be quiet! Shadow Rock TF 2 Review

The be quiet! Shadow Rock TF 2 is of course the successor to the original Shadow Rock TopFlow air cooler. Essentially, it is a new low-profile cooler from the German company aimed at those with who don't want to compromise on cooling despite owning a ITX or SFF case. But is it worth £59.99? Clearly, the most interesting thing about the be quiet! Shadow Rock TF 2 is its size, but all is not as you might expect. This is because other low-profile coolers we have seen previously, like the Cryorig C7, have been tiny - the C7 measures just 47mm high, for instance - but the TF 2 actually comes in at 112mm tall. For me, this puts it in a sort of in-between area, as it is not quite 'low-profile' but nor is it a standard air tower cooler. It is certainly an interesting product so let's dive right into the review. Specification Cooler: Type of cooler: Shadow Rock TF 2 Model number: BK003 Warranty: 3 Years Dimensions, incl. fan (L x W x H in mm): 137 x 165 x 112 Weight, incl. fan (g): 680 Heat sink material: Aluminium Socket compatibility: Intel®: 775 / 1366 / 1150 / 1151 / 1155 / 1156 / 2011(-3) Square ILM. AMD: AM2(+) / AM3(+) / AM4 / FM1 / FM2(+) Maximum power capacity (W TDP): 160 Number of heat pipes / diameter (mm): 5 / 6 Noise level (dB(A)) @ 50 / 75 / 100%: 11.9 / 19.3 / 24.4 Fan: Fan dimension (mm): 135 x 135 x 22 Fan motor technology: 4-pole Bearing type: Rifle Fan speed (rpm) @ 100% PWM: 1,400 Noise level (dB(A)) @ 2,000rpm: 20.8 Airflow (cfm ; m3/h): 67.8 ; 113.8 Air pressure (mm / H2O): 2.1 Input current (A): 0.11 Connector: 4-pin PWM Lifespan (h): 80,000 Type of cooler: Shadow Rock TF 2 Model number: BK003 Warranty: 3 Years Dimensions, incl. fan (L x W x H in mm): 137 x 165 x 112 Weight, incl. fan (g): 680 Heat sink material: Aluminium The be quiet! Shadow Rock TF 2 ships in a very dark box - in classic be quiet! style - without a product photo on the front. Inside, the installation hardware is neatly packaged into separate and labelled bags, so be quiet! is already doing well here. The installation manual is also excellent - it is particularly helpful that each individual part that is being referred to is highlighted in orange so you know exactly which bit you need for each step. Other than that, there is just the cooler itself. As I mentioned previously, its size is very interesting as it measures 137 x 165 x 112mm (L x W x H) including the fan. Rather than something like the Cryorig C7, which sits directly on-top of the motherboard's socket and CPU area, the TF 2 is designed to over-hang your RAM, so if you have particularly tall DIMMs (over 48.5mm) , that could be an issue. The fan is also worth touching on as it is actually 135mm in size, and rather than being the usual 25mm in height be quiet! has managed to shave 3mm off that to get it down to 22mm. I suppose every millimetre helps with a cooler like this. Lastly, be quiet! does not classify the fan as a Silent Wings/Pure Wings fan, but it is clearly similar so we can expect good performance from it here. Here I will walk you through the installation process. It is worth noting we test using a Z97 motherboard – socket LGA 1150. The process below reflects that. The first thing to do is attach the backplate. Place it over the motherboard socket holes and push the four longer screws through the holes. Next, flipping the motherboard over, you should see the four screws poking through. To keep those screws in-place, attach a small black clip to each screw (as pictured). With that done, we can our turn our attention to the cooler's mounting arms. Here, a thicker screw gets pushed through on one side and is secured on the other side with a hexagonal nut. be quiet! even provides the required spanner to tighten the nut down. Once the arms are ready, they can be screwed onto the cooler's base. With that done, go ahead an mount the cooler on-top of the CPU. The four screws should align with the four mounting arms. To secure the cooler, though, you will need to turn the motherboard over and use a screwdriver to tighten those backplate screws into the cooler's mounting arms. This is a bit tricky and fiddly, and my recommendation is to to turn the motherboard on its side and secure one screw first and then you can turn the motherboard over and finish the rest. After that, the installation process is complete, and the finished article should look something like the above. You might just be able to see that my 2 Corsair Vengeance Pro DIMMs (at 44mm tall) fit just fine, too. All-in-all, though, I do feel that the overall installation process is a bit fiddly and potentially long-winded. The whole process took me about 10 minutes which isn't overly long, but other coolers can be installed faster. I also think beginners may want to look at a simpler cooler to install if they were looking at this one, as the whole process of turning the motherboard over is not ideal.To test all CPU coolers, we devised an easily repeatable test with no variables other than the coolers themselves. This ensures that figures from