be quiet! Dark Rock 4 review - Core i7 4790K Baseline test

Testing The Cooler

Time to test. Today's tested cooler will work absolutely great with any processor from low to high-end (Core i3/Core i5/Core i7 quad-core and even six-core including up-to 130W) at default operating frequencies, of course, there's room left for overclocking as well. We have built a new test system policy for cooling benchmarks.  Let's have a look at the results for the system in its default non-overclocked state. Below, the IDLE temperatures, thus your processor is doing barely anything to nothing. Just sitting and waiting in your system.

If you have a look at the chart above you can see the processor LOAD temperatures (in the non-overclocked state). We measure in a 21 Degrees C ambient room temperature. Ambient temperatures do affect the cooling performance, albeit a little bit.

We note down the hottest measured CPU package temperature. 

Guru3D's rule of thumb on CPU load vs cooling temps:

• Anything up-to to roughly 50 Degrees C or lower we consider enthusiast class cooling
• Anything in-between 51 to 60 Degrees C we consider performance cooling
• Anything in-between 61 to 70 Degrees C we consider mainstream cooling
• Anything above 71 Degrees C we consider average cooling

This cooler offers mainstream cooling. On the next page, we'll show you how silent (acoustics) the unit really is.