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Maximum noise levels
In terms of maximum volume, both Scythe’s Big Shuriken 4 and Shuriken 3 had relatively low noise levels, measuring 39.6 and 40.3 dBA, respectively.
PBO Performance
Enabling PBO allows AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X to stretch its legs and guzzle power, but those legs won’t stretch very far with SFF cooling. Despite the limitations of a small heatsink, the Big Shuriken 4 is still able to handle 90% of this CPU’s default power limit in Cinebench R23.
The smaller Shuriken 3 doesn’t fare as well, dropping to 134W. But that’s kind of impressive, considering that cooler is about the size of a pack of cigarettes.
150W
For the next thermal test, I’ve set the power limit to 150W. This is about the highest power limit I would recommend for users considering the Big Shuriken 4 to keep their CPU under TJ Max, as the average temperature was measured at 79.5 degrees Celsius.
The smaller Shuriken 3 isn’t able to handle this workload, so it has been omitted from the results in this chart.
150W Noise measurements
Now, as the 150W thermal measurements demonstrated above are similar to what users might encounter in gaming scenarios, I’ve measured the noise levels of coolers in this benchmark to see how loud they get in everyday situations.
Scythe’s Big Shuriken 4 measured 39.3 dBA, a moderately low volume level.
100W thermal results
Our next test is the least-demanding benchmark featured in this review, with a workload that consumes only 100W. With this lower power limit in place, both of Scythe’s latest SFF coolers can handle the CPU with relative ease. Scythe’s Big Shuriken 4 reached a temperature of 62.7 degrees Celsius, only 5-6 degrees behind traditional single tower air coolers.
Noise-normalized testing
While the preceding results used the default fan curve of my MSI x870E Carbon motherboard, I understand many readers prefer data where cooler noise levels are equalized. For this review, two noise-normalized tests were conducted. The first test was run with Precision Boost Overdrive (PBO) active to allow for the highest possible power consumption.
Looking at this first round of results, what stands out to me is how little performance is lost when the CPU’s fans are set to 39.6 dBA and the system fans are reduced from 60% to 25% PWM.
The Big Shuriken 4 cooled 178.7W with fans set normally, but only lost 1.2W of cooling power – practically a margin of error difference when noise levels were lowered and standardized.
The other noise-normalized test we have for this review also stresses the CPU to its maximum, as above, but also adds the heat of a GPU to the mix – our MSI RTX 4070 Ti Super consumes ~295W.
Conclusion
Scythe’s Big Shuriken 4 is a worthwhile choice for builders targeting SFF systems. Its slim 67mm profile, combined with low-noise operation, delivers cooling performance superior to that of smaller SFF alternatives. It’s a compelling balance of price, performance, and size for any system where space is at a premium.
