Every human being is unique. We all subconsciously strive to stand out among others. There are multiple ways how this goal can be achieved. Some of us are extremely smart, some are unearthly beautiful, some are kind and helpful, some possess other respectful traits of human character. Those, however, who feel like this is not enough usually resort to some exclusive things, like limited edition cars, watches, “haute couture” outfits, jewelry, etc. Of course, in the computer field there are much fewer things like that. We can certainly recall 1000-piece batch of exclusive Albatron PX845PEV-800 mainboards, 500-piece batch of limited edition ATI Radeon X1950 XTX Uber Edition graphics cards, Dell XPS 600 Renegade gaming system. Over time things like that turn legendary, and it is very likely to happen to Scythe Ninja Copper cooler launched by Scythe’s 5-year anniversary.

People started talking about the fashionable copper Scythe Ninja modification right after the company launched their original aluminum Scythe Ninja, and Ninja Plus a little later. Back in 2005 they demonstrated the copper modification of this top cooling solution at Computex 2005, but it never really went any further: the cooler never made it to mass production. In the meantime, Japanese company’s fans and dedicated fans of the Scythe Ninja cooler didn’t give up and kept expressing their hopes about the copper fellow in numerous hardware forums. Of course, their expectations were absolutely natural, because the aluminum Scythe Ninja was the best air-cooler at that time, and the efficiency of a copper modification promised to be absolutely stunning.

However, times passed, cooler makers designed and released new products that already started to outperform the Scythe Ninja (Scythe actually launched their Infinity cooler as well), and the copper Ninja was nowhere to be seen. The stimulus for the Copper Ninja to be finally released was Scythe’s 5-year anniversary, so they decided to commemorate it with a limited edition of new Ninja coolers featuring copper heatsink rib array instead of an aluminum one. Experienced overclockers may be a little skeptical about replacing aluminum heatsink with a copper one. Besides, I also wouldn’t expect a tremendous cooling efficiency boost from that. Nevertheless, Ninja Copper is indeed unique, and a few other interesting innovations made in it are totally worth our closest attention.

Package and Accessories

Slim-looking, bright-colored box stresses the uniqueness of this cooling solution:

The front of the box bears a full-size cooler photo and a few icons indicating that Ninja Copper supports all new CPUs, can work in passive fanless mode and comes with a silent 120mm fan. A separate tag on the front of the box states that this cooler belongs to a limited anniversary edition of Scythe products, because as I have already mentioned earlier, this company has recently turned 5 years old.

The other sides of the box are also very informative:

When you open the box, the 120mm fan sits on top, then comes an unusually heavy copper heatsink, and at the very bottom there is a small flat box with accessories. Everything you need to install this cooler is inside:

• A bracket for cooler installation onto LGA775 and Socket 478 mainboards;
• Backplate for LGA775 and Socket 478 mainboards;
• Two retention clips for LGA775 and Socket 478 mainboards;
• Retention bracket for Socket 754/939/940 and AM2 mainboards;
• Two wire clips for fan retention;
• 1g pack of SilMORE thermal grease;
• Installation guide in multiple languages;
• A set of screws and plastic washers.

According to the info on the box, Scythe Ninja Copper is made in Taiwan. As far as we know today, the cooler has been manufactured in limited quantity of only 1000 pieces by the company’s anniversary. Looks like Scythe Ninja Copper will not go into real mass production.