be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 Review

The be quiet! Dark Rock Pro series of coolers have been around for a while and has seen small but very useful upgrades with each revision, the Dark Rock Pro 4 keeps this trend going. Performance wise there isn't really anything that separates the Dark Rock Pro 3 from the Dark Rock Pro 4, they're both rated at 250W TDP, both come with two fans and the same number of heat pipes. The £79.99 price tag is exactly the same as it's main rival, the Noctua DH-D15 so we expect performance to be similar, of course the be quiet! looks nicer than the Noctua because of the black ceramic coating and black fans. Speaking of the fans, they are Silent Wings 3 PWM edition with sizes of 120mm and 135mm, the smaller of the two being on the outside to help with RAM clearance. If you want to buy these fans separately they'd cost over £35, so we think you're getting a pretty good deal with the Dark Rock Pro 4.

Tech Specs

- Height – 162.8mm - TDP – 250w - Weight – 1130g - Socket Compatibility - LGA 1150 / 1151 / 1155 / 1156 / 1366 / 2011(-3) Square ILM / 2066, AM2(+) / AM3(+) / AM4 / FM1 / FM2(+) - Included Fan(s) – 1x Silent Wings 3 120mm, 1x Silent Wings 135mm

What’s in the box?

- be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 CPU Cooler - 1x Silent Wings 3 120mm, 1x Silent Wings 135mm - Mounting hardware for all above sockets - Mounting instructions - Warranty information - be quiet! cross head screwdriver

Mounting

The mounting is one of the main differences the Dark Rock Pro 4 has when compared to the Dark Rock Pro 3, and we're very grateful for this as the Dark Rock Pro 3 was a nightmare to install. be quiet! have managed to support all modern sockets with as little pieces as possible, which of course cuts down costs and makes the user experience better too. It is a basic installation process, something that we don't usually see with huge dual-tower coolers so it is evident that be quiet! have put a lot of time into developing this mounting system. One of the very nice features are the way you screw the cooler to the backplate assembly, there's two screws between the two heat sinks that normally would be very hard to get to, but the two heat pipe caps nearer to the middle of the cooler are actually fake and can be unscrewed, this reveals cutouts directly above where the cooler screws to the backplate assembly so you can easily access it, they even include a screwdriver that is the perfect length for this! Unfortunately the mounting isn't all good, the method that be quiet! use to mount the fans to the cooler is pretty terrible. They do use the wire mounting method that many other coolers use, however they have such a small amount of slack they end up being way too tight which makes it almost impossible to install without damaging the ceramic coating or bending the heatsink fins.

Aesthetic

The Dark Rock Pro 4 is a very very good looking cooler, in my opinion it's the best looking dual-tower design cooler you can buy. The cooler comes with a black coating on all of the fins which helps with it's good looks, now this coating looks like it would negatively affect performance but it actually does the complete opposite, this coating contains specially developed ceramic particles that aid in the exchange of heat from the aluminium fin to the air, something really clever that be quiet! have developed! We really like the top plate on the Dark Rock Pro 4 as it has a few different things that improve the look of the cooler, the first being the top plate itself which is a nice black brushed aluminium piece that covers the heatsinks perfectly. There are also heatpipe caps mounted to this plate, this really improves the look of the coolers too. Finally, instead of having holes to fit a screwdriver through the plate in order to mount the cooler, there are cleverly designed covers that look the same as the heatpipe caps that simply screw out allowing for easy installation. The fans only add to the great looks of the Dark Rock Pro 4, the all black design with the simple be quiet! logo complement the colours of the rest of the cooler, the fan cables are also braided with black connectors to keep with the stealthy black aesthetic.

Performance

Performance is an area that the be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 really does well in, maybe even better than the "aesthetics" area. We tested the be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 against all of our other air coolers, with the main competitor being the similarly priced Noctua NH-D15. These are the specs we used on our test system:

Test System Specs

- Processor - Intel i7 8700k - Case - CoolerMaster H500P - RAM - Corsair Vengeance DDR4 16GB 3000Mhz (2x8) - Motherboard - Asus Rog Strix Z370-F - SSD - Samsung 860 EVO 250GB - PSU - Corsair RM750x - GPU - EVGA GTX 1050Ti We performed different tests using different pieces of software for a broad range of results. The software used for stress testing was 3DMark Time Spy CPU Test, Prime95 with the Blend preset and AIDA64 CPU+FPU which really tests the CPU Cooler to it's limits. Temperatures were logged using AIDA64's temperature logging function. Both of the tests were ran and both stock voltages and clock speeds, and overclocked at 5.0GHz with 1.35V, in the results anything marked "OC" uses these settings. All of these tests were performed in out climate controlled test room at a constant 21°C. All fan speeds were set to normal in the BIOS, which worked fine and none of the coolers we tested had excessive noise levels. The graph below shows they average temperature over a 20 minute stress test using Prime95's blend preset. This test was by far the best at showing the performance of these air coolers visually due to the range being much higher than other tests. After performing all of our tests the be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 we determined that the Dark Rock Pro 4 wasn't only about the good looks, it's a very good performer as well! When comparing it to the Noctua NH-D15 on the graph above, well, there isn't anything at all between them on either of the stock or OC tests, we knew these two would be close but nobody was expecting them to be this close!

Conclusion

This really is the best all round air cooler, you get exceptional performance, great aesthetics and a pretty good mounting system all bundled up in a nice package from a reputable brand. It is very comparable to Noctua's dual tower cooler option, the NH-D15 in both performance and price, they actually share the exact same numbers in both of those categories! If it were my choice, I'd go with the be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 over the NH-D15 simply due to the looks, even considering the not to great mounting system.