INTRODUCTION

   October happens to be one of my favorite months of the year since it marks the beginning of winter the season which is very kind to most electrical and electronic devices out there. For me winter means i can perform tests a lot easier not only because low temperatures in the lab are always welcome (especially when testing coolers) but also because we can achieve higher and more stable overclocks compared to the much hotter summer season (at least without having to worry about turning the AC on). Of course the arrival of winter doesn't mean people should feel free to "neglect" getting proper cooling for their systems (house temperatures are never as low as the ones outside after all) so we haven't really stopped searching around to bring all of you reviews of the most intriguing CPU coolers to hit the market and today with us we have the latest offering by our old friends over at Scythe called the Mugen MAX (SCMGD-1000).

   Scythe Co., Ltd., (Registered and incorporated in Tokyo Japan) originally started its business operation in Japan's famous "Akihabara Electric Town" located in the metropolitan Tokyo, where visitors can find a variety of products from the latest computer parts to the world's most advanced high-tech electric devices. Scythe Co., Ltd., began its operation and business since November, 2002 as a distributor and the manufacturer of passive and low-noise PC parts. Since then, the company has established the R&D facility in Taiwan & China for production and quality control, and the USA office (in Los Angeles, California) & European office (in Hamburg, Germany) for customer care and sales support. At Scythe, we believe that the best ideas for product come simply from knowing customers' needs and their expectations. Based on this philosophy, the PC enthusiasts working at Scythe know what to develop because that is exactly what we would like to have for ourselves too! We offer products with 100% quality assurance and total pride, and if the product has the Scythe name on it, you can rest assure that its quality will be up to the "Zero Tolerance" standards!

   Scythe has been using the Mugen name for quite some time now so the MAX is not really the first CPU Cooler in their product line to bear that name (if i recall correctly including two revisions this must be the 7th) and what that obviously means is that they needed to design and manufacture something that could easily surpass all its predecessors. Well it's been a while since i last had a Mugen CPU Cooler in my hands but judging by the special design (both of the body and fins), large size (for a non-sandwich model) and bundled 140mm Glidestream fan we all believe that the Mugen MAX should be more than capable of doing so. On top of that Scythe has also re-designed the layout of the heatpipes to make certain that the cooler doesn't have any clearance issues with mainboard components and RAM modules and although i don't really expect that to apply for every single mainboard in the market still it's a good feature to have especially for a large model like the Mugen MAX. Enough with the introduction page however, time to see just how good the latest Mugen MAX CPU Cooler by Scythe really is.