BeQuiet! Dark Rock 2 CPU Cooler Review

1. Introduction2. Packaging and Bundle3. Be Quiet! Dark Rock 2 CPU Cooler4. Installation5. Testing Methodology and Performance6. Acoustical Performance7. Closing Thoughts8. View All Pages

Today we are going to test the Be Quiet! Dark Rock 2 CPU Cooler with the AMD Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition CPU.  We recently tested a cooler from Akasa, and Titan which we will be using as a comparison during testing.

Each cooler tested today will be using the ‘out of the box' configuration of fans. The Akasa Venom Voodoo ships with 2x120mm fans and the Titan Fenrir Siberia has 1x120mm and 1x140mm fans whereas the Be Quiet! Dark Rock 2 has only a single 135mm fan.

We like to try and mirror ‘realistic’ conditions when possible, so instead of an ‘open bench concept’, we are mounting the test system inside the BitFenix Shinobi XL case that we recently reviewed, which does offer very impressive thermal performance in itself, as such our temperatures can't be compared directly to previous tests.

Room ambient temperatures were maintained at a steady 20c throughout testing and the coolers were all set to their maximum fan speed.

System Specs:

Processor: AMD Phenom X4 965 Black Edition @ 3.7 GHz.
Motherboard: ASUS M4A785TD- M Evo
Cooler (for comparisons): Akasa Venom Voodoo CPU Cooler & Titan Fenrir Siberia Edition CPU Cooler
Memory: 4GB Corsair DDR3 1600MHz
Graphics Cards: AMD Radeon 6450 HD (GPU @ 850 MHZ, Memory Clock @ 1000 MHz)
Power Supply: Akasa Venom Power 750W
Boot Drive: OCZ Vertex I 60GB SSD (OS only)

OS: Windows 7 Home Edition 64bit
Digital Sound Level Noise Decibel Meter Style 2

From these results it is very clear that the Be Quiet! Dark Rock 2 CPU cooler delivers extremely impressive thermal performance. Not only does it outperform the Akasa Venom Voodoo CPU cooler hands down, it beats the physically larger Titan Fenrir Siberia Edition.

It is worth reiterating that both the Akasa and Titan products ship with two fans while the Be Quiet! only has one. Very impressive, but what about the acoustical performance?

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