Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 2 CPU Cooler Review
Ryan Martin / 12 years ago
Stock acoustics were brilliant, the fan didn’t really change at all even under Prime95 load. It was our quietest CPU cooler under load so far.
Overclocked acoustics were surprising. When our CPU exceeded the package temperature threshold of 75 degrees the fans ramped up a fair bit, making the Dark Rock Pro 2 louder than Mugen 3 and Hyper 412 Slim. If you don’t exceed that threshold, which users of Sandy Bridge and Sandy Bridge-E should find easier as those processors run with much lower temperatures, then your acoustics will remain totally silent like in the graph above.
It is also possible to manipulate the PWM controls using fan software or the BIOS because quite frankly the difference in performance by ramping those fans up is marginal anyway – 2 or 3 degrees at the most. Even though the graph is slightly misleading, we can still say the Be Quiet! Dark Rock Pro 2 is the quietest cooler we have ever used during realistic usage scenarios such as gaming, rendering and browsing.
