Scythe Mugen MAX

While we rarely review cooling products at Phoronix in the past few years given that there's really nothing related to Linux compatibility or performance about them, I obliged to Scythe as the Mugen MAX seemed like an interesting heatsink for keeping some of our high-power systems cooler over the summer months.

For testing the Mugen MAX I ended up installing the heatsink on three different Intel LGA-2011 motherboards:

- At first I used it for the Intel i7-5960X build when using the MSI X99S SLI PLUS motherboard, but that's the board that caught fire.

- After the failed X99 motherboard, I installed it on the Gigabyte X99-UD4 motherboard and that worked great! The Mugen MAX didn't appear to run into any issues cooling Intel's high-end Haswell-E processor!

- The only problem with the second setup was that when it came time to run the thermal tests, the Linux kernel used didn't support the i7-5960X for reading its core temperature... So I ended up dropping back to an older X79 + i7-4960X combination where thermal readings were working right under Linux.

While at first installing the Mugen MAX seemed a bit tedious, it's that way since Scythe tries to make this CPU cooler be universal rather than bound to just a subset of the CPU sockets still out there. After installing the Mugen MAX the first time, it became a very quick and easy process and in carrying it out a second and third time (now a fourth time after moving it back to the i7-5960X system), I really don't mind its setup process and was very straightforward with the LGA-2011 configuration.

When cooling the Core i7 4960X and Core i7 5960X, the Scythe Mugen Max was working out great in both cases. I had no complaints or concerns about cooling these very expensive, high-end heatsinks with this air cooler that was providing superior performance.