be quiet! Dark Rock Elite Air Cooler Review

A Closer Look

be quiet! has a very slick-looking cooler with the Elite. I rather liked the look of the Dark Rock 5 Pro, but I felt the external fan just looked a bit slapped on the side. However, with the Elite, you get this much more stylish sculpted fan mount that gives it a more streamlined look.

Here’s a look at the Dark Rock 5 Pro (below) compared to the Elite (above), and as subjective as it may be, I would say the Elite looks much better.

The cooler features the latest Silent Wings 135mm fans, and in be quiet!’s own words it uses an “Innovative front fan mounting system for maximum usability and RAM compatibility”.

The middle fan is mounted onto the full-cover magnetic top plate, giving it a sort of T-shape design for the whole unit, and it just slides down between the two massive cooling towers.

The top plate covers the top of the towers, but also has some mesh on the top that matches the aesthetic of the latest be quiet! PC cases, but will also ensure you don’t get any unwanted heat build-up here.

Around the back, there’s a stepped design to the fins on the rear tower, this will help diffuse and change the flow of air, allowing it to move the air away from the cooler more efficiently. The towers look stunning too with their black ceramic coating that just gives everything a more premium aesthetic.

The cooler features 7 massive heat pipes that pass through both towers and come together into a huge polished cold plate to provide excellent CPU coverage. To the sides, you can see two screws, this is the integrated mounting system.

These make for a much easier install, when the middle fan is installed, the screws recess into the middle fan shroud to keep things looking neat and tidy.

That means you have to slide the middle fan housing out of the tower to install the cooler, and it simply lifts out without the use of tools.

With it removed, you can see the second Silent Wings fan, and interesting for be quiet! these are their rarer much higher RPM fans, giving you a choice between their usual lower RPM quiet mode, but being more capable of up to 2000 RPM in their new performance mode.

Now you can reach your screwdriver down the middle to mount the tower to the motherboard.

Under the top plate, you can lift the surround off and reach a switch to toggle between Q and P modes, and that means the cooler doesn’t require additional software to control its max RPM, which is great!