be quiet! Dark Rock 4 review

Cooling 189 Page 10 of 10 Published by

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Final words and conclusion

Final words and conclusion

The new Dark Rock 4 cooler offers a very nice combination of proper aesthetics, fantastic acoustics while offering very reasonable cooling performance as well. These units are aimed at the folks that need pure silence acoustics wise, do not expect an overclocking capable beast, albeit it still is a very capable unit. I would say it the target demographic processors are the ones not overclocked too far and if you stick to that concept, any modern age quad-core or six-core proc will be cooled to decent values with this cooler. And the best part is this, it does so that completely silent. And me personally, I like it very much.

Aesthetics

The reason I like the Dark Rock this much has a lot to do with its all dark looks, the coated fins, the dark black top cover, even the heatpipes received that dark treatment, and then sure, the fan is dark as well. Most motherboards these days are all based on a black PCB, ergo this is a cooler that matches. Nice to see is that all cabling is sleeved black with a black connector to top it off. The powder coating is fragile though, if you'd grab a coin and move it over the fins, you'd see the paint fall off exposing the alu. So during installation be wary about this, and thus be careful. Small damaged parts can easily be fixed with a black marker. 



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Cooling performance

The cooler certainly performed good enough, we do need to mention that we armed our test system (deliberately) with the still difficult to cool Core i7 4790K, on purpose. The default clock frequency performance is good, nothing more, nothing less. Overclocking based on voltage normally with a CPU like this is ill-advised. With our 4790K processor at 1.3 Volts/4600 MHz heat jumped to 77 Degrees C, high, but that is still okay and thus this cooler allows for a mild tweak. The TDP and heat signature of this proc is similar to modern age six-core Coffee lake processors. And AMD Ryzen simply will not be an issue as these CPUs run even cooler overall.

Acoustics

The Dark Rock 4 is fabulous with its low acoustic levels, at defaults (not overclocked), this is an incredible silent product, on our ASUS Sabertooth we simply leave the default fan profile for what it is, and yeah we reached 30~31 DBa under full processor load, even up-to 1.30 Volts (tweaked) the noise levels remain extremely low, after 1.35v we don't have little cooling performance left. So really this is an all silent product, but at default clock frequencies is continuously what I need to say and recommend here.
 

Pricing

The kit as tested today will cost roughly 69 USD / Euro, obviously, you will not reach the 'enthusiast' segment of cooling. be quiet! does offer its 3-year manufacturer’s warranty. 



Guru3d-recommended

Final Words

There is a certain charm and appeal to the Dark Rock 4 thanks to it's intricately designed black looks. I like it, and I know a lot of you will have a similar feeling. The cooling performance can be rated as very adequate, it, however, remains a single fan heatpipe cooler so the higher you go in extreme tweaking on the processor, the faster you will run out of cooling capacity, it comes with the territory of this technology. For usage with a small tweak, this cooler is golden though, the looks and low acoustics are phenomenal. Also worth noting is that the installation has become much easier thanks towards a new mounting system. All modern age processors and sockets are supported, including AM4 for AMD. However, SP3 Threadripper is not supported. The be quiet! Dark Rock 4 is intended for the guys and girls that really hate noise, really this is one of the most silent coolers we have tested ever. It does so while keeping the Core i7 4790K we used at acceptable temperature levels as long as we do not overclock it too much, you are totally fine. The trade-off with the smaller form factor and relative average performance is an incredibly low noise level, you'll be hard-pressed to be able to even hear noise coming from this puppy. Cool looks come at a price, and that is roughly 69 bucks. This product ticks the right boxes for the audiophiles and design aficionados. Combined with the very decent cooling performance we can surely recommend the Dark Rock 4.

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