be quiet! Dark Rock 2 CPU Heatsink Cooler Unboxing & First Look Linus Tech Tips
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2013-05-07
·
1,540 words · ~7 min read
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welcome to my unboxing and first look at the be quiet! I'm sorry it's it's old now
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uh dark Rock 2 no compromise silence and performance up to 180 wat TDP so yeah
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pretty much everything uh CPU Cooler LGA 2011 ready uses silent Wings fans which
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is like excellent very quiet operation at 21.2 DB Max 135 mm silent Wings pwm
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fan highly effective Cooling completely dark nickel plated single Tower layout
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that actually is pretty appealing to people like me who love that compatible
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with Intel and AMD all right areas of application safe cooling of high
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performance CPS even extreme overclocking scenarios seriously quiet
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PC systems with the highest standards of performance reliability highly effective
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cooling very quiet operations thanks to silent Wings completely dark nickel
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plated a stable back plate ensures vibration secure attachment even when
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the computer's being transmitted transmitted transported brushed aluminum
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cover protects the cooling fins design and quality control in
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Germany okay requirements of our customers a focus of everything that we
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do full aluminum top cover 12 steel heat pipe caps height adjustable oh height
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adjustable fan cool anti vibration rubber ring cooling fins with wave
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design six high performance heat pipes all right and it should be noted that it
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is a valid thing to say high performance heat pipes because not all heat pipes
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are oh my goodness that actually looks really
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good that that looks just baller
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I'm I'm sort of so already and I actually haven't seen the cooler
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yet uh this looks like a reasonably smart mounting system so it looks like
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they've got um uh the kind where the thing screws
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into the thing and then that screws into the other thing uh similar to what we've
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seen in the past although there are a lot of pieces which sort of gives me
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pause um sometimes mounting systems with lots of
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pieces can be a little bit challenging to put together let's have a look at what they're instructions are like
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though okay so they're labeling everything pretty clearly which is nice
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to see so basically you
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H here we go yeah so that's LGA 2011 is
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what we're using this for and that should be really easy so you basically
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put this thing into the uh the back plate that's already on the socket and
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then the cooler screws into that with these uh uh with these things here or
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with something else that's also in the package I suppose and then this is going to be your am d as well as older Intel
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sockets or lesser Intel sockets such as
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uh 20 1155
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1156 okay they've got nice little exploded diagrams of everything so it
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should be pretty straightforward let's go ahead and check out the heat sink
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itself this looks like a great back plate though look how thick this thing
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is like it actually has some weight to
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it wow look how thick that is here slick
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hold this heavy right right heaviest you
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felt yep there you go guys and it's like solid it's like a it's like solid piece
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of metal like there's no flex to it whatsoever and it has the uh the anti-
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conductive Coatings already on it so I've seen ones in the past where you
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have to like put it on yourself and I'm just like that seems like a safety
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hazard cuz someone's not going to put it on someone's going to short out their
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expensive board which is going to destroy someone's CPU all of those
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someone's are probably like the same person just saying that like it's not
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like one person is going to like short out their board and someone else's CPU
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somewhere is going to die that's not really how it works all right so that is
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that a 120 mil fan cuz that doesn't look like a 12 mil that looks like a 140 oh
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yeah I was probably using the uh hold on Slick's giving me a hard time about
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something silent Wings yeah it is it's a 135 mm fan um and this is a bit of a
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unique design because this isn't like the regular case fan that we unboxed
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before because it's using a completely different mounting system system just
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for their CPU heat sink fan it's got a rubber ring all around the outside here
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so that means without any cheesy like little rubber strips that you have to
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sort of like stick to the heat sink fins and then they fall off and then your
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cats chew them up I've had this happen um the fan will always have the rubber
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layer on it which will keep vibration from being transmitted to the tower heat
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sink itself I'd say about like an A minus
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sort of dark nickel plating I can see a couple small blemishes but you'd never
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see them if you weren't picky like me and the fact that they've got this
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beautiful beautiful brushed aluminum top piece that looks outstanding sort of
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makes up for it actually cuz you'll never see the uh you'll never see the
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fins themselves anyway they've also got are these really metal oh my goodness
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metal caps on the tops of the heat pipes so that you don't have to see the ugly
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cuz you know how heat pipes have one clean end and then they have one like a
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clamped shut end so that the uh the fluid is sealed inside so you don't have
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to see which end is the ugly end and which end is not the ugly end they've
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just got caps on all them looks outstanding uh the mounting mechanism is
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this is actually one of my personal favorites the uh the stretch it over and
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put it wherever you want mounting system so that's what they mean by height
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adjustable I suppose because you could actually put it up higher if you had
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like a motherboard component that's interfering with the fan or you could put it down lower if you wanted
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additional air flow over the uh over the vrm of your motherboard for example and
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you just kind of Lodge that in there assuming you can get it in there we go
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and the side goes in just like that or does
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it yes it does aha locked into place
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same thing on the other side ah yes let's do the obligatory
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finger shot so very shiny but you can see some of the Machining marks in the
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base it should be noted guys a mirror finish is not necessary for good contact
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with the CPU in fact as you may or may not have noticed your CPU Is Not Mirror
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finish on the bottom so it's not like
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you were getting like perfect mirror to mirror contact
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anyway uh but that doesn't mean it's not flat although based on a quick look it
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has a bit of a convex shape to it which assuming you're mounting with any kind
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of adequate pressure can actually be an advantage because metal does have some
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flex and some give to it so if you're making the best contact with the middle
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and then putting a lot of pressure it'll actually spread the contact patch a little bit and you'll get the best
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cooling that way because the CPU die itself under the heat spreader is only
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about yay big anyhow so something to
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note um very shiny heat pipes little attention to detail stuff
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see short see short connector right why
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isn't everybody doing this because the CPU power pan header is never further
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away from like you know the CPU than like here you know this kind of radius
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so it makes a lot of sense to do that and if it's a little bit closer it looks
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a lot cleaner if you know you give it a little little Loop like that and then
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just plug it in really really close makes everything look really clean if you have a longer connector on the fan
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what it ends up looking like is kind of cheesy I don't know if I have yeah I do
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have another one so this for example is a CPU fan intended to be installed on a
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CPU see it comes with like a bracket to attach it to the cooler so if you pull
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that trick on this one it still ends up looking kind of stupid cuz it's huge
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whereas if you have a nice short uh short cable then it can look really
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really clean so I think that pretty much covers it thank you for checking out my
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unboxing and first look at the be quiet!
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dark Rock 2 don't forget to subscribe for lus techtips for more unboxings
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