Gadgetory

all right this one is going to be exciting I have two coolers right here in front of me to read the title be quiet dark rock slim and cooler master hyper 212 evo Black Edition for all intents and purposes just a hyper 212 Evo although some have claimed slightly better thermal performance here there's really not there's not supposed to be any difference so what we're going to do is use this as kind of like our benchmark this is a 30 or so dollar USD cooler and that is an insane value that's why the hyper 212 Evo is one of the most popular air coolers around that and it also is compatible with pretty much any ATX or micro ATX build doesn't interfere with your RAM much at all and yeah again should follow suit there the dark rock slim is a new entrant came out just a few weeks ago and it follows a very similar footprint so for copper heat pipes each each come with a 120mm fan of both pwm fans and this one has a 180 watt TDP rating this one doesn't really have one on their website but we can assume it's around a hundred and sixty water so TDP and my testing that's what it comes out to kind of around the Kyrie h7 quad Lumi space so we're gonna weigh all that in with this video and I'm going to try to be as fair and unbiased as possible especially given the price disparity between the two because I expect this to be a better cooler for the price but maybe that's not all you should consider if you decide to spend more than this maybe the the sound quality matters more to you than just cooling in general although I think in this price point you're probably more concerned with cool so if we're gonna weigh all that in this video stay tuned it's easy to look past certain things but an activate Windows watermark yeah not one of those things snag a verified Oh am Windows 10 key from SCD key for a little over ten bucks and enjoy a fully activated OS without the annoying compromises use offer code s studio for an eighteen percent discount on your order so the first thing I want to talk about is ease of installation and this is something that you're going to run into no matter what I'm unless you have someone else do this for you you're going to have to deal with the installation processes of either of these coolers the hybrid 212 Evo uses an older mounting process and older mounting mechanism so it's not as refined as a dark Rock slim took me about two-and-a-half or three minutes to install that cooler whereas a dark rock slim it's about a minute and a half and that is due in part because the dark rock slim uses the same mounting mechanism as the dark rock four and dark Rock pro four which we reviewed in this video right here so I had a slightly unfair advantage there but it uses a bracket basically like a brace over the entire cold plate so you only need two screws to secure the cooler to the motherboard whereas with this cooler the bracket requires four screws and you actually have to secure the bracket to the cold plate via screws upside down underneath the cooler is kind of a weird installation process I know I had run into this before when I used to use the hyper 212 Evo a lot but it's been a while so I definitely needed a refresher all in all the dark rock slim definitely had the easier install process but I mean I'm minute or two isn't really going to make much of a difference and it certainly doesn't make up for the 30 or so US dollar disparity between these coolers remember that both of these coolers do ship with a four pin PWM 120mm fan the silent wings three fan and B quiets case is indefinitely I think the better-looking fan it is certainly quieter you'll see our sound test here soon but the fact that the hypertrophy evo Black Edition does include a four pin fan is still a nice addition especially in the $30 price range a few physical aspects of the coolers to point out both of them utilize for copper heat pipes I believe they are six millimeters in diameter each I'm trying to see on the box here it's says that I'll look it up online if not it just says for he pipes okay well that doesn't help much yes that would be six millimeters so I confirm that with Coolermaster cooler and the dark rock slim also has six millimeter copper heat pipes and remember there are four for both so pretty much apples to apples here I mean this is not really it much closer than this especially when you're crossing over between companies I used I 264 engineer and stress the CPU as well as the graphics card and system Ram so the graphics card would in theory heat up the CPU just a bit more because that heat is gonna passively rise into the CPU cooler you can find the remainder the parts used in our testbench link down below if you are interested in building something similar there tied to where amazon affiliate account so it does give this a small kickback just want to throw that out there one more point of distinction is that i use carbon up pads from thermal grizzly because of the consistency right they're easy to remove and reapply they're reusable we've confirmed that in our testing and it should keep our what would be thermal paste application extremely consistent between these runs and i ran both of these temp tests for each cooler twice to make sure that there was no variance between them now one of the good stuff these are CP synthetic low temperatures