Scythe musashi VGA cooler review
Continueing my line of reviews of different parts from my new rig, here's my review of the Scythe musashi. My main reason to buy it were silence, cooling performance and keeping the card dualslot. Read on to see if it meets these demands
Packaging and bundle
Being the first time I had seen a Scythe packaging for real, I was amazed by how much information humankind can put on one little package. While the front is quite clear relatively seen (ie it has some blank spaces), the back is compeletely crammed with information in multiple languages:
The front mainly features the name and design of the cooler
While the rear provides you with details and... Japanese signs
Upon opening the package you immediately encounter a cardboard holder, with the cooler fit snugly into it and the accessoires in any space that was left unused. Not exactly well protected, but there's not much to break about a gpu cooler. Sadly, I failed to take any reasonable pictures of the packaging method, so you will have to do with just my word.
The bundle was certainly good enough for anyone's needs. Of course we have the cooler itself, with attached fans and fancontroller:
Also displayed on this picture is a part of the packaging the cooler was supplied in. Actually the only picture of reasonable quality I have that shows it.
The accessoires mainly consisted of heatsinks and mounting materials:
Supplied with the cooler: mounting screws and bolts, ram cooling, thermal crap, a copper plate for lower cores, a backplate and a main (PWM?) heatsink.
Not included in the pictures is an A4 format instruction manual in 5 languages. It was ... Well, sufficient for a good reader, but it wasn't exactly clear.
I would not recommend using the thermal paste included with the musashi. I have not taken it out of its bag but it really felt too thick when compared to the MX-2 I used.
Build quality
Even though the base and heatpipes of the Musashi feel quite stury the fins are just flimsy. During the install I bended them several times and even the fan wires bend them. Not a real problem once the cooler is installed, but I don't really like it either.
Mounting and ease of it
Although you only have to mount your gpu cooler once I think this quite and important aspect of a cooler. The musashi was not a great hassle as long as you pay attention to what you are doing. I did not, and mounted it the wrong way once...
Step one: removing the stock cooler. This was easy as pie in my case, my stock 4850 hsf was secured with just four screws and the thermal paste was not the usual cement:
... owned
After cleaning the core with Articlean it's time to put on the small ramsinks, which is easy as pie because of the pre applied thermal glue:
The ramsinks applied. I let the stock PWM sink in place because the aftermarket did not fit
Then you can screw the mounting screws into the baseplate of the cooler. This is done using normal screwthreads, so nothing special about it. After applying your thermal paste to the core and a final check of your components you should be ready to roll:
Thermal paste and ramsinks applied? Backplate and bolts present? Screws in cooler baseplate? You are ready to go
After fitting your card on top of your cooler (the card is smaller, after all), screw on the bolts. Once done, you are ready to install your card:
After installing the card itself, I came across the largest problem of the cooler: the fan controller knobs did not fit through the PCI opening in the case. A handfile was the solution for me, but I think this really is not a good thing.
Temperatures
I have not tested any other aftermarket gpu coolres in my life, so I will have to compare the musashi to the 4850 reference cooler.
The reference has -as many may know- a thing for being noisy. When the card is under full load it makes a sound like it wants to lift off and is still letting the card run at a burning 90 degrees centigrade. The Scythe musashi however, kept her just below 60C in FurMark eXtreme burn and stayed dead quiet with one fan on low and the other on middle power. I really can not hear it above my Noctua U12P cooler and HAF932 case fans with all fans on 7V, which is fairly quiet.
The eXtreme burn running with the musashi equipped. Fan1 on low, fan2 on mid
With both fans on high the Musashi sounds like a windtunnel (mainly because of fan1 which has a lot of air resistance near the cooler base) but kept her at around 50C under eXtreme burn.
Conclusion
The scythe musashi is a well cooling and silent gpu cooler. But when you are looking a cooler that keeps your card dualslot, do NOT purchase this cooler. It's taking 3 slots with the fans on, forcing me to switch coolers if I want to crossfire.
At €35 (HighFlow.nl), the musashi is €10 above one of its main competitors (Akasa Vortexx), but also €10 below the thermalright T-rad², one of the main alternatives when it comes to dualslot coolers. All this, combined with the loss of my crossfire capability, does not make me recommend the Musashi VGA cooler.
<edit>After my brother installed one of these on his rig, it turns out the knobs can be removed from the controller with quite some force.</edit>
The pro's:
- Good performance
- Silent
The mediocre:
- Installation
- Bundle
- Cable management (power as well as fancontroller cable)
The bad:
- Loss of crossfire/SLi capability
Performance: 8/10
Value: 7.5/10
Presentation: 7.5/10
BTW: I'm sorry for the lesser quality pics, but they were all taken somewhere between 01.00 and 02.30 in the night, so I wasn't exactly awake enough to do some good composition.
