Scythe Mugen 5 Rev.B Review 

While at the same time "poor" Noctua bundles heatsinks with bend iron wire, because actual screwdriver is just too costly for their budget...

Well thanks very much, I appreciate the show of support! Not sure about being as big as Linus, I'm not sure that's possible in the market today, but I'll certainly push as hard as I can and see where we end up :)

Thanks very much, that's really nice to hear. I'm glad you liked the video so much, if you have any criticism to add please do. And if you know of some upcoming components you'd like to see reviewed here just let me know. There's also a Discord for the channel where a fair few of us discuss channel related topics of your interested in that sort of thing. Thanks for checking this one out and for subscribing. I hope you enjoy many more to come!

How many degrees C did your Temps drop over the prism?

Won't find better bang per buck high end cooler, especially one with as good DIMM and PCIe clearances/reasonable height fitting to almost any case.

@@tuunaes just installed it last night! With my specific motherboard, it sits right over the RAM sticks!. Luckily I don't have any fancy RGB RAM sticks and I'm not planning of swapping them anytime soon.

So you installed it in reverse direction? Because offset design keeps fan inside cooler mounting clearance area around CPU socket in dual channel platforms: www.tweaktown.com/image.php?image=images.tweaktown.com/content/8/3/8320_29_scythe-mugen-5-rev-cpu-cooler-review_full.jpg And for quad channel platforms notch in fin stack makes clearance on other side of CPU socket. www.scythe-eu.com/uploads/tx_cfamooflow/Cooler_.With_RAM_2_14.jpg

I agree to a certain point. And that point is I'm not testing thermal paste, I'm testing coolers. By keeping the thermal paste consistent between coolers we've removed a variable to better assess the design of the cooler, and not whether or not they're compensating or not with some better or worse thermal paste. This also becomes an issue if a cooler needs retesting and there was only one or two applications worth of paste available, or worse preapplied thermal paste that can't be replicated identically. It's a minefield to go down and is better traversed by avoiding it and removing the variable entirely.

Im about to buy a cooler but I think I may hold out for this. Looks awesome

Has the same version of the cooler, but XFR2 & Precission Boost are enabled on my 2600X. Might be those 2 functions are enabled too on your 2700X. Also looking out to use higher RPM fans, or getting a pair of Scythe Kaze Flex 1200 rpm fans.

How are you finding the switch from wraith to mugen black RGB mate? I have the same setup (Ryzen with Lian li dynamic) and thinking of buying the black RGB.

Cheers man! I've covered the Thermalright Macho Rev B and Le Grand Macho RT, but I haven't got my hands on the Ereboss. I'll keep it in mind, thanks for the suggestion!

@@AVTechy Looking for a 50€ cooler so Im considering this one. Macho is great for price/perf I can get it for 41€ but its too big or the ereboss, basically the same!

Very true, the old bruiser is still hanging in there!

I liked it too :)

Definitely return it and get another sent out, you've not paid the price for a damaged product. Amazon tend to be pretty good about replacements and will have one over to you ASAP and let you return the one you bought within 30 days. Hope the new one is on pristine condition!

@@AVTechy Just boxed it up ready to go back. Another one should arrive on the 7th of May. Hope this one is in perfect condition. Thank for your reply.

Still the reason why I refuse to buy computer parts from webshops. The hassle when you get something damaged or broken due to shipping. Lucky there are enough good local pc hardware resalers near the place I live.

@@dorientjewoller113 yeah but there is none where i live. amazon did send a replacement and this one was flawless.

How is this cooler going on for you oc??

How is the cooler holding up mate ?

It's been added to the list, I can't promise I'll be able to cover all these suggestions any time soon though, this channel uploads at a glacial rate haha.

Yes they will, but with diminishing returns

@@AVTechy Thanks for your answer! Didn't expect such a quick reply. How many degrees difference would you expect? You didn't happen to test it did you? That would be something I'd love to see. Can't seem to find anyone that has done it either.

Check out my Arctic Freezer 34 eSports DUO video for single and dual fan testing of a cooler. There's only a few degrees in it, and I've found that's the same for other coolers like the Hyper 212 Evo. You may get another one or two with a larger cooler, but it's not a great price to performance solution.

