Final Thoughts & Conclusion

Scythe's Katana II is only meant to be a mainstream CPU cooler, and not an enthusiast solution. This doesn't stop the Katana II from performing, however. During an hour-long test after giving the thermal grease a day to settle, the temperature of my Phenom 9500 never crossed the 60°C mark.

The only thing that marred this performance was the fact that the temperature rose a whopping 30° before settling just below 60°C. The case itself has suitable cooling, and previous heatsinks did the job of keeping the temperature down, however the previous heatsinks were enthusiast-level solutions.

Another fact to consider is that the Katana II was released well before AMD's Phenom processors, and doesn't list it on it's supported processors. Regardless of this, the Katana II does a reasonable job of keeping the CPU cooler.

Pros

• Quiet
• Fan is upgradeable
• Fan runs up to 1500RPM
• Unique design with tilted fins
• Keeps quad-core AMD CPU under 60°C

Cons

• Significant temperature increase before leveling off