Continueing my line of reviews of different parts from my new rig, here's my review of the Scythe musashi. My main reason to buy it were silence, cooling performance and keeping the card dualslot. Read on to see if it meets these demands
Packaging and bundle
Being the first time I had seen a Scythe packaging for real, I was amazed by how much information humankind can put on one little package. While the front is quite clear relatively seen (ie it has some blank spaces), the back is compeletely crammed with information in multiple languages:
The front mainly features the name and design of the cooler
While the rear provides you with details and... Japanese signs
Upon opening the package you immediately encounter a cardboard holder, with the cooler fit snugly into it and the accessoires in any space that was left unused. Not exactly well protected, but there's not much to break about a gpu cooler. Sadly, I failed to take any reasonable pictures of the packaging method, so you will have to do with just my word.
The bundle was certainly good enough for anyone's needs. Of course we have the cooler itself, with attached fans and fancontroller:
Also displayed on this picture is a part of the packaging the cooler was supplied in. Actually the only picture of reasonable quality I have that shows it.
The accessoires mainly consisted of heatsinks and mounting materials:
Supplied with the cooler: mounting screws and bolts, ram cooling, thermal crap, a copper plate for lower cores, a backplate and a main (PWM?) heatsink.
Not included in the pictures is an A4 format instruction manual in 5 languages. It was ... Well, sufficient for a good reader, but it wasn't exactly clear.
I would not recommend using the thermal paste included with the musashi. I have not taken it out of its bag but it really felt too thick when compared to the MX-2 I used.
Build quality
Even though the base and heatpipes of the Musashi feel quite stury the fins are just flimsy. During the install I bended them several times and even the fan wires bend them. Not a real problem once the cooler is installed, but I don't really like it either.
Mounting and ease of it
Although you only have to mount your gpu cooler once I think this quite and important aspect of a cooler. The musashi was not a great hassle as long as you pay attention to what you are doing. I did not, and mounted it the wrong way once...
Step one: removing the stock cooler. This was easy as pie in my case, my stock 4850 hsf was secured with just four screws and the thermal paste was not the usual cement:
... owned
After cleaning the core with Articlean it's time to put on the small ramsinks, which is easy as pie because of the pre applied thermal glue:
The ramsinks applied. I let the stock PWM sink in place because the aftermarket did not fit
Then you can screw the mounting screws into the baseplate of the cooler. This is done using normal screwthreads, so nothing special about it. After applying your thermal paste to the core and a final check of your components you should be ready to roll:
Thermal paste and ramsinks applied? Backplate and bolts present? Screws in cooler baseplate? You are ready to go
After fitting your card on top of your cooler (the card is smaller, after all), screw on the bolts. Once done, you are ready to install your card:
After installing the card itself, I came across the largest problem of the cooler: the fan controller knobs did not fit through the PCI opening in the case. A handfile was the solution for me, but I think this really is not a good thing.
Temperatures
I have not tested any other aftermarket gpu coolres in my life, so I will have to compare the musashi to the 4850 reference cooler.
The reference has -as many may know- a thing for being noisy. When the card is under full load it makes a sound like it wants to lift off and is still letting the card run at a burning 90 degrees centigrade. The Scythe musashi however, kept her just below 60C in FurMark eXtreme burn and stayed dead quiet with one fan on low and the other on middle power. I really can not hear it above my Noctua U12P cooler and HAF932 case fans with all fans on 7V, which is fairly quiet.
The eXtreme burn running with the musashi equipped. Fan1 on low, fan2 on mid
With both fans on high the Musashi sounds like a windtunnel (mainly because of fan1 which has a lot of air resistance near the cooler base) but kept her at around 50C under eXtreme burn.
Conclusion
The scythe musashi is a well cooling and silent gpu cooler. But when you are looking a cooler that keeps your card dualslot, do NOT purchase this cooler. It's taking 3 slots with the fans on, forcing me to switch coolers if I want to crossfire.
At €35 (HighFlow.nl), the musashi is €10 above one of its main competitors (Akasa Vortexx), but also €10 below the thermalright T-rad², one of the main alternatives when it comes to dualslot coolers. All this, combined with the loss of my crossfire capability, does not make me recommend the Musashi VGA cooler.
<edit>After my brother installed one of these on his rig, it turns out the knobs can be removed from the controller with quite some force.</edit>
The pro's:
- Good performance
- Silent
The mediocre:
- Installation
- Bundle
- Cable management (power as well as fancontroller cable)
The bad:
- Loss of crossfire/SLi capability
Performance: 8/10
Value: 7.5/10
Presentation: 7.5/10
BTW: I'm sorry for the lesser quality pics, but they were all taken somewhere between 01.00 and 02.30 in the night, so I wasn't exactly awake enough to do some good composition.
