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I was looking up some HSF and as usual went on Scythe's site to see what they have. To my surprise I was greeted with this:

To Customers and Users
Scythe USA Inc. has been a supplier of Scythe products for the past several years. In November 2012, Scythe USA had to make a difficult decision to end its operations as a result of the closure of its parent company. We greatly appreciate your business and support over the years.

Sincerely,

Masahiro Sakai

CEO

A further search came up with this blog entry. So what does this mean? No more Scythe products in the USA? Will there still be imports? What will happen to prices? Will other vendors step up and give us equivalent products?

Crikey. I've bought a fair number of Scythe fans over the years. They were my go-to for fans between 3-5 years ago because they were reasonably priced but good quality, especially FDB bearing fans, and I haven't had to buy any fans since then. Now that I think about it, both my main PC and storage server have Scythe CPU heatsinks too.

Scythe Japan is still going though, so they weren't the parent company...Scythe USA was a distributor then? I'd like to know more about the corporate structure. There might be a new US distributor at some time I hope, but otherwise it's yet another case of the Japanese keeping all their cool stuff to themselves

That's too bad. I hope another supplier comes along. I've owned numerous Scythe fans and a couple of their heatsinks too. Always worked well for me. I especially appreciated their Shuriken series, great performance given the small size, low noise and reasonable price.

Farewell, Japanese coolers. Looks like Korean monitors finally won.

Washer wrote:

That's too bad. I hope another supplier comes along. I've owned numerous Scythe fans and a couple of their heatsinks too. Always worked well for me. I especially appreciated their Shuriken series, great performance given the small size, low noise and reasonable price.

That's exactly what I was looking at, a LP HSF with good cooling, plus a Slipstream fan to possibly replace my relatively loud 120mm one on the Hyper 212+. I do hope another supplier can step up. Looking at Scythe Japan's website they have a lot of goodies available that we DIY geeks will love to get our hands on.

Time to stock up on fans, the Kama flow2 900rpm is a great fan, low noise, low starting voltage.

GAH!!! Out of stock at NCIX !!!!!!

edit - discontinued at newegg, dammit, I wish I found out about this a lot earlier......sigh.

This makes me sad.

When I needed a new fan, I went straight to Scythe. Although I've lately been having my eye on those Noctura's...

R.I.P. Scythe USA. Ninja, Ninja 2, Ninja Mini, and a bunch of random fans. Thanks for the good times.

I always had a soft spot for my old ridiculous sized Scythe Infinity.

Sargent Duck wrote:

This makes me sad.

When I needed a new fan, I went straight to Scythe. Although I've lately been having my eye on those Noctura's...

Look into Noiseblocker, they are a German fan company. I went out on a limb and replaced one of my fans (Scythe actually) with one....and was pleasantly suprised. A bit pricy (but if you are looking at Noctura's you are already lookign at pricey) and quiet with high quality components. Just a thought!

No more Gentle Typhoons?

No more S-Flex FDB fans?

I am sad. These two were tops for my various needs; nobody could touch them for quality. The Gentle Typhoons are an especially good design. I hope someone continues to source them from Scythe Japan.

This was announced back on the tenth of September? Talk about falling through the cracks...

As a number of folks already have mentioned themselves, they were also my primary go-to company for reasonably priced, good performing coolers (Ninjas, Mugen 2) and fans (Slipstreams and S-Flexes).

I suppose it's a tribute to the quality of their products that I'm so out of the loop whose fans/coolers I would need to look at if I were to ever need/want replacements... I haven't needed to replace anything for quite some time.

Doh! Noooooooo!!

Then again... I don't think it makes sense for me to stock up on these til I need them. Probably makes more sense to buy whatever's available when I do upgrade again. *sigh*

Resisting some Gentle Typhoons is hard, tho...

continuum wrote:

Doh! Noooooooo!!

Then again... I don't think it makes sense for me to stock up on these til I need them. Probably makes more sense to buy whatever's available when I do upgrade again. *sigh*

Resisting some Gentle Typhoons is hard, tho...

Goodluck, they are pretty much out of stock anyway now.

LoneWolf15 wrote:

No more Gentle Typhoons?

No more S-Flex FDB fans?

I am sad. These two were tops for my various needs; nobody could touch them for quality. The Gentle Typhoons are an especially good design. I hope someone continues to source them from Scythe Japan.

Gentle Typhoons were rebadges or licensed production of some Nidec Servo fans anyway...someone else could come out with them pretty easily if they wanted to.

Good design, serious QC issues.

I once ordered 18 of their Shuriken Rev.B coolers and ended up replacing all 18 fans.
ALL OF THEM. I Googled, and it wasn't just me. If that was revision B, I'd hate to have seen revision A.

Chrispy_ wrote:

Good design, serious QC issues.

I once ordered 18 of their Shuriken Rev.B coolers and ended up replacing all 18 fans.
ALL OF THEM. I Googled, and it wasn't just me. If that was revision B, I'd hate to have seen revision A.

'B' does not necessarily stand for 'Better'...

This does not sadden me. Scythes products have been very hit or miss. Just because it said Scythe on the box didn't mean you had something top notch.

I'm sad to see them go...but at the same time my Scythe fan controller bit the dust when only running low-wattage fans (<10 watts per channel). Left a sour taste in my mouth for the company ever since.

