Verdict: Nowhere near as impressive as two katanas.
With impressively named CPU coolers such as Ninja, Katana and Andy Samurai Master, Scythe seems to have a healthy obsession with Japanese tradition as well as the Grim Reaper's favourite harvesting tool. The Katana 2 doesn't refer to the fashion of wearing two katana swords during the Muromachi period though - it's merely an update to the Scythe Katana.
The Katana 2 retains the design of the original Katana: three heatpipes branch out of the copper contact plate, and the heat is then spread over a bank of thin aluminium fins angled towards the motherboard. This heat is then dissipated by a 1,500rpm, 100mm fan, which Scythe rates as producing 22dBA. This is 3dBA quieter than the already quiet Katana, and when in use, the Katana 2 is very quiet.
The Katana 2 has fixing mechanisms for LGA775, AM2 and older sockets, and the effectiveness of the cooler depends on the socket you use. In our LGA775 thermal test rig, the Katana 2 kept our overclocked quad-core Xeon X3210 cool enough to complete our Folding@home torture test, although our CPU became 4C hotter than it did with the reference Intel heatsink. Unless you want quiet operation over cooling ability, there's little point in using the Katana 2 with an overvolted Intel chip.
The Katana 2 was less effective in our AM2 rig. The clip-on retention bracket, while easy to fit, didn't clamp the contact plate to the CPU heatspreader tightly enough, so our overvolted test CPU quickly reached its thermal shutdown limit.
Conclusion
There are much better HSFs than the Katana 2 available at the moment. Scythe's own Infinity is excellent for AM2 CPUs and costs just £30, while our old favourite, the Arctic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro is great for LGA775 processors, especially as it costs around £15.
