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We’re going to start this review’s benchmark section by focusing on a traditional maximum performance test, with the CPU cooler’s fans allowed to reach their fastest speeds, for the best cooling possible.
Turning on PBO allows AMD’s Ryzen 9 9950X3D to stretch its legs to an extent and consume over 260W. Enabling PBO enables high power consumption and heat output, when using MSI’s X870E Carbon Wifi motherboard the CPU will reach its TJ Max (peak temperature) of 95 degrees C (203 F) and thermally throttle to some extent with most coolers. When this throttling occurs, I’ve measured the average power consumption to determine performance.
You’ll notice there are two results for Scythe’s Magoroku here. The first result is with an intake fan above our test rig’s TeamGroup DDR5 (as Scythe suggests); the second result is with that fan placed on the back above the motherboard’s VRM modules. As you can see, it’s better to move the front fan to the back if your system incorporates tall RAM modules. That said, neither result is particularly impressive. These are the worst results we’ve seen on our latest test bench.
Some coolers perform well in maximum strength tests, but run loudly at full speeds. Noisy fans in this scenario aren’t necessarily a bad thing; some prefer to hear them as a way to be aware when the CPU is getting hot. Scythe’s Magoroku has a maximum volume level of 43.4 dBA, which is on the quieter end of the fan noise spectrum.
200W thermal benchmarks
For the next thermal test, I leave the motherboard settings at their defaults, which results in a power limit of 200W when running Cinebench R23. The results here are slightly better than the last test, but not by much. The Scythe was the second-warmest cooler we’ve seen on this test bench.
150W + GPU thermal results
Our next test runs Cinebench on the CPU with a 150W power limit, while also running Furmark on MSI’s RTX 4070 Ti Super Ventus 3x OC. This causes the GPU to consume ~295W of power. This test is designed to emulate the thermals of games, which primarily stress the CPU and GPU.
We’ve got another fairly disappointing result here, with a CPU temperature of 69.9C (47.9C over ambient) – the thermal performance is again in last place. Noise levels in our 150W CPU thermal test were acceptable, though, reaching 39.6 dBA.
It’s worth pointing out that some games are more intensive than this test above. While playing Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, I regularly noticed temperatures reaching near TJ Max. This is a bit concerning.
Noise-normalized testing
Most testing is performed with the cooler tied to the default fan curve of our MSI X870E Carbon motherboard, but some of y’all prefer to see tests when the noise levels of coolers are equalized. This is especially important to those of you who prefer silent computers. This next test has the CPU cooler noise-normalized to 38.9 dBA, with PBO enabled for the Ryzen 9 9950X3D CPU.
This test is especially difficult because, in addition to the reduced noise from the CPU cooler, our current test bench’s system fans are configured to run extremely silently, below the floor of the noise meter I use to measure dBA.
Most coolers, particularly air coolers, can’t keep the CPU from reaching its peak temperature (TJ Max) in this stress test. We’ll look at this in terms of power consumption, which averaged 228.7 watts. I wish I could say more positive things about this cooler’s thermal performance, but it just doesn’t seem to perform very well with an AMD Ryzen 9950X3D CPU.
Karhu DDR5 RAM thermals testing
Your CPU cooler does not operate in isolation. It has an impact on not just your CPU’s temperatures, but also the other components in your build, like your RAM and GPU. To that end, I’ve run the Karhu RAM stress test. This places a load of ~153W on the CPU and ensures system RAM (DDR5 in my case) is fully stable. In this type of scenario, most AIOs tend to produce worse results than air coolers.
While the rest of our test results weren’t very impressive, Scythe’s Magoroku performed well when it came to keeping system DDR5 temperatures under control, measuring at an average of 43C (21C over ambient), tied for our second-place result in this benchmark if you don’t count Silverstone’s AIO with extra VRM fans.
Conclusion
Scythe’s Magoroku is a nice-looking cooler with moderately low noise levels. But most of our thermal results were underwhelming with our AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D test bench. The exception to this was DDR5 RAM temperatures, which were impressive. If you’re looking for a low-noise air cooler that effectively cools your system memory, you might be happy with this product.
Perhaps this cooler performs better on Intel systems, but for AMD users, I’d instead recommend Thermalright’s Royal Pretor 130 at this price point.
