The Scythe Kodati is an interesting product. Although I’d never heard of it until very recently, it was launched in mid-2014. This tiny unit piqued my interest as an option for uSFF builds – it’s 34mm height is similar to the height of standard RAM modules and thus would fit in all but the smallest of cases. Today we look at this minute cooler.
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About Scythe
From Scythe’s Website:
Selected PC Parts for DIY PC Experts
Scythe Co., Ltd., (Registered and incorporated in Tokyo Japan) originally started its business operation in Japan’s famous “Akihabara Electric Town” located in the metropolitan Tokyo, where visitors can find a variety of products from the latest computer parts to the world’s most advanced high-tech electric devices.
[mks_pullquote align=”right” width=”367″ size=”18″ bg_color=”#000000″ txt_color=”#ffffff”]At Scythe, we believe that the best ideas for product come simply from knowing customers’ needs and their expectations. Based on this philosophy, the PC enthusiasts working at Scythe know what to develop because that is exactly what we would like to have for ourselves too! We offer products with 100% quality assurance and total pride, and if the product has the Scythe name on it, you can rest assure that its quality will be up to the “Zero Tolerance” standards![/mks_pullquote]
Sythe Co., Ltd., began its operation and business since November, 2002 as a distributor and the manufacturer of passive and low-noise PC parts. Since then, the company has established the R&D facility in Taiwan & China for production and quality control, and the USA office (in Los Angeles, California) & European office (in Hamburg, Germany) for customer care and sales support.
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The Scythe Kodati Rev B
| HEATSINK SPECIFICATION | |
|---|---|
| Dimension ( with fan ) | L82.5 mm x W95 mm x H34 mm |
| Weight ( with fan ) | 180 g |
| Model Number | SCKDT-1100 |
| Heat pipes | Copper heatpipe x 2 |
| Fin Material | Aluminium |
| Fin Count | 40 pcs |
| Copper Base | Copper nickel plated |
| RAM Height Limit | Unlimited |
| TDP | 65w PWM, or 88w at full speed |
| Replaceable Fan? | Yes |
| FAN SPECIFICATION | |
|---|---|
| Dimension | L80 mm x W80 mm x H10 mm |
| Weight | Unknown |
| Rated Speed | 800 ~ 33000 RPM ±10 % |
| Noise Level | 8.2 – 32.5 dBA |
| Air Flow | 10.2 – 42.2 CFM |
| Air Pressure | 0.54 – 1.99 mmH2O |
| Ampere | 0.2 A |
The cooler has compatibility with AMD sockets AM1, AM2, AM2+, AM3, AM3+, FM1, FM2 and FM2+ (as well as some variants of Socket 1207). On the Intel side, compatibility is with sockets 1150, 1151, 1155 and 1156, as well as LGA775.
Unboxing
The Kodati comes in an appropriately small box, dwarfed by all the other coolers I have encountered before!
Warranty details, in a fittingly small print.
The rear of the box lists all the specifications of the cooler in 6 languages. Hopefully you have a magnifying glass handy!
This side shows a few token warnings (sharp edges, read the manual, etc).
A significant quantity of mounting hardware is supplied, which, although not surprising, is greatly appreciated considering the large compatibility list of this cooler. A single dose of thermal paste is the only let-down here. We much prefer to see a syringe of paste included with a cooler as it allows you to re-mount the cooler and re-use the cooler without worry of running out of paste or having to run down to the local shop to buy some!
Now for the first look at the cooler. This thing is tiny! I dropped a screw for it and had the entire house on their knees looking for it!! To keep the overall height low, Scythe chose to mount the fan between the fins and the base of the cooler. Unfortunately this is the only place the stock fan and clips can mount the fan – I tried mounting the fan to the top of the cooler (albeit, this does defeat the purpose of this product) but it was not possible. The nickel plated heatpipes are clearly visible, as is the brightly coloured fan cable. I would have preferred this to be sleeved, but any modder worth their salt would easily be able to do this themselves.
The cooler uses a simple 4 screw setup for mounting the brackets to the heatsink. Ignore the discolouration on the base, I had to take these photos after the testing.
The base is well machined and polished.
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Hardware Compatibility
As stated above, this cooler supports a myriad of sockets. Here it is with the AMD (excluding AM1) bracket installed. In this shot you can also see that the fins are set somewhat to one side of the base, enabling you in some cases to actively cool your VRM or chipset heatsinks.
The cooler is somewhat easy to install. It does not use the standard AMD backplate (or any backplate on any platform!). It’s not the hardest cooler to install by far but the mounting mechanism could be improved.
No conflicts here! This test board has some of the tightest socket tolerances I have experienced, and the Kodati doesn’t block any socket, slot or mount.
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Cooling Performance
The SFFN test bench currently includes the following hardware:
- Gigabyte 970-D3P Motherboard
- Phenom II 555BE @ 3.2GHz
- 8GB Crucial DDR3-1600 Value RAM (single DIMM)
- Hitachi 60gb 2.5″ 5400RPM SATA HDD (temporary!)
- Gigabyte R7-360
- Thermal Master 420W Power Supply
- Aluminium Test Bench Chassis
To test this cooler, we used a simple methodology. Using Deepcool Z3 thermal paste (a budget, but decent performing, paste), we mounted the Scythe Kodati Rev B to our 89w Phenom. To retrieve idle temps, we booted up Windows, loaded HW Monitor and left it there for 10 minutes. The hottest core was recorded at that time. To load the CPU, we ran Prime95 Blend, with 2 threads (dual core processor). After 20 minutes of load, we once again took the hottest CPU core at that time. Finally, we plugged the fan directly into 12v, waited 10 minutes under load, and recorded the hottest core.
We also measured ambient temperatures and converted all results to Delta T (change from ambient). The fans were run at ‘Normal’ fan control mode in BIOS.
As expected, the Kodati isn’t the greatest performer, but for it’s size, it is truly impressive. Beating two of our 3 AMD stock coolers at 12v, it offers a good upgrade path. Speaking of 12V, the fan is barely noticeable, even at full speed.
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Final Thoughts
Overall, the cooler is well built and a great option for those really small builds that we love to see here at SFFn. This cooler trades blows with the high end stock coolers, at much smaller dimensions. Support for AM1 while offering significant (for that 25w platform) cooling is a major win for the Scythe Kodati Rev B.
Pros:
Quiet at full speed.
Doesn’t block slots or hardware on our test board.
Supports most modern sockets.
Well built.
Fan is replaceable (although it may be difficult to find a fan this size)
Cons:
Has difficulty handling high wattage processors (but this is to be expected due to it’s size)
Cooler Mounting screws can be easily lost (seriously, girlfriend was not happy with me, but we found it!)
This cooler is available for around US$34.99 from Amazon. [mks_separator style=”blank” height=”2″]
Thoughts? Discuss them in the forum.
Review sample provided by eTonix Media PR on behalf of Scythe.
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