Scythe Yasya Six Heatpipe CPU Cooler Review

Today we are bringing you a look at the new Scythe Yasya tower cooler.  This is a brand new design from Scythe that utilizes six, 6mm heatpipes in the popular tower configuration.  This particular design is very unique and looks great.  But looks aren’t nearly as important as performance, so the question is: Does the Yasya have the performance to back up the looks?

Getting to know the Yasya

If you listen to the hype from the Scythe marketing deptartment, there is a lot to get excited about

The Yasya CPU Cooler is the first cooler from Scythe equipped with T.M.L.F. (Trident Multi Layer Fin) structure. This special design maximizes the cooling surface to provide the best cooling result of the heatsink. By placing the heatsink fins as well as total of 6 copper heatpipes in unparallel design, static pressure loss is minimized and heat transfer is maximized. New 120 mm “Slip Stream 120 Adjustable PWM” case fan is supplied for optimized airflow. Although the fan supports the PWM feature user can manually adjust the speed between 470 to 1,370 rpm and 740 to 1,900 rpm.

Easy mounting is available by the famous V.T.M.S. (Versatile Tool-Free Multiplatform System) which requires no motherboard removal for the heatsink mounting. Yasya CPU Cooler is compatible to all current sockets, including the new socket LGA 1156.

So all of that sounds pretty nice, but I’d like to make a few observations.  There are 54 fins, they are very thin, and they are pressure fitted to the heatpipes.  The heatpipe arrangement apears to take a page out of Thermalright’s design book, it is identical to that of the Ultra 120 Extreme from three years ago!  We’ll have to look at the results before commenting on claims concerning performance though.

The fan is very similar to the popular Slipstream design, but this one adds PWM capability and an expansion slot mountable potentiometer for manual speed control.  With these two features together, you are able to tune the fan to automatically vary its speed within a range of your liking.  I’d also like to mention the fan clips.  Only one set is included, so if you’d like to mount two fans in a push-pull configuration, you’ll need to find another solution.  Also, they require fans with open corners, so if you want to us a closed corner design, be sure to plan accordingly.  Lastly, because the clips attach on the inside screw holes, these clips are compatible with 25mm or 38mm deep 120mm fans.

The V.T.M.S. is nothing more than clip on mounting brackets with Intel’s factory styled plastic push-pins.  Even Intel abandoned the plastic push pins with the new Core i7 980X six core CPU cooler.  Why a nice aftermarket cooler like the Yasya, which happens to weight over 800 grams, should be mounted with plastic push pins is beyond me.  One upside is that right out of the box, it has compatability with all of the popular sockets.

The base of the Yasya is extremely flat, and polished to a near mirror finish, something we have come to expect from Scythe.  Something else I’ve come to expect from Scythe, but much less desirable, is also present here…the heatpipes do not appear to be soldiered to the base.

The competition

I’ll be pitting the Yasya against the stock Intel heatsink and my personal favorite, the Prolimatech Megahalems (although I have to say, I’ve got my eye on the new Thermalright Venomous X).

As you can see in the photos above, Intel finally looks like it might have something worthwhile this time.  Also a tower design, it uses only four 6mm heapipes.  It’s still significantly smaller than the other two coolers here, but suprizingly large for a stock solution.  And as I mentioned earlier, you can see that the plastic push-pins are gone, replaced by a true “bolt through” system.

And here we have the bases of the other two coolers.  This Prolimatech megahalems has been mounted and dismounted over 100 times in the short time I’ve owned it, which accounts for all of the marks on the base.  But even brand new it did not have the smooth finish of either of the other two here.  Both of the coolers here have their heatpipes soldiered to their bases.

Testing

Today I’ll be using the new Intel Core i7 980X as the test CPU, running with a heafty 1.4V vore CPU voltage to generate a lot of heat.  The entire rig consists of the following components:

• Gigabyte GA-X58A-UD7
• Intel Core i7 980X @ 4GHz
• 6GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-2000
• Saphire AMD HD 2400Pro
• Ultra X3 1000W PSU
• DIMASTECH Bench Table V2.5

Vcore was set to 1.4V in the BIOS, and “load line calibration” was set to “level 1”.  Most other settings remained on default.  I was not attempting to obtain a high overclock here, just to generate a large heat load.

During testing, I used a high precision digital thermometer to record the ambient temperature of the air from about 1 inch in front of the fan mounted on the cooler.  Temperatures were manually monitored and recorded at one minute intervals.

I tested with a synthetic load via Prime95.  This program fully loads all 12 virtual threads of the 980X CPU, stressing it beyond most any real-life scenario to generate a high TDP.  Below is what the screen looked like durning testing.  I tested both the Scythe and the Prolimatech Megahalems with the fan supplied with the Yasya to demonstrate the capabilities of the Yasya in its factory configuration.

With the fan set to 100% in the BIOS, and the manual control set to the slowest setting, I start at the Windows desktop idling.  I then start RealTemp (with logging) and Prime95 at the same time, allow the test to run for ten minutes and then change the fan’s manual control to 100%, continuing the test for another ten minutes.  That ends each round of testing.  Each cooler was tested a total of three times.

Results

Below you can see the average results from all three sets of testing.  The core temperatures were averaged to obtain the data below.

Readers with a keen eye may notice the stock Intel cooler missing from the results…that’s correct, the Intel cooler did not complete the testing.  During each of the three attempts with the Intel cooler, it was overwhelmed with the heat generated and within about 20 seconds multiple cores were reaching/exceeding 100°C, not something I’m comfortable doing with a $1000 CPU.  Suffice it to say, the other two coolers here are in a completely different league than the stock Intel cooler!

The next thing I’d like to point out is that the Prolimatech Megahalems cooler handily out-performed the Yasya, in every test. Regardless of fan speed, the Yasya was always trailing the Megalalems 4-8° Celcius, not insignificant amounts in my book.

The last thing I need to mention is that those are absolute temperatures, and don’t take into account the enviornmental variable of ambient temperature.  I did include the ambient readings in the graph above and there wasn’t much change in my testing environment,  but it can still skew results enough to matter.  So I deducted the ambient temperatures from the absolute measurements to provide a third plot for each cooler, the “rise over ambient” or ROA.  I’ve plotted this curve in the chart below.

Conclusion

Well, I cannot say I’m impressed.  Scythe has long been known for low noise cooling solutions, and this one could definitely fill that niche…but so could dozens of other designs from Scythe. Do we really need another?  Based on appearances, this one takes on the heavyweights of the cooler world. Unfortunately, it just does not have the performance to match.  So, where else can it be competitive?  Appearance and price!  In the looks department I think Scythe has a winner on its hands, it definitely looks cool in my opinion, but each one of us has to decide that for him/herself.

Price, on the other hand, is easily quantifiable and in this case a quick check shows the TRUE Rev.C for $65 with a fan.  The Prolimatech Megahalems for $60 without a fan (factor in a $14 for a decent fan and you’re at $74).  The Yasya is already on the shelves for only $48.  Sounds like a pretty reasonible sum to me.

If you looking for an air cooler with top performance, you should be looking at the offerings from Thermalright or Prolimatech, the Yasya just doesn’t have the cooling of the others.  If you’re head-over-heels in love with this design and don’t mind a moderate performance penalty, this Yasya cooler may work fine for you, even if you could afford the others.  If those are out of your price range, the Yasya may be just what you need!

Last, but not least, I’ve shopped with Crazy PC numerous times in the past and they’ve always treated me well, which is why I decided to do this review!  A big “Thank you!” to crazypc.com for providing this sample!

–MIAHALLEN