Scythe Grand Kama Cross 3: Review| Test |Specs | CPU | Hashrate| Set-up| Pros & Cons

Scythe Grand Kama Cross 3: Review| Test |Specs | CPU Performance | Hashrate| Set-up| Pros & Cons – Scythe is a brand that is very old on the market, far more than many of the most popular marketing brands, and it is a shame that it is not better known in France. After the excellent Mugen 4 PCGH, Mugen Max, Ashura and the Ninja 4 I will take a look at the latest one, I named the Grand Kama Cross 3!

As its name suggests, this is the third version of the Grand Kama Cross, a “top flow” format cooler which therefore has a fan parallel to the motherboard and which blows in the direction of the latter. The vast majority of boxes on the market are designed to accommodate a tower type cooler that blows outwards, but sometimes it is not possible to install this type of cooler, often when there is not enough space, so it is here that the Grand Kama Cross 3 is useful.

Offered at a recommended price of € 36.50 excluding VAT, it has a much softer entry ticket than its direct competitors in the “top flow” format, namely the Noctua NH-C14S and other be quiet! Dark Rock TF, knowing the brand, it should offer excellent value for money, but let’s not sell the bear skin before having killed it, so let’s test!

The front is rather dark, we are far from what the brand offered not long ago with bright colors in the Japanese spirit. Here we find a product profile photo, model name and socket compatibility, and a ninja!

At the back the warranty information (2 years) as well as the usual warnings.

On the sides we find the technical characteristics of the beast, more particularly the dimensions of all the elements via different diagrams.

Once the box is open we fall directly on the beast well surrounded by its various boxes, the transport should go well as long as the box does not take too many hits.

Here is the beast! We can say that the look is very singular here, a 14 cm fan placed on 2 V-shaped radiators. The build quality is very good and Scythe decided to improve the finishes a little by putting nickel-plated baking on the heat pipes and a black painted fairing covering the ends of the latter. Let’s take a closer look at all of this.

On the side we can clearly see the V-shaped radiators, 35 aluminum fins on each side crossed by 4 large nickel-plated heat pipes (2 x 6 mm and 2 x 8 mm). The shape is very particular and we can see a fairly large space between the 14 cm fan installed above and the two radiators.

The ends of the heat pipes are not visible here, instead we end up with black covers marked with the brand’s logo. We can also see the 4 heat pipes, the thickest are located in the middle, they will be more efficient in transferring heat from the processor to the fins because the processor tends to heat the most in the center.

On the top we are in the presence of a good big beast, indeed the 14 cm fan would be almost small placed on the radiator!

The installed fan is a GlideStream 140 PWM running at a speed between 400 and 1300 RPM, already encountered on various coolers of the brand and which should once again behave very well. The cable is of course black braided and of very good quality.

Underneath there is not much to say, except that there is a lot of room around the base due to the orientation of the two radiators.

The nickel-plated copper heat pipes intersect to go into the two radiators, the build quality is very good here and nothing is left to chance!

The base is very well finished without having a 100% mirror finish, we can see the concentric grooves left by the machining. Moreover the base is convex with the top located in its center, that is to say that the maximum pressure will be in the center which is generally where the cores of the processor are located.

The bundle is made up of:

• 1 x Radiator Scythe Grand Kama Cross 3
• 1 x Scythe Glidestream 140 PWM Fan
• 1 x Intel mounting plate
• 1 x sachet of thermal paste
• 1 x Manuel
• 1 x screwdriver
• The necessary screws

As you can see the bundle offers everything you need to mount the cooler in good conditions, on the other hand no superfluous here, only what is necessary! There is no thermal paste tube here, however, and Scythe has decided to put back a bag, too bad because it will dry much faster. The brand has even thought of those who do not have a long screwdriver and provided one, we would almost come close to the bundle of a Noctua!

Specification: Hashrate – Scythe Grand Kama Cross 3

The Scythe Grand Kama Cross 3 is compatible with all sockets on the market, from the old and obsolete 775 to the very recent 2011-3 at Intel and all AMD sockets, it goes without saying that there will be no problem of compatibility if you buy a new PC, at least at the socket level! In terms of weight, the Ninja Grand Kama Cross 3 displays a small 650g without the fan and 790g with it, which is ultimately not so excessive when looking at the dimensions of the beast.

Regarding the dimensions, we are in front of a “top flow” cooler 14.7 cm high (with the fan, 12.2 cm without), for 14 cm and 17.1 cm on the sides, which means that if the height is measured it will clearly not be forgotten with its 17.1 cm for the largest side! With such dimensions the question of the compatibility of the memory and the first PCIe port arises, we will see that during the assembly 🙂

Each of the 2 radiators is made up of 35 aluminum fins and crossed by 4 nickel-plated copper heat pipes of 2 different sizes (6 mm for those on the outside and 8 mm for those on the inside). The fins are spaced far enough apart so as not to require too much air pressure, this type of cooler is generally more efficient than those with many fins but closely spaced when a very slowly rotating fan is installed.
At the fan level the Glidestream 140 PWM of the brand has been selected, its speed varies from 400 to 1300 RPM for a sound level ranging from 12.5 to 30.7 dB and an air flow of 29.90 to 97.18 CFM, it should logically be very discreet at rest and quite audible under load.

Offered at a recommended price of € 36.50 excluding VAT, it fits very well in the “top flow” category, if performance is correct it could be a very good alternative to its much more expensive competitors.