To me, they seem to have products that are quiet enough but with good cfm. The S-Flex and Slipstream fans were great. And it is not as expensive and as unavailable (I mean lack of stores selling them) Noctua or even Noiseblocker. What happened to the Panaflos anyway?

Flying Fox wrote:

to possibly replace my relatively loud 120mm one on the Hyper 212+.

I've been thinking of doing exactly this, as that is the only fan I can hear if I try (my case fans -- NZXTs -- are all silent). Interested in whatever you end up picking, should you do so, or at least what you're considering now that Scythe isn't an option.

flip-mode wrote:

This does not sadden me. Scythes products have been very hit or miss. Just because it said Scythe on the box didn't mean you had something top notch.

Yes, Scythe products are hit and miss. But I don't know a single company who your last sentence is true. Scythe USA also offered products like the S-FLEX model of fans and several of their heatsink lines that were unmatched when you considered their performance for their price.

UberGerbil wrote:

Flying Fox wrote:

to possibly replace my relatively loud 120mm one on the Hyper 212+.

I've been thinking of doing exactly this, as that is the only fan I can hear if I try (my case fans -- NZXTs -- are all silent). Interested in whatever you end up picking, should you do so, or at least what you're considering now that Scythe isn't an option.

I had my eye on the Slipstream medium speed model, which gives similar airflow with almost 8dBA lower noise.

Washer wrote:

flip-mode wrote:

This does not sadden me. Scythes products have been very hit or miss. Just because it said Scythe on the box didn't mean you had something top notch.

Yes, Scythe products are hit and miss. But I don't know a single company who your last sentence is true.

I nominate Noctua.

Flying Fox wrote:

UberGerbil wrote:

Flying Fox wrote:

to possibly replace my relatively loud 120mm one on the Hyper 212+.

I've been thinking of doing exactly this, as that is the only fan I can hear if I try (my case fans -- NZXTs -- are all silent). Interested in whatever you end up picking, should you do so, or at least what you're considering now that Scythe isn't an option.

I had my eye on the Slipstream medium speed model, which gives similar airflow with almost 8dBA lower noise.

I was pretty unhappy with the fan that shipped with the Hyper 212 EVO. Replaced it with a Noctua fan. I'm happy with the Noctua fan.

flip-mode wrote:

I was pretty unhappy with the fan that shipped with the Hyper 212 EVO. Replaced it with a Noctua fan. I'm happy with the Noctua fan.

Which Noctua fan? The PWM 120mm one, or one of the others?

UberGerbil wrote:

flip-mode wrote:

I was pretty unhappy with the fan that shipped with the Hyper 212 EVO. Replaced it with a Noctua fan. I'm happy with the Noctua fan.

Which Noctua fan? The PWM 120mm one, or one of the others?

The model I have is the NF-P12.

I have the same noctua fans, when plugged into my gigabyte mobo with fan speed control enabled, they would not spin up due. The kama2 900rpm fans have no issue starting at that low voltage.

Hopefully Noctua works on the starting voltage for their fans, I have 4 of them collecting dust

anotherengineer wrote:

I have the same noctua fans, when plugged into my gigabyte mobo with fan speed control enabled, they would not spin up due. The kama2 900rpm fans have no issue starting at that low voltage.

Hopefully Noctua works on the starting voltage for their fans, I have 4 of them collecting dust

I have them plugged into my Gigabyte mobo with fan speed control enabled (not as nice as Asus' fan speed controls, of course) and they spin up fine. The fans do come with two different resistors for setting the fan's speed in the absence of BIOS controls, and you should definitely make sure that you're not using one of the resistors and BIOS control at the same time. I made that mistake. Honestly, I don't know how long it took me to realize that my HSF was not spinning, but one day I opened the case and put my hand on the Hyper 212 Evo and it was SCALDING hot - the ENTIRE heatsink. I'm really surprised my computer neither shut down or cook itself, because it was that hot. Anyway, I took of the resistor and let my BIOS do the work and everything works fine. I think

flip-mode wrote:

I nominate Noctua.

I would disagree. Not every Noctua product is great, some are merely good and other's very average (especially with price in consideration). You can spend as much for a full heatsink + fan assembly that's 95% of a Noctua for the price of some of their fans.

MadManOriginal wrote:

LoneWolf15 wrote:

No more Gentle Typhoons?

No more S-Flex FDB fans?

I am sad. These two were tops for my various needs; nobody could touch them for quality. The Gentle Typhoons are an especially good design. I hope someone continues to source them from Scythe Japan.

Gentle Typhoons were rebadges or licensed production of some Nidec Servo fans anyway...someone else could come out with them pretty easily if they wanted to.

It doesn't mean they will, though.

I agree with others that not all Scythe products are good. I chose Lamptron for my fan controller as I heard a lot of negative things about Scythe's quality control, and my Lamptron has been great. However, those two lines of fans were the best 120mm models I could get my hands on. I'm glad they last a long time; I have Gentle Typhoons and S-Flex fans in my desktop (Typhoons for case fans, S-Flex as push/pull for my Thermalright TRUE Black heatsink), and S-Flex fans in the wife's case (much better than the Lian Li fans that came with it). Combination of good airflow, low noise, and long-life bearings.

I especially hope that someone markets the Nidec fans again; I thought the blade design was nicely done, and the fans are well-balanced and just last.