be quiet! Dark Rock 4 CPU Air Cooler Review @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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be quiet! Dark Rock 4 CPU Air Cooler Review

be quiet! has quietly made a name for itself in the CPU air cooling business over the years and now demands a very solid following of fans and users. It may surprise you to know, that be quiet!'s claim to fame is...wait for it...being quiet. That however is not usually our main concern when it comes to cooling, which is...wait for it...cooling.
 
What an amazing looking piece of shit.

How did Be Quiet get it so wrong :S ? Maybe some time with a piece of glass and some sandpaper is needed to fix the base.
 
I like their (be quiet!) fans for case fans, but I wouldn't use most of them on a radiator or cooler. The Dark Rock 4 looks like it has a high-density fin design, but they packaged it with their Silent Wings series which aren't really meant for restricted operation (note the more open blade design and standard/small motor). Poor choices makes for poo-poo performance or is it just a bad cooler? Lol

Edit: looks like they don't make any fans designed for restricted operation. I thought they use to, but the only ones I see are their 80mm Silent Wings 2.
 
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I'm really curious as to how a TON of other review sites have the DR 4 performing well (not Noctua D15 levels, but well), and it does SO badly here. Perhaps it was a defective unit?
 
Whilst I realise it defeats the purpose of the review, what happens when you swap the fan to something else? Those kind of temps really look like they're fanless/passive temps almost x.x
 
This was very unexpected.. am really surprised, especially given the praise these two units got pretty much everywhere else (4 and 4 Pro).

No innuendos, just as you read it.
Kyle, if BeQuiet contacts you for any info/further clarifications, is it something you'd then be able to share with us?
 
entropism said:
Perhaps it was a defective unit?
Click to expand...

Perhaps, fan was running within spec, but I am suspect of that nipple on the baseplate.

It is also possible that it is our testing is a little more brutal, we push coolers to the limit with the highly overclocked 1700, in a case, not stock clocks on an open bench.

knowom said:
Hows it compare to AMD's wraith cooler itself?
Click to expand...

Kyle is sending me the new Wraith Prism cooler to test and add to our charts, so soon™
 
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As a new owner of a Noctua NHU-14S I can quietly sit back and enjoy my purchase. I was on the fence about the Dark Rock. Thanks for the review!
 
rgMekanic said:
It is also possible that it is our testing is a little more brutal, we push coolers to the limit with the highly overclocked 1700, in a case, not stock clocks on an open bench.
Click to expand...

Even still, I could list a ton of other reviews where it came close to D15/U14S/Fuma/Mugen 5/etc levels. It's definitely not the coolest temp cooler on the market, but it's definitely enough to cool a highly OCed 8700K. In fact, most reviews I've read have it on a 4790K.

Either way - the silence, though, we can all agree on.
 
entropism said:
Even still, I could list a ton of other reviews where it came close to D15/U14S/Fuma/Mugen 5/etc levels. It's definitely not the coolest temp cooler on the market, but it's definitely enough to cool a highly OCed 8700K. In fact, most reviews I've read have it on a 4790K.
Click to expand...
Did they test it in a case in real world worst case scenario?
 
As far as I can tell, half did, half didn't. Again, not questioning the testing methods here. I'm thoroughly convinced you got a defective dud of a unit.

Edit: Something similar happened with the Cryorig H7. You guys found it to be an awful cooler. Every other review puts it as one of the best budget units out there. These are two outliers (along with the Mugen 5 review) that caught my eye over the past few reviews.
 
Hmm, I would have expected Noctua U14S levels of performance, seeing it's about the same weight, with same amount of heatpipes and has a similar mounting system.

Dark Rock 3 was always slightly behind U14S, but this Dark Rock 4 surely can't be this much worse than Dark Rock 3 or U14S.
 
entropism said:
I'm really curious as to how a TON of other review sites have the DR 4 performing well ...
Click to expand...
For me this is the first review I find of the non-Pro version. The Pro reviews are all over the net and that cooler is really good, perhaps you mix them up?
Still, it's very quiet and will perform better with a louder fan (or reversely the competition will perform worse at the same noise level).

