instead of three from all four sides. A new mounting system is also present, which requires you to slot in two preconfigured arms – giving us simply the easiest multi-socket mounting kit we’ve seen, and a big kudos to Scythe for that one.

A big ‘shit no’ is sadly also required, as it has used Intel’s horrible ‘push-down-and-twist’ unstable fastening mechanism for 775, which has resulted in many a system shut down due to insufficient contact with the processor. Boo!

Also new is the presence of Scythe’s own 1200rpm fan – which although it isn’t as quiet as our Nexus Real Silent, is still acceptable and a nice inclusion.

Doing our best Rodney McKay impression before destroying a galaxy, we turned Chernobyl (our custom heat generating tour de force) up to 80W and hooked in the Infinity. In an ambient temperature of 26°C it spat back a nice 42°C, which would be great, if its older sibling the Ninja didn’t manage to do the exact same temperature at 300g less.

The Infinity is a good product – but simply way too heavy. Save your board a hernia and get a revision B Ninja instead.