be quiet! Dark Rock Elite Review

Epilogue

The be quiet! Dark Rock Elite offers notably better performance than the Dark Rock Pro 5 model, thanks to the pair of stronger fans that it uses. The height adjustment feature of the front fan also makes things easier if you have RAM modules with tall heatsinks, and the ARGB cover is a nice touch. If I were to spend 100 dollars on an air-cooler, I would have paid 15 dollars more to get the premium version with the higher performance. The only problem is that the mighty Noctua NH-D15 chromax.black has a close price tag, offering better performance but no ARGB lighting nor the easy front fan height adjustment. It is up to you to select the 6-8% higher performance of the Noctua cooler over the be quiet features! cooler’s offers. The Dark Rock Elite’s performance is close to the Deepcool Assassin III, which the Assassin IV has replaced. The latter has a price similar to the NH-D15, at 120 dollars, and will be among my following CPU cooler reviews.

The Dark Rock Elite is a high-end cooler, able to handle even a 350W processor, and although it doesn’t come with ARGB fans, the top cover will partially satisfy the needs of users who want something colorful. At 115 dollars/euros, its price is slightly lower than the competition at this level, while the cooler’s build quality is at the same high level. The primary asset of air coolers, contrary to AIOs, is that they can offer good cooling performance while keeping noise output low, and on top of that, they are far more reliable and need less maintenance. They need more space on the mainboard and apply tremendous stress to it because of their increased weight, which in most cases exceeds 1 kilo. I switched the AIO on my main work PC with an air-cooler, and the only thing I have to do from time to time is to clean the heatsink from dust.