Looking at the values for noise:
Subtracting the 39 dB(A) background noise (*) you get that the computer, including case fans and what have you, has a noise level of 38.4 dB(A) with the DR4 and 39.4 dB(A) with the NH-U14S. Isolating the coolers themselves the difference should thus be more than one dB(A).

(*) N = 10*log(10^(M/10) - 10^(B/10)) where
N = Net noise in dB(A)
M = Measured noise in dB(A)
B = Background noise in dB(A)
 
entropism said:
As far as I can tell, half did, half didn't. Again, not questioning the testing methods here. I'm thoroughly convinced you got a defective dud of a unit.

Edit: Something similar happened with the Cryorig H7. You guys found it to be an awful cooler. Every other review puts it as one of the best budget units out there. These are two outliers (along with the Mugen 5 review) that caught my eye over the past few reviews.
Click to expand...

Olle P said:
For me this is the first review I find of the non-Pro version. The Pro reviews are all over the net and that cooler is really good, perhaps you mix them up?
Still, it's very quiet and will perform better with a louder fan (or reversely the competition will perform worse at the same noise level).

Looking at the values for noise:
Subtracting the 39 dB(A) background noise (*) you get that the computer, including case fans and what have you, has a noise level of 38.4 dB(A) with the DR4 and 39.4 dB(A) with the NH-U14S. Isolating the coolers themselves the difference should thus be more than one dB(A).

(*) N = 10*log(10^(M/10) - 10^(B/10)) where
N = Net noise in dB(A)
M = Measured noise in dB(A)
B = Background noise in dB(A)
Click to expand...

And maybe testing the cooler INSIDE of a case shows totally different heatloads than testing on an open bench? We are sure of our results.
 
entropism said:
Again, as I said, I'm not questioning your methods, I generally trust this site more than 99% of the other sites out there. I'm merely asking if it's POSSIBLE you got a defective unit? It happens. Not sure if you're intending it, but I'm reading the reply as a bit defensive here.
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We saw nothing to suggest the unit is defective. That said, they only sent one for review. And we reviewed it.

You can "what if" all day long, all I know is the unit that was supplied by the manufacturer failed in our testing. And quite frankly, after we saw how little air it moves, we did not think it would pass our tests. We put a stronger fan on it to check it out a bit more and dropped the temps by 5C.
 
Alright man, your site, you do you. I'm only saying your site is the ONLY site that got these results. I'm removing myself from the conversation, because I said my piece and have nothing left to add.
 
entropism said:
Alright man, your site, you do you. I'm only saying your site is the ONLY site that got these results. I'm removing myself from the conversation, because I said my piece and have nothing left to add.
Click to expand...
That is what we do. I do not tailor our results because you see something else at another site. The MFG has our results and has not suggested in any way that our results are incorrect.
 
entropism said:
Case installed test:

https://www.bit-tech.net/reviews/tech/cooling/be-quiet-dark-rock-4-review/2/ (Corsair 730T)
https://www.vortez.net/articles_pages/be_quiet_dark_rock_4_review,7.html (Corsair 760T)

Edit: I generally hate linking other sites to here, I feel like I'm being a bit rude. But since I wanted to prove it wasn't just open air testing...
Click to expand...

First link takes the max temp after 15 minutes of an arguably less stressful version of Prime95, and ended up with a ΔT of 58* on their AM4 system. ΔT on our system during the CPU Only test at 15 minutes was 63.8*. Not a huge difference.

The difference there is we push our testing much further, and [H]arder.

Second link is a 20 minute pull with AIDA64.... That's really all I need to say there.

If you have not read our testing procedures, please do.

We run 2, 1 hour tests, one with the CPU only being stressed by Prime95, and a second with both Prime95 and Furmark running simultaneously. Temps are taken every 5 minutes. Not press button and come back in 15 minutes to see what Coretemp says the max was and thereyago. And as an added bonus, we won't mount the cooler upside down to hide one of its shortcomings.

DR4.jpg

NOTE: My case exhaust temp thermocouple failed, replacements have already been ordered.
 
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entropism said:
I'm really curious as to how a TON of other review sites have the DR 4 performing well (not Noctua D15 levels, but well), and it does SO badly here. Perhaps it was a defective unit?
Click to expand...

Yes I was wondering this too, TPU gave it a stellar review and so have others, I wonder if [H] got a defective unit?
 
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