be quiet Pure Rock 120mm CPU Cooler Review

Introduction

By now I think everyone will have heard about be quiet! A company that is known to release excellent quality products such as PSUs, CPU coolers, fans and even recently a case. All these products are made with three things in mind – quality, performance and aesthetics. The downside to this is that the products are sometimes expensive, but they have always been most certainly worth it, as they include be quiet! fans, which have proven to be some of the best fans on the market.

Today we are going to look at the be quiet! Pure Rock, a budget 120mm fan CPU cooler for multiple sockets. It will be interesting to see how this product performs as it’s the cheapest cooler I have seen from be quiet! let’s hope that they haven’t compromised on the quality or performance.

The Box for the be quiet! Pure Rock follows the same pattern as all of the other be quiet! products we have seen. It has a very nice black background with some rather nice photos of the product. I like to see a uniform theme between products as it instantly tells you which brand the product is from and what to expect.

Other information that can be found on the box includes the specification. As you can see it supports many of the Intel and AMD sockets that we’re used to, so it will fit most modern motherboards. We can also see that this cooler comes with a be quiet! PURE WINGS 2 120mm fan, which is a 1,500 rpm 12v 4-pin PWM fan, which is very quiet.

Inside the box we get a nice bunch of fittings to allow us to mount the CPU cooler, the fittings are for both AMD and Intel. One thing that is missing is a tube or sachet of thermal paste. be quiet! have actually pre applied this to the cooler which for one time application, but if you make a mistake, or want to re-seat the cooler then you are going to have to purchase more thermal paste.

Included with this cooler is also this little spanner, this helps when you are installing the cooler. Using this tool you won’t necessarily need to take the fan off the tower to install which is always good.

As always with be quiet! products you get one of their excellent fans. This is a pure wings 2 and we know from previous experiences with these that they are an excellent balance between cooling and silence.

Now this is where we forget that this is actually a cheap product from be quiet! It looks just as good quality as their high-end, high budget models. I don’t need to say too much more on the aesthetics, pictures say far more than I could ever hope to, they just look beautiful.

The tops of be quiet! coolers are always finished excellently and this one is no exception. I think that having the caps over the 4 heat pipes is an excellent idea. I know be quiet! are not the only company to implement this idea, but they certainly do it well and it adds to the overall quality and finish of the cooler.

The underside is made of CNC machined copper, which ensures the best possible thermal conductivity, as well as a little more eye candy. Unfortunately there is pre-applied thermal paste, which is great for one time use and for people who are a little unsure about applying paste but it does mean that if for whatever reason you need to take the cooler from the CPU then you will have to purchase some aftermarket thermal paste. I much prefer seeing a nice syringe of paste with a cooler rather than it being pre-applied like this. You can also see that this cooler has 4 6mm heat pipes to help dissipate the heat.

Installation for the be quiet! Pure Rock couldn’t be easier, you simply add the back plate to the motherboard using the thumb nuts to hold it in place. You then use the same 4 thumb nuts to screw in the brackets for your desired socket type, once this is done you simply add the cooler and use the provided screws and holding plate to secure your cooler.

Once the cooler is fitted, the fan does very slightly go over the top of our RAM. This isn’t much of a problem as with the be quiet! Pure Rock you are able to move the fan to the other side of the cooler, but for those who wish to have it on the same side of the RAM or have motherboards with RAM on both sides of the cooler, then you will need low profile RAM.

So, we have seen how this product looks, let’s see how it performs!