Be Quiet Dark Rock TF Review: Setting the Silent Cooling Standard
Final Thoughts about the BeQuiet Dark Rock TF
Just like what most users have come to expect from Be Quiet coolers, the Dark Rock TF is forged with high-quality materials and has a unique and modern design worthy of a premium label. The simple addition of a custom cap at the top adds a lot of character to the heatsink and separates it from regular air coolers. The unique two-stage G-type heatpipe arrangement cleverly gets around potential clearance issues while allowing double fan mounting. While it is a lot taller than most C-type coolers, it is also significantly better performing especially when the noise-performance ratio is factored in.
The choice of a non-standard fan mounting will unfortunately limit fan replacement options to purely Be Quiet fans unless the fan clips are modified. Also, the Be Quiet mounting system is much more complicated than most, thankfully for non-reviewers, this is something they only need to do once. One big advantage that the Be Quiet mounting system provide that most don’t is support for older sockets such as LGA1366 and LGA775 and even more exotic AMD mounting types beyond the standard AM3/FM2.
Be Quiet’s fans definitely live up to the name and are easily the most silent with a very smooth sound profile as it traverses through RPM changes via PWM. It can be set as low as 300RPM but by 800RPM, most consumer-end SPL meters would not be able to distinguish it from ambient silent room noise. This was in an open air environment so when paired with a decently dampened enclosure, users can easily set the RPM higher or simply leave it in PWM mode and have an impressively silent system. This is useful for those looking to build a home media center or an audio recording PC. You might not hear it running but you can definitely see the impact the Dark Rock TF does to your CPU thermal levels.
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