be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5 CPU Cooler Review

A Closer Look

One thing that fills me with hope is the mounting kit, a far cry from the frankly awful mounting system they used previously. There’s a durable metal backplate, some Intel arms, some AMD arms, and a few screws, and that’s it, as the brackets on the cooler are universal and ready to screw down to these two mounting arms.

The cooler itself looks amazing and is certainly smart enough to rival the rather stunning DeepCool Assassin IV, however, I do think the Assassin looks even better, as it’s all enclosed rather than having a fan hanging off the front, but that’s subjective of course.

The fins look great too, with a dual tower design and a staggered design at the back that’ll help create some small vortexes in the air to pull more heat from the cooler.

The side is neat and tidy too, with the middle fan having a wider side plate built into it, sealing up the gap between the two parts of the heatsink.

There’s also this lovely full-size top-plate, which is magnetically mounted, and features mesh ventilation that both looks cool, but will also prevent hot spots from building up under it.

The middle fan has a top frame attached to it with a built-in fan control switch, and there’s a split in the fan cable allowing you to sync up the 120mm fan on the front with the fan controller too. In Quiet Mode, the maximum fan speed is 1500 RPM for the 120mm and 1300 RPM for the 135mm. In performance mode, that’s changed up to 2000 RPM and 1700 RPM respectively.

The whole thing is tool-free too, you can slide the middle fan out for easy installations and maintenance.

The fan in the middle is a 135mm Silent Wings while the outside fan is a 120mm model, which both look great and match up with the rest of the latest be quiet! fan products you will see in everything from their PSUs to their cases.

With everything removed, the heatsinks look stunning, with seven U-shaped copper heat pipes running through each tower.

There’s even a block of aluminium fins right on the CPU block which will help further dissipate the heat more evenly throughout the cooler.

The seven heat pipes are pretty chunky, and fully cover the beautifully milled CPU block.