be quiet! Is one of the leading power supplies company in Germany that has time and again come up with innovative products like Dark Rock Pro 4 and solutions that has won many popular awards and recognition. It has also been awarded as the “Manufacturer of the Year” for almost 6 times in a row by “PC Games Hardware”, a popular German hardware magazine. now Dark Rock Pro 4
Gaming PCs tend to generate a lot of heat as gamers use their PCs for a long time playing their favorite games and only a quality air cooler can help to disseminate the heat. Overheating can cause the IC’s the chipsets and graphics cards to malfunction and this is where be quiet! helps you in a big way with the launch of their Dark Rock Pro 4 and Dark Pro 4 coolers.
The Dark Rock Pro 4 comes as a single-tower cooler and with aluminum fins that are powered using 6 high-quality copper heat pipes. One of the important aspects of this cooling system is the brilliant election of the black color scheme that also helps in the heat conduction process and the neutral color scheme goes well with all systems. The aluminum top cover provides a great finish to the cooler and the performance is also quite impressive.
Design
The Dark Rock Pro 4 comes with a unique design as it moved away from the traditional rectangular design and sports cooling fins with a wave-contoured design. The new design element on the Dark Rock Pro 4 is considered to enhance the memory clearance to some extent. The fins are not the same in the back and in the front and also the fins at the bottom are not wider like the ones on the top. The heat sink quality is top notch as always similar to all the air coolers from be quiet! but the Dark Rock Pro 4 is a bit heavier than the previous version as it weighs around 1130g.
Even the design of the top plate is not as attractive as the Dark Rock 3, it is not a major drawback as the top plate blends beautifully with the copper heat pipes. The 7 heat pipes in the air cooler extract all the heat from the bottom and feed to the fins to dissipate them. The fins also come with a design with dimples that enhances the cooling aspect of the air cooler to a great extent.
And the overall size of the Dark Rock Pro 4 is certainly bigger than its predecessor and can easily take up almost one-third space of the motherboard. But with cabinets that comes as theme built ones, the air cooler looks cool inside. Even though it just comes with 2 fans, there are also options to attach a third fan and that is the reason that extra fan clips are provided in the cooler. Overall, the design of the Dark Rock Pro 4 looks cool and can blend well with most of the systems out there.
Installation
Before you start the installation of the Dark Rock Pro 4, you need to ready the backplates by sliding all the screws into the right slots and secure them with rubber-o-rings. Now position the backplate gently onto the motherboard and with the help of the standoffs provided, you can secure them tightly on the motherboard. You can also use some thermal compounds before mounting the heatsink.
Now the backplates are secured on the motherboard, it is time to get the heat sink ready. Remove the caps on top of the heat sink and gently place it over the backplates. Once the position is right, secure it using the screws provided. The next step is to connect the fans and plug the fins into the fan header. And that’s it, you have successfully installed the Dark Rock Pro 4 in your system.
To be fair to be quiet! it is certainly a great improvement in terms of the mounting hardware as it has been revised to a great extent as it works extremely good. And the overall installation process is pretty much simple and straight-forward that you can complete the process in 10-15 mins approximately.
Performance
The Dark Rock Pro 4 does well on the Intel LGA 115x, which is a great news considering the overall reputation of this socket family with users. The noise level is far lower when compared with other coolers. When you run it in full-speed of around 1400 RPM, it is still very quiet, which is a trademark feature of the company to produce noiseless air-coolers.
The Dark Pro4 really does exceptionally well in most areas and during our tests, we could see that the previous gap between NH-d15 and the Dark Rock Pro2 and Dark Rock Pro3 were almost non-existent with the Dark Rock Pro 4 and maybe it gained a little edge with its noiseless offering. And certainly be quiet! comes with an upper hand with the Dark Rock Pro 4 in the air-cooler market.
Conclusion
be quiet! Is always known to improve with each product and that is one of the main reason that they are one of the leading suppliers of air-coolers and other accessories. The Dark Rock Pro 4 continues with this trend in a great way. Even though its main competitor, Noctua, has always managed to edge out on most of its predecessors like Dark Pro 2 & 3, the Dark Pro 4 has certainly managed to gain a little edge with its performance.
One of the main reasons that Dark Rock Pro 4 is successful is because the company has certainly listened to the complaints and suggestions put forth by customers and product review websites. This is evident from the fact the mounting hardware has been upgraded and even the installation process is much easier when compared with their previous versions. Even the memory clearance with the graphics cards has been largely enhanced along with coming up with a cooler outlook.
Even though there are some minor issues like the cooler is a bit heavy and oversized, it is not a great deal unless you are installing in systems that cannot fit into it. But overall, the Dark Rock Pro 4 is one of the quietest air-coolers available in the market as of now.
