Gadgetory

what's going on everyone we finally have the be quiet dark rock pro4 in the studio now I have benchmarked this with a 5820k and 16 gigs of RAM I tried to keep the platform consistent I don't think it matters as much what CPU we're using as long as we have a baseline and as long as we keep our tests consistent so I didn't want to just throw one set of graphs at you right with just this cooler without anything else with which to compare so that's why this video took a while to produce I wanted to test this thing put it head-to-head against something like the Noctua an HD 15 which is another beefy air cooler comparable to this one the size and TDP a couple of a iOS and also a few smaller air cooler just so you get an idea of what you're getting for your money so without further ado let's go ahead and talk installation and then we'll get into those thermals now to be clear the dark rec pro 4 makes no substantial cooling performance jump from the DRP 3 both are 250 watt TDP s the big thing be quiet outing with this one is the installation it has been vastly improved from what they're saying and we got a glimpse of it at CES but we'll see in our own testing if that in fact is the case the new RP 4 has an MSRP of about a hundred USD it might be slightly lower than that in some cases we'll keep a look out you can find the product link in the video description if you want to check it out after watching this video but I want you to watch this video because after installing it running my tests there are a few things that you should know before you just jump on the bandwagon and purchase the improved dark rock pro 4 we're still stuck with the same 250 watt TDP again perfectly fine for an air cooler it's not it's not issue 7 large copper heat pipe spanning from the base up through some black ceramic coated fins good for heat dissipation and you do get two silent wings three fans one is 135 millimeters in diameter and the other 120 the larger fan sits between the two heat sinks this is where it belongs because the smaller fan upfront means that you won't have as many RAM clearance issues all right now I want to talk ease of installation at this point because this is something that be quiet touted especially at CES and I don't want to say it was kind of misled but I didn't know the full story because I didn't actually install anything myself they had the Phillips head screwdriver that is included by the way with the purchase of the cooler it's a very elongated one it's magnetic which is a good thing you no why here in a second but the installation process is slightly it's held back by a few design flaws that I want to point out especially you know if they want to take this criticism to heart implement this in the next generation you guys will you'll see what I mean in a second so the holes that they've drilled here these are the new holes that were supposed to make the installation much easier right you can thread the Phillips head screwdriver down and then secure the cooler to your socket with just two Phillips head screws well that's fine and dandy but the problem is the only thing that fits through these holes is two Phillips head screw driver the screws themselves are too wide at the head so you actually have to hold the screw underneath the plate and then somehow get that magnetic screwdriver to grip into the threads perfectly at which point you can secure the cooler to the socket I found them especially when building in a case it was very difficult to get that top screw to thread into the Phillips head screwdriver you know poking through the cooler what they should have done was widen the holes a little bit so you don't have to hold the screw underneath the screwdriver it just it makes things so much easier I actually drop the spear a few times had to flip my case around very frustrating to get that screw back out so if they widen the holes and then the other thing is because these holes line up perfectly with the fan that would otherwise be here that I removed for the purposes of filming this segment of the video you have to remove the fan and you have these stupid you know a little metal hinge things that are a pain to get off you have to I almost have to use like a prying tool I can't even do it with my fingers it you know and you're bending the the fins when you do that I've already you can see I've already cut a few of them just by trying to pry off the middle fan it just holds this cooler back if this coolers ease of installation was improved dramatically like I expected it to be you know they touted this cooler as a massive improvement of the D rp3 then there would literally be no other competition out there I think it already looks the best it performs admirably we'll get to that in a second but the ease of installation is just not there yet so I'm definitely a little disappointed with the fact that be quite it's almost taken a sidestep here it's an improvement over the dr p3 you know getting at it from the bottom and trying to secure everything underneath near the heat pipes was a royal pain with a dark rock pro 3 but the dr p4 really didn't expedite things much in the way of you know how long it took for me to install the cooler i still found new problems especially doing it the first I'm around it just it wasn't ideal make the hole slightly larger move them into the heatsinks and then boom you've got a perfect cooler all around for the price I'm waiting on that cry work does it really well rip cry rig off you guys and then you've got an excellent cooler in the Dr p5 revision now on to cooling potential and its sound both of these are really important we look for an air cooler you don't want it to be loud but you do want it to cool your CPU very well now the way that we've kept things pretty mainstream and baseline here was I use the exact same fan curve for every fan in the case it will remain that way for all the other coolers you'll see tested in this video and so it's just a normal fan curve it's a normal preset when you go into the hardware monitor fan utility and that average is around 40 to 50 percent utilization for each fan so that varies per fan especially when they're PWM controlled you know 50 percent for one fan might be slightly higher lower in terms of rpm than another fan that's a little bigger and so that's something you need to take into consideration and you're also gonna be hearing the case fans when you hear you know the overall sound of the cooler that's something that I don't want to I don't want to not include that because it's the whole