every cooler we test are comparable with each other. Test rig Using an open-air test bench, we deploy an Intel Core i7-4790K plugged into a Gigabyte Z97X-SOC Force motherboard. Alongside this is 16GB of 2400MHz Corsair Vengeance DDR3, as well as a 120GB OCZ Trion 150 SSD. Powering everything is a Corsair RM750x PSU. The test process Testing coolers involves taking a total of 4 temperature readings per cooler. First, we measure the idle temperature of the i7-4790K at stock speeds (turbo boost disabled), before measuring its temperature under load at stock speeds. Next, we overclock the CPU to 4.5GHz using a 1.3 Vcore, ensuring greater heat output. In its overclocked state we then measure the idle and load temperatures of the CPU again. The figures we present are temperature deltas – meaning we take each temperature reading and minus the ambient temperature from it. This allows us to test in an environment that is not temperature-controlled. To ward off potential comments or questions, we know 4.5GHz using a 1.3 Vcore is not the ‘best’ overclock – this particular CPU could reach that frequency at closer to 1.25 on the Vcore, which is more efficient. That is not the point, however. We are trying to stress the coolers to see how they deal with excess heat … hence the higher than necessary Vcore. Where possible, each cooler’s fans are plugged directly into the motherboard using the CPU_Fan or CPU_Opt headers. Some AIOs, however, ship with their own fan controllers or PWM hubs. If we are unable to plug the fans directly into the motherboard, it is specified in the performance section of the review. An idle reading comes from leaving Windows on the desktop for 15 minutes. A load reading comes from running Prime95’s (version 26.6) Small FFTs test for 15 minutes – enough time for temperatures to plateau. Noise output Unfortunately I am unable to properly measure the sound output of CPU coolers using a digital sound meter. This is because I am based alongside a busy road (with high ambient noise levels). Using a sound meter is, as such, not possible as there are variables out of my control. However, I will try my best to subjectively describe the noise output in a helpful manner.Temperatures All temperature charts are sorted with lowest load temperatures at the top. Across both tests, the Shadow Rock TF 2 did pretty well for a cooler of its size. At stock clocks, it comfortably beat the other low-profile coolers we have tested previously (Cryorig C7 and Raijintek Pallas) and even bettered some standard air coolers like the Cooler Master MasterAir Pro 4 and Antec A40 Pro, so it is certainly no slouch. Once we overclocked the CPU performance did suffer slightly and the TF 2 slipped back a bit. It is still the best performing low-profile cooler on-test, though, which will make it an attractive option to those looking for a cooler of this size. Acoustics Acoustics are a strong point for this cooler, as is the case for most be quiet! products. The 135mm fan is barely audible with the CPU at stock clocks, emitting a very gentle whirr. Once overclocked, it does spin up and become noticeable, but its max speed is only 1400 rpm so it is still far from loud. Using a bigger, 135mm fan definitely helps here as some low-profile coolers have 92mm fans which can be a bit whiny - but that is not the case here.The Shadow Rock TF 2 is another capable cooling solution from the folks at be quiet! It is a good-looking cooler with its capped heatpipes and aluminium heatsink. The dimensions are also interesting as it is relatively large for a low-profile cooler, while there is also a DIMM height limitation of 48.5mm which potential buyers should be aware of. Installation is a bit tricky, though, and is probably the weakest area of the cooler - users have to turn the motherboard over and secure the cooler in-place, while holding the cooler to prevent it from slipping out of position. If this could be improved that would benefit everyone. Performance is good, however, and the TF 2 finished as the best performing low-profile cooler we have tested to-date. It did perform best at stock clocks, dropping away slightly once we overclocked the CPU, but it is still very competitive. Acoustics is another strong area as the 135mm fan keeps noise to a minimum. Even with our CPU overclocked, the noise was not intrusive at all and that definitely appeals. So, all-in-all, the be quiet! Shadow Rock TF 2 is a very capable low-profile cooler. Users will want to make sure it fits in their case, as its height of 112mm is bigger than most low-profile coolers, but its performance and low noise levels make it well worth buying. You can buy one for £59.99 inc. VAT from Overclockers UK HERE. Discuss on our Facebook page, over HERE. Pros Strong performance. Nice and quiet. Good-looking. Cons Fiddly installation. 48.5mm maximum DIMM height. KitGuru says: be quiet! has produced a very good low-profile cooler in the Shadow Rock TF 2. It is a bit bigger than its competitors but its performance is good, while the noise levels are far from intrusive.