The assembly is rather simple, just put the back plate like this:

Then we place the white washers above the 4 holes of the motherboard:

We then place the screws that will attach the back plate:

Once the 4 are in place, you have to place the 2 plates that will be used to fix the cooler itself over these same screws, you have to be careful to place the screws in the correct hole (there are 3 locations for 3 sockets different), for socket 1150 1155 1156 it is the middle one, and we install the 4 screws provided for this purpose:

When the 2 plates are placed, you must of course not forget to put a little thermal paste on the processor, and when I say a little it is really a little , as below:

Now we finally move on to the placement of the cooler on the processor, do not forget to remove the protective film under the cooler, we place the black plate on the base and we put the cooler, which we then screw:

Be careful, however, it is necessary to proceed alternately and especially not to screw up one screw and then pass on the other, otherwise the temperatures will be completely delusional. Likewise, be careful not to over-tighten otherwise you exert excessive pressure on the processor, unfortunately no stoppers for the screws so do not go like a lumberjack. Thanks to the supplied screwdriver, without which many people would find themselves stuck.

And here is the beast is installed! As we can see it will clearly not go unnoticed in a configuration, especially if it has a window. Now let’s see what the compatibility of the surrounding components is.

Memory / PCIe compatibility

There is no real need to draw a picture, the memory should not be the slightest problem, unless perhaps you install radiators 10 cm high!

We are getting dangerously close to the first PCIe port here, even if it will be technically possible to install a graphics card there, it should not have a back plate, or screws that protrude too much from the PCB otherwise it will touch the cooler.

The test platform

The Scythe Grand Kama Cross 3 has been tested on the configuration below:

• Processor : Intel Core i7 875K @ 3.2 Ghz
• Motherboard : Asus P7P55D
• Memory : Kingston HyperX 4 x 2 GB 1600Mhz
• Hard Drive: WD Raptor 150 GB
• Graphics card : Sapphire Toxic 5850
• Power supply : Seasonic X650

The test protocol

The core i7 875K has been slightly overclocked to 3.2Ghz. The temperatures under load are an average of all the cores for 3 tests of 30 minutes on OCCT, the temperatures at rest were taken after 15mins on the desktop (still an average of the 4 cores). All the tests will be done with the 5V, 12V and PWM fans managed by the motherboard.

The cooler has been tested against:

• be quiet! Dark Rock TF (tested here)
• Cryorig C1 (tested here)
• Noctua NH-C14S (tested here)
• Noctua NH-L12 (tested here)
• Noctua NH-C12 (tested here)
• Noctua NH-D15 (tested here)
• Scythe Ninja 4 (tested here)

The choice of coolers is not random, the Scythe Grand Kama Cross 3 being a “Top Flow” cooler I compared it to its competitors in my possession, namely the be quiet! Dark Rock RF, Cryorig C1, Noctua NH-L12, Noctua NH-C12P and Noctua NH-C14S. In addition to the “Top Flow” coolers I added the monstrous Noctua NH-D15 which is the best in air cooling and will give a point of comparison. Likewise, the Scythe Ninja 4 which represents an excellent performance / silence / price / compatibility ratio is present.

What can we say about the performance of the Scythe Grand Kama Cross 3 except that it is excellent! We can see that its double radiator design works perfectly. With the fan supplied with 12V the processor drops to a small 50 °, once the PWM mode is activated it stagnates at 54 ° while in 5V it rises on the other hand to 75 °. The results in 5V are easily explained by seeing that the fan only turns at 400 RPM, suddenly the air flow is very low and the fact that there is a large enough space between the latter and the radiators. ‘Clearly not helping, on the other hand it is really not catastrophic since 75 ° is a completely acceptable temperature especially under OCCT.

Noise pollution

Warning: Part to be taken with a grain of salt, unfortunately not having access to the appropriate equipment and using an android application to take the readings The measurements below are only indicative! The readings were taken 15cm from the cooler. The ambient sound level recorded is 31 dB.

At least the Scythe Grand Kama Cross 3 is very quiet and it will not bother you too much, only a slight noise of the motor is heard when you stick your ear on it, nothing serious however because this noise disappears immediately after a times the ear to 20 cm. On the other hand, the fan will not be forgotten, it cannot be qualified as silent but only the circulated air is heard, there will be no engine noise or friction which is still to be noted. . The PWM mode is a real credit to the GlideStream with a sound level of 35dB, which will certainly be much lower than the noise of the other components under load, so will be really inaudible once in a tower.

Here we are at the end of this test, what to say about this Scythe Grand Kama Cross 3?
Scythe, which aims to make high-performance, silent and accessible coolers, once again did not miss the mark with our little test animal, while the finish was quite basic before the brand decided to enhance all this a little by putting nickel-plated heat pipes in place of the raw copper we were used to and hiding the ends of the latter in order to offer a product that clearly has a more upscale finish.

For a “top flow” cooler the performance is first rate in PWM or 12V, on the other hand you will have to be careful with the fan set to 5V because the air flow will perhaps not be sufficient enough to keep them cool. hottest processors. As usual with Scythe, noise is very contained, in 5V the fan is inaudible, in PWM it is very clearly silent (and will certainly be quieter than the other components of the PC) but in 12V it will be heard even if the absence of parasitic noise makes everything bearable. It goes without saying that the PWM mode is to be preferred, as the noise level at rest is low and contained under load.

Offered at a price of € 36.50 excluding VAT, it is clear that Scythe is once again signing an excellent cooler, combining performance and silence for a low price. If you are looking for a cooler for your gamer config and the “top flow” format is mandatory then the Grand Karma Cross 3 will offer the best performance / price ratio on the market.

Advantages

• Performance
• Noise
• Build quality
• Price

Disadvantages

• Can block the first PCIe slot

A big thank you to Scythe who allowed me to do this test.

Where to find the Scythe Grand Kama Cross 3?

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