measured in i 264 after a 20 minute burnin and you can see that the hyper 212 evo a black edition came in at about 86 degrees celsius that's the max the peak temperature experienced during that 20 degree run the average temperature was 77 point one and coincidentally the dark rocks limb came in at the exact same 86 degrees even there was no variance there and then seventy six point nine degrees on average over the twenty minutes and that's within the margin of error of that seventy seven point one from the 212 Evo so from my testing at least these coolers are nearly identical and I'm kind of not surprised because they look nearly identical and if we assume that the fans are turning it around the same rpm which we're using normal fan curve so very slightly out of the box but these fans are meant to run at different rpm stock that would explain the small variance if there was any but in this case they're pretty much the same another important aspect of a CP cool is how loud it operates and this can be measured in decibels perceives down intensity remember reason the logarithmic scale here so the hyper 212 Evo at idle conditions was 27 decibels 26.1 the dark rock slim up to forty two point seven for the 212 under load and forty 1.2 for the door up slim so the darker exilim was definitely the quieter cooler I could perceive the difference it wasn't substantial but it is noticeable and this is gonna be you know almost totally due to the fact that the silencer efan is in the dark rock slim this is a very premium fan now the cooler master fan was good I was actually surprised by how well it handled noise but well you know when the temperatures heat up and and the the fan has to spill a bit more to accommodate it did get noticeably louder and it was a higher tone the silent wings three fans have very low tones and they're a little harder for most people to hear I think so that also plays a role and probably is why it seemed even louder than what the decibel readings suggest so there's that the coolers are exactly the same the only key differences between the two or that this one is slightly more difficult to install and this one is no I don't think saying slightly quieter does it justice it is noticeably quieter but is it $30 quieter I really don't think so I have to be I have to be honest with you I think if this came down in price by about 10 bucks it was around fifty dollars that would be more competitive as of right now this is competing in the 5060 dollar market with like the h7 quad Lumi maybe something a little bigger beefier than that and so it's trying to punch above its weight class but it especially with its price but it just it's not there I mean you'd have to really get this fan to ramp up at which point the whole purpose of this cooler using a style at wingstreet fan to be quiet it's kind of out the window so my take on it is that the hyper 212 Evo is by far the better value this is gonna be more premium they both weigh about the same at least that's what it feels like in the hand this one is quieter easier to install but in the day you're only installing it usually one time so I don't really think that's a worthy point of discernment in the long run so if you're interested in saving a few bucks the hyper 212 Evo really does impress me and this one looks really good for the $30 or so price tag maybe a little more maybe 35 bucks if it's upwards of $40 then I think that that point starts to dissipate but the dark rock slim it's 180 watt TDP cooler but it's it's really performing like a hyper 212 Evo so it needs something more than just beauty and being a little quieter to justify its price in my opinion so maybe in the near future comes down maybe 10 bucks or so then I think I could be totally on board with it it's still a great cooler what I recommend it to most people it's tough I mean if you're if you're a real big real big fan of be quiet components then I think this is something you're already considering or already own but for the general you know purpose of like buying an aftermarket cooler so you don't have to use the stock in teller and be cooler which is usually what people buy this for I think this is the better Buy full disclosure will be advertising this cooler would be quiet here soon so you'll see a few ads from them with this and we're actually one of using this cooler for the remainder of 2019 in our taste test so you'll be seeing a lot more of this cooler in the future I just want to let you guys know we do plan to advertise this and I'm not gonna hide the fact that I don't think it's as good of value as a 212 Evo I think and we've advertised products that we don't think are the best but that are still good and that's what this is it's good it's just not the best especially from a value perspective it's still be quite cooler silent winks three of some of the best fans on the market in my opinion looks really good installation is easy just a little pricey at the moment so maybe that will come down soon with that if you guys liked this video let me know but guess what a thumbs up I appreciate it you guys have been awesome click that red subscribe button if you haven't already become a member if you're feeling especially fancy now I'll catch you in the next one this is science to do thanks for watching and thanks for learning with us