Dark Rock Pro 4 by be quiet! – A Towering Cooler

be quiet! gave us the opportunity to review one of their massive coolers, the Dark Rock Pro 4. be quiet! released the Dark Rock Pro 4 in 2018, but it can still handle the latest Intel and AMD processors released. After reviewing various products from be quiet!, they are gradually growing on me.

Unboxing the Dark Rock Pro 4

The unit is packaged in foam padding. This supports the cooler, Silent Wings fans, and a very useful be quiet! cross-tip screwdriver. Additionally, there are manuals in various languages, mounting brackets, a Y cable, screws, and thermal paste.

The primary colors for their products are black, white, and orange. The Dark Rock Pro 4 continues that theme, sporting deep black from the radiators down to the mounting brackets.

Let’s Get Technical – Dark Rock Pro 4 specs

Here’s the technical data from be quiet!:

Dimension (L x W x H), (mm)	146 x 136 x 163
Total Weight (kg)	1.13
TDP (W)	250
Socket compatibility (AMD)	AM5 / AM4
Socket compatibility (Intel)	1700 / 1200 / 2066 / 1150 / 1151 / 1155 / 2011(-3) Square ILM
Fan model, number	1 x Silent Wings 3 120mm PWM / 1 x Silent Wings 135mm PWM
Decoupled fan mounting	Yes
Overall noise level (dB(A)) @ 50/75/100% (rpm)	12.8 / 17.9 / 24.3

Installation

The Dark Rock Pro 4 uses two Silent Wings fans: 1 x 120mm for the front and 1 x 135mm between the heatsinks. The cooler uses AMD’s standard backplate that comes with the motherboard. In addition, be quiet! includes a custom Intel backplate for installation.

Cooler installation was a breeze (no pun intended) following the manual. I removed the standard AMD mounting brackets, assembled the mounting foundation, added thermal paste, and put the cooler on top. From there, I placed the mounting bridge across the cooler and aligned the notches on the bridge and cooler to fit perfectly. Then I removed the heat pipe caps on top and mounted the cooler in place using the included cross-tip screwdriver. Lastly, I used the fan clips to install the middle fan, put the heat pipe caps back in place, and connected the fans to the Y cable and then to the motherboard.

The front of the cooler is designed to allow room for RAM to fit underneath the fins and the Silent Wings fans. However, I highly suggest planning on RAM placement prior to installing the Dark Rock Pro 4. Once you install the cooler, you will definitely have trouble accessing the first RAM slot without removing the cooler. The remaining slots may not be an issue if you remove the front fan.

On Your (Bench)marks

I installed this cooler on a setup that included:

• AMD Ryzen 5 3600
• AMD Radeon RX 470
• G.Skill Trident Z 8GB 3600Mhz
• be quiet! 1000W Pure Power 11 FM
• be quiet! Silent Base 802 Black case

I left the CPU idling in a room with an ambient temperature of 21.6 C (71 F). At about 37 minutes, the temperatures were reading 32 C (91 F). Running a CPU-Z benchmark, the temperatures rose up to 64 C (147 F) during the test. Running a CPU-Z stress test for 5 minutes, temperatures ranged around 65.5 C (150 F) with the highest temp hitting 67.8 C (154 F) for a split second a few times throughout the 5-minute test.

I also used Cinebench 20 to run temperatures after 43 minutes of monitoring and saw the same results as the CPU-Z stress test: 64 C (147 F) average with the highest hitting 67.5 C (153.5 F).

When I recorded CPU temperatures while benchmarking in Cities: Skylines and Tomb Raider, Tomb Raider hit around the high 50s C with the highest at 63.3 C (146 F) at the highest. I approached Cities: Skylines differently; playing the game like normal the game relies heavily on CPU usage. The game hit around 50 C with the highest at 60.3 C (140.5 F) during a 1-hour session of gaming. During all my testing the fans remained relatively quiet. However, I was not able to grab any measurements for sound to validate how quiet.

Final Thoughts

The be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 is a cooler with a modern design and can keep CPUs at pretty reasonable temperatures. The cooler is fairly big so make sure the case you’re going to use will handle this behemoth. In addition to the size, adding or replacing RAM may require removing the cooler entirely. Hopefully, no one will have to deal with that. Otherwise, I had a great experience installing the Dark Rock Pro 4 with ease. At the time of this review, the be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 4 is priced at $89.90 on Amazon.com.