It's certainly an interesting topic, and you've clearly looked into it further which is great. The thermal paste basically fills in the gaps between the IHS and the base plate. By gaps we can be talking about micrometer sized scratches left over from the manufacturing process. Or larger more visible gaps where heat pipes don't quite fit tightly in their bracket. When it comes to heat transfer, surface area contact is king, and the thermal paste leverages the surface area that's otherwise lost due to scratches or gaps. In an ideal world we'd all get rid of the IHS and have our cooling solutions in direct contact with the CPU removing the requirement to transfer heat through several layers of material. But unfortunately there are several factors that prevent this from happening, many of them are legal issues with warranties, product durability and liability, and many are practical such as safely transporting and installing bare CPUs followed by a cooling solution. Basically thermal paste is a really easy solution to solve all these problems. It's not that a base plate to IHS connection isn't possible, you can just sit a cooler on an IHS and play some games. It's just that thermal paste massively increases the usable surface area of the two components, and it's really really cheap, effective, and safe way of doing so compared to all the other alternatives (so far). However there are some other interesting materials that have emerged on the market that do a similar job like the variations of thermal pads designed for processors. Of course your observation of the far lower thermal conductivity of thermal paste is ground on a reasonable assumption. The thermal paste is the weak link, so it needs to be minimized to reduce its negative impacts as much as possible (also less material for heat to transfer through is beneficial). This is where mounting pressure comes into play to limit the amount of excess thermal paste between the coolers base plate and IHS. On top of this you can increase the thermal conductivity of the thermal paste as much as possible, such as using Thermal Grizzly Conductonaut which has a thermal conductivity value of 73 W/mK, which is still a far cry from bare copper (300 - 400 W/mK), but still far better than traditional thermal paste. Anyway, that's enough of me droning on about thermal paste. If you have any other queries let me know.

@@AVTechy thanks for the response. I didn't realize that the pressure during mounting had that much of an effect. I'm wondering if its a safe assumption that the pressure whilst mounting results in the actual even parts of the IHS making contact with the plate and pushing aside the thermal paste entirely and leaving it only in the gaps in which its required? I suppose it doesnt really matter nor is that an easy question to answer. Either way thanks for the response it answered most.

@@vgamedude12 It's a fair assumption to make, but in this application there's not enough pressure to displace the thermal paste to a point where the base plate and IHS form such a close connection. If that were the case the amount of thermal paste required for a full and even spread would be a fraction of what is actually required. Let's just say for example we wanted a 10 micrometer (0.01mm) spread across a 30 x 30mm surface (could be an IHS). That should only take 0.009 milliliters of thermal paste, but it's clear that nobody uses such a small amount, which gives us an indication that there isn't enough pressure to press the thermal paste down to such a thin layer. It's likely because the thermal paste has such low viscosity (not very runny) , but if it was more viscous it might just poor out of the gaps. Coolers have the potential to cause some real damage to a motherboard, but they all have travel limits and a lot even include springs to even out the force across during installation. But there are applications where higher thermal transmittance is required, and in those cases thermal paste wouldn't be enough, which is where techniques like soldering are implemented. Transmittance through a solid is extremely effective due to the higher particle density of solids over a liquids and a gases. But that's not very practical harking back to the points made earlier. This thermal transmittance game is a real head scratcher :P

@@AVTechy I see. So in essence your bottle neck is always the thermal compound used and the potential of the IHS and plate contact is largely meaningless compared to the limiting factor of the compound used.

@@vgamedude12 Sort of yeah. You could increase the size of the cooler to a certain point and hit diminishing returns, but a change in thermal paste (or liquid metal) would see better results. But then you'd hit the limit in thermal paste performance so you might change the cooler style to some elaborate water cooling and then hit the limit of reasonable consumer technology (you may even experiment with different liquid types or block designs but there's not a lot in those fields that makes a huge impact). Above that you're looking at soldering directly to the CPU (or CPU to IHS to CPU cooler), or compression cooling which is well out of the realm of a consumer build and gets technically challenging and expensive short and long term. There's a hard limit to the performance of thermal paste that due to its physical properties is hard to get past. The realistic situation is there has to be a joint somewhere, or a few in this case. So it's a case of finding a material that will provide reasonable performance for a reasonable cost. And at the moment, bog standard thermal paste is that material.