system right that you should be considering for something like this so we're gonna start first with the audible tests and then we'll jump into thermals so the first test was at idle and these coolers always impressed me from be quiet it was virtually inaudible about 20 decibels which is and that's a whisper practically and then when things heated up and around 64 65 degrees Celsius under load under full load without a 64 on the CPU side that things really didn't pick up that much at all around 25 dB so I'm going to keep and keep in mind though you know the the loudness of these coolers is gonna be based on the fan curve so if we use a much smaller cooler now that doesn't keep temperatures as low then the fan curve will peak in a much higher utilization for those fans right around 80 90 percent so the system will get hotter and then the system will get louder as a result that's okay though because we're still being consistent if the cooler can keep things as cool as it is you know if this one in particular keeps things under let's say 65 degrees Celsius then it deserves to be quieter and it deserves recognition for that because it is doing an adequate job dissipating heat so that's what this test will revolve around so just to recap again that is 20 decibels at idle and then a mere 26 decibels under full load again full load for the CPU not necessarily the cooler unless you're doing some severe overclocking this cooler should never approach one or two percent fan and utilization now on to the temperatures you'll see both idle and low temps again this is not full load for the fans and the coolers this is just full load for the CPU under i-264 conditions the CPU by the way is running its stock speed so I think things turbo to around 4 gigahertz for the 5820k but as long as things stay consistent across all coolers it's really all we care about here the deltas are what truly matter in relation to the price of each so the DRP 4 stayed nice and cool at around 33 degrees Celsius the idle the AI was across the board were slightly cooler at idle but this is probably because the liquid inside the loops hadn't actually equalized anything higher than room temperature by this point but under full load this is where the dark rock pro 4 shines so not only was it the quietest of all the coolers tested here apart from the nokju and HD 15 which was arguably about the same the in HD 15 was slightly more audible in the sense that the the tones and the fans were slightly louder the silent wings three fans in the dark pro four are slightly bass here there they have a lower tone now it really depends on which you were more receptive to but both coolers are extremely quiet in their own respects and both cool about the same the dark rock pro 4 is actually slightly cooler in this respect and I think that might have to do with the positioning of the fans so the DRP 4 is fans on the cooler lined up perfectly with the fans in the case both of the front and rear so airflow you know in and out of the case was pretty much as optimal as it could get so very cool and quiet here just twenty six decibels that's practically a whisper and then 65 degrees Celsius at the highest temperature core core free for some reason was was peaking every now and then above the others but nonetheless that's the one we took because it was the hottest across all six of them and again 65 degrees is nothing that's plenty of overclocking Headroom we could have easily pushed this thing to may be 4.3 4.4 gigahertz and for 5820k that's pretty impressive especially for an air cooler one other thing to note regarding our testing I was sure to use the thermal paste included with each cooler respectively so the knock to a cooler are used to the knock do with a whole paste included in the box be quiet cooler used to be quiet thermal paste and so on and so forth I would cry ever get seven in here I used the cryo rig thermal paste in that box and that's because I don't expect the consumer to have you know seven or eight there compounds laying around you might use just one thermal compound it might not be any of these listed but it does keep things consistent and it influences and encourages these manufacturers to throw the best thermal compound they can into their boxes so as to minimize you know variances and temperatures so my verdict on the be quiet dark rock Pro 4 is surprisingly almost the same verdict that I had with the dark Rock Pro 3 things slightly improve of the installation side of things and that's really about it the cooler looks as good as it did in the previous generation it cools about the same as the previous generation did and it's also extremely quiet it's got three of the four major components for an air cooler going for it I just wish that the ease of installation was was there it's really not yet it's improved but if you have a dark rock pro 3 you know you're perfectly fine even if you have something that's comparable TDP wise it doesn't look as good you're probably best just stick in with that if you're building a new PC for the first time and you want to go with air cooling then I still do strongly recommend the dark rock pro 4 you're not gonna have as difficult the time installing the cooler you're gonna be impressed with the way it looks in your case you're gonna be impressed with how quiet it is and how cool it keeps your CPU so you know this still a cooler I recommend it's just not everything I thought it would be be quiet probably doesn't want to hear that but I have to be honest I expected more they touted the installation process of being so much easier and for me anyway it just wasn't unless I'm completely misunderstanding the installation manual which by the way is pretty it's pretty straightforward if you have you know am 4 or C 370 or even x-29 9 it's very straightforward how to install the cooler thanks to the manual if you haven't done to this sort of thing before so it's nice that they included that and in several languages too I was surprised by how many different languages they had in the box with that again you can find the links to this cooler and it's be quite dark route pro 3 counterpart in the video description if you want to leave a comment suggesting future comparisons between this and other air coolers do that in the comments below I'll be sure to check those out as well if you like this one be sure let me know give this one a thumbs up I appreciate it thumbs down for the obstacle to subscribe on if you haven't already and stay tuned for more content like this this is science studio thanks for there