Final Thoughts
As we mentioned at the beginning of this review there are not a whole lot of options for a low-profile air cooler these days. Scythe has put together a pretty good cooler in their Big Shuriken 3, although we would not recommend this cooler for someone who plans to do any type of overclocking. It is great for a small form factor or mini-ITX system that is not going to do a whole lot of heavy lifting.
It has been redesigned to not have any clearance issues with memory or motherboard I/O covers and it is quite easy to install. Our installation took less than 10 minutes. Also during idle operation the fan is really not that noticeable at all.
The downside is that the two other low-profile coolers we tested performed better than the Big Shuriken 3. Both the Reeven Brontes and Cryorig C7 Cu have better load results and both of them are actually smaller (Revven Brontes: 59 mm, Cyrorig C7 Cu: 47 mm). Sadly, both of these coolers are not available for purchase online anymore.
I wouldn’t say that the Big Shuriken 3 is a bad cooler, I would gladly throw it on a Core i5 or Ryzen 5 in a mini-ITX system, but there are better low-profile options out there if you can find them. Right now the Big Shuriken 3 is selling at our favorite online retailer for $46.99, which given performance we think should be a bit lower. Overall ThinkComputers gives the Scythe Big Shuriken 3 CPU cooler a 7 out of 10 score.
Pros:
– Easy to install
– Quiet operation during load
– No clearance issues
Cons:
– Outperformed by two other low-profile coolers
– Price is high based on performance
