Out of the box, the Scythe Choten TUF is set to go with the fan pre-attached. As such, you have a nice strong presentation. The first thing you will undoubtedly note, however, is its unusual design. Specifically that the radiator is fitted parallel with the mounting plate.
This design provides the radiator with the rather strange design of being quite a significant distance away from the processor itself. With the 8 cooling pipes, however, this should hopefully translate into some positive temperature control and decent airflow.
The fan itself provides excellent covertage of the cooler with the 120mm design actually sitting slightly taller than the radiator itself. This provides an exceptionally large amount of the fan providing direct airflow to the radiator. The design choice to vent towards the base is, as well, probably the smart decision.
The radiator itself is perhaps just as unusual as the design as a ‘criss-cross’ effect with the vents have been applied. In addition, as you can see in the picture below, there are various recesses to allow for the vent intakes. Just on an aesthetic level though, this design is exceptionally complicated and some credit should go to Scythe for clearly executing it well.
Speaking of aesthetics, both the fan and the radiator have a number of nice styling choices. The branding is solid, but subtle enough to not detract from the design. In addition, the white line design (which is used on the packaging) provides a particularly nice highlight to the metal on the radiator.
The contact plate is nice and large and amazingly shiny. With the 8 large pipes leading away to the radiator, this should hopefully translate into some amazing performance. Even for a cooler as small as this.
In terms of the design, as weird and wonderful as this is, I find myself strangely attracted to it. I have absolutely no idea why, but I really like the styling of this cooler. It will, therefore, be curious to see if it can impress me just as much in testing as in does out of the box!
The Scythe Choten TUF comes with RGB lighting to the fan. Running this, however, requires a sync capable port on your motherboard or RGB hub. In other words, there is no manual controller or SATA power source. If you want the RGB, you have to have the sync port. When the lights are on though, the effects are quite nice. There is something of a contrast as the fans are significantly more vivid than the top of the cooler, but on the whole, the colour range is nice, varied and bright. Everything you want from RGB.
A particular highlight is the upright design which puts the RGB fan efforts on full display!
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