True, but my testing found that it's woefully inaccurate to do so without any calibration, and even with calibration it's accuracy is not maintained throughout all sound levels --> ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-ibzkh-8fae4.html

In all honesty I don't think you'll find too many differences between the two in terms of performance. I would advise you to go with the one you like the look of most (it's really that close). If you need to go as cheap as possible go for the Ultimate. But if you prefer the style of the Mugen 5 over the Ultimate then go for the Mugen 5. If you are really into the H5 Ultimate, just double check your RAM height as it's only compatible up to 30mm for the first 1 or 2 RAM slots. I know it sounds like a painful "sitting on the fence" response. But that's exactly what I'd do in your situation. Hope this helps, and best of luck with your upcoming build!

No, no, thank you for quick answer, my almost 7 years old mb decided to break, so now I have to practically build all new pc, so I have to tighten my budget. And if I ask one more question about ram I chose Corsair Vengeance LPX, on net I found info that is high around 31 mm, will it fit with H5, or this 1-2 mm is out of question.

Ahh right, sorry to hear that. Cryorig say there's a 30-35mm clearance for the RAM underneath the fan, so I think you'll be completely fine with it. However, I'm not sure if the 30-35mm means you'd need to shift the fan up by 5mm effectively giving you a 165mm cooler. Actually taking a close look at the Elevation drawings of the cooler on their website (linked below), it looks like the 160mm clearance it to the top of the heat sink, so if you needed this fan to fit inside case that can support a 160mm cooler, then the fan would have to be moved below the top of the cooler. This would effectively give you only 20mm clearance for RAM (160 - 140 = 20). However if your case can fit a 170 - 172mm cooler then you should be completely fine. If you really liked the style of cooler you could go for the H5 Universal, but it would perform a little less favourably than the Mugen 5. Sorry this is all getting complicated, with any luck you'll end up with a cooler you want haha. Let me know what you plan to go with, and if you have any more questions please let me know.

My case is Thermaltake Core V21, and on the site max cpu cooler high is 185mm so no problem here, my only corncern was cooler overall temp./noise performance, and if it fit new mb with all those additional heat sinks etc. Once again thank you for answer my questions.

A little update on my build, thanks to my brother, who also decided to build his new pc, I got a chance to check if Cryorig H5 Ultimate fit on M-ATX mb(gigabyte z390 m gaming), and it will fit, but the distance between side of cooler and gpu back is like 2-3 mm, and I do not want to risk damage my new pc parts, so in the end, I'll go with Scythe Mugen 5 Rev.B, I hope that this will help if anyone else had a similar problem.

No idea, I haven't tested the H7. I'd say it would be extremely close though since both are large and very capable, so I'd just pick the one that has the fan you like the most, and which one looks best to you.

@@AVTechy Ok thank you for your reply. I kind of like the bee hive fins on the H7 more. But it only has 3 heat pipes versus 6 on the Mugen 5.

Also would like to see this form of testing on the "Scythe Scmg 5PCGH CPU Cooler Mugen 5 PCGH Edition"..... what would the thermals be like with the additional fan?

They'd be very similar. See my testing of the Arctic Freezer 34 eSports DUO for single, dual, and no fan test results. Dual fans can offer a few degrees of extra performance, but are quite an expensive way to reduce thermals.

@@AVTechy Thanks

No data is useless. If data is the same like FPS figures between coolers it shows consistency to provide confidence in the testing, and if there are differences like temperature it highlights what the differences are so we can speculate on what caused them. Showing just the data in question leaves ambiguity in other areas. If there's a difference in temperature but not frame performance how can you tell if the performance was just down to the differences in the coolers? Sure I can say they're all the same, but I'd rather show you what I found. Every review is partially useless to everyone, people find different things important so they must find other things less important.