The Katana 2 features a pre-mounted 100mm fan. This fan is held on by a single metal retention clip at the bottom. This allows mounting of different sized fans that feature a 25mm thickness. One unique feature of the Scythe Katana 2 heatsink is that the fins are angled downwards from front to back. This forces the air flow down around the motherboard components.
From the side, you can see that the Katana 2 has a fairly slim build and a medium/high height. With the angle of the fins, you can see that the three heatpipes scale down in length as you follow the fins downward.
At the top of the Katana 2 you will find that each heatpipe is capped off with a hex-nut. These give the cooler a very beefy look. Each aluminum fin is embossed with the Scythe logo; a very nice touch.
At the bottom of the cooler is a copper base protected by a plastic film that will need to be removed before installation. This base is comprised of a copper bottom and an aluminum top piece which sandwich the three copper heatpipes between them. This combination allows for quick extraction of heat from the processor and transfers this heat to the heatpipes to be cooled by the aluminum fins.
The copper base has been milled and polished very smooth. No ripples or machine marks were felt when our figure nail passed over the surface. An interesting note is that the exclamation mark that was on the protective film was bleached onto the copper base. Though there was no residue left by the film, this is an odd occurrence for sure!
Installation of the mounting harnesses to the Scythe Katana 2 cooler is as simple as screwing down four screws through the harness; mounting the cooler in any of the four positions. For our testing, we preferred the fan pushing the air through the cooler and out the top exhaust fans of our P190 case so our mounting of the harness was parallel with the airflow.
