INTRODUCTION

   A few days back a good friend of mine decided to build a brand new system purely for HTPC use featuring one of the latest 4770k CPUs by Intel so when the time came for him to decide on a CPU Cooler we turned to me and the end result was him choosing the Antec Kuhler H2O 650 since he wanted good cooling with almost no noise at all (for that he has the fan switch to silent mode). That being said lately many of you out there have asked us to concentrate in doing more reviews about CPU Coolers and although there aren't that many new models in the market right now we will give it our best shot. Now since for the past 2 months or so we've been focusing in reviewing CPU Liquid Systems and high-end CPU Air Coolers we decided that in order to cover each and every single one of our readers our next few reviews should be about mid-end and HTPC low-profile CPU Coolers. The brand new Shadow Rock Slim by our friends at be quiet! is one such product and it has been on our test bench since Monday.

   be quiet! is a premium brand manufacturer of power supplies and cooling solutions for your desktop PC. be quiet! products are convincing which is proved by reaching and defending the market leadership in PSU business in Germany for five consecutive years *. This is validated and accompanied by numerous awards for both power supplies and cooling solutions. be quiet! is awarded for five times in a row as manufacturer of the year in the power supply category by the readers of the well-known German hardware magazine PC Games Hardware. Another first and second rank in the categories “fans” and “cooler” underline the high acceptance of our products. be quiet! sticks to its name: Ten years’ experience in the field of noise reduction and silence make be quiet! products probably the most silent one on the market. Undoubted fans have a large impact of the noise levels of be quiet! products. Due we are using our specially developed Silent Wings fans in nearly all of our range. They are equipped with various noise reducing features. Thanks to these we ensure a really silent operation - our products reach the best balance between cooling performance and a virtually inaudible operation. If you choose be quiet! you can be sure to get premium quality and second to none silent operation from the quietness experts.

   What will probably draw your attention most once you see the 160W TDP (Thermal Design Power) capable Shadow Rock Slim is neither its slim heatsink nor its design but rather the 135mm SilentWings fan be quiet! decided to equip it with which thanks to its very good performance should be able to balance things (size/performance). That being said the Shadow Rock Slim is not really a high performance CPU Cooler and be quiet! certainly doesn't claim otherwise (besides with just 160W TDP it wouldn’t be possible) since its advertised strong points are the no clearance issues with memory modules and the ability to install it inside compact PC cases. Still we are quite curious about how well such a small heatsink can perform and compare against similar solutions so let's find out.