Today's Hard|Forum Post
Today's Hard|Forum Post
Date:
Tuesday , February 11, 2014
Author:
Marc Adams
Editor:
Kyle Bennett
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bequiet! Dark Rock Pro 3 CPU Air Cooler Review

There is no doubt that when it comes to CPU air cooling, marketing terms like "category leader" and "virtually inaudible" will get your attention. be quiet!'s Dark Rock Pro 3 air cooler touts cooling up to 250 watts, which is stout at best in the world of air cooling. Does the Darck Rock Pro 3 perform and bring with it a cooling value.

Introduction

It was only three short months ago that we looked at the DarkRock Pro 2 from bequiet!. It would be easy for any company to sit back and let the sales roll in for a few months before designing its successor but that won’t work for bequiet!. Instead they are back with the DarkRock Pro 3 and ready to up the ante. It’s a bold strategy and in this business you have to be bold if you want to be successful.

So what changes does the DarkRock Pro 3 bring over the DRP2? Well, the design is largely the same and even the dimensions are within a few millimeters of each other. You’d have to look a lot closer to see what bequiet! changed. The big change comes in the form of small dots on the fins that serve to increase the efficiency of the convection without creating a noticeable amount of noise.

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Testing System Setup

Today's review takes place on our fourth generation [H]ard platform. The test bed consists of the ASUS Z87-Deluxe motherboard, eight gigabytes of Corsair 1600 MHz DDR3 RAM and the Intel Core i7 4770K.

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Test Methods

CPU

The biggest change you will notice is the removal of hardware testing. In recent years, Intel has shifted their methods of testing to software based and so we find it acceptable to do the same.

GPU

Once again we have an integrated GPU in our processor which alleviates the need for a discrete one. With the removal of a discrete GPU comes the advantage of not having an additional variable to account for.

The iGPU will not create any anomalies in our testing as long as we practice consistent testing methods.

Case

Corsair was kind enough to provide us with their Carbide series chassis. It provides excellent airflow and interior space and is a good reflection on current case design.

Thermal Paste

Noctua's NT-H1 thermal paste was selected as the paste of choice for a few key reasons. The thermal paste has been shown to provide excellent thermal conductivity allowing the heat sinks to better do their job. There is no observed curing time. That is, performance does not get any better over time. Any curing time could have introduced variables into the equation causing at best dubious results and at worst unreliable ones.

Temperatures

Ambient temperature will be kept at 25C for the duration of the tests and measured with a MicroTemp EXP non-contact infrared thermometer and cross referenced with the Sperry Digital 4 Point thermometer. Any variance greater then 0.2C will halt the testing until temperatures return within spec for fifteen minutes.

Idle

Idle temperatures will be recorded after a twenty minute period of inactivity. Any fluctuation during the last sixty seconds will reset the timer for an additional five minutes.

Load

Load temperatures will be recorded after a twenty minute period of 100% load. To obtain this load we will be using AIDA64 Extreme Edition v3.00.2500. This places an even greater load on the CPU than before and includes some benefits. Because the load is so extreme we see the temperature vary wildly from 72C to 86C in some instances. To get an accurate reading we will utilize AIDA64’s ability to average the temperature over time. Given twenty minutes at 100% load we arrive at a temperature that accurately represents our heatsink’s performance.

Sound

Sound levels will be measured with a Reliability Direct AR824 sound meter from a distance of four feet away. With everything turned off and the room completely silent the meter registered a sound level of 38dB(A). This is a very quiet room where a simple pin drop could be heard. All sound measurements are recorded in the very late evening to further reduce any ambient noise.