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The Be Quiet! Dark Rock Advanced manages to capture the attractive aesthetics of it's bigger brother, the Dark Rock Pro, despite the more compact form factor. The black and nickel colour scheme is sure to fit in well aesthetically with many system builds so we expect to see a number attractive looking rigs based around this cooler.
Our main concern with this range is the fiddly mounting mechanism that really complicates the installation process. Even though the cooler is compatible with every socket used for the last few years, we wouldn't mind sacrificing compatibility with some of the older AMD sockets for a simpler design like Noctua's.
We were quite pleased with the temperature results that we recorded with the Dark Rock Advanced and we were able to achieve a reasonable stable overclock without too much work. We did manage to achieve some higher overclocks without any more voltage demands, but these weren't completely stable. The low noise level of this cooler is a big selling point and really lives up to the Be Quiet!'s name. Those with sensitive ears will love this design.
As we mentioned earlier in the review, the Dark Rock Advanced can be purchased for a shade under £40 at Overclockers which we think offers reasonable value for money. That said, there is a lot of competition in the market around this price point from a handful of different manufacturers. For example, the impressive Noctua U12P cooler can be had for only around £4-5 more and the mounting mechanism is far superior.
Pros
- Beautiful design
- Good cooling performance
- Very quiet fan
Cons
- Complicated mounting system
- Can only be mounted vertically on AMD
KitGuru says: If you value low noise and don't want to compromise on cooling efficiency then this certainly is a great product.
