INTRODUCTION

   Tower design CPU Coolers may have been around for roughly a decade now but it wasn't until a few years ago that several manufacturers thought about combining two heatsinks to make the main body of the cooler instead of one thus increasing its cooling potential. Dual tower solutions were later on called sandwich type ones since in between the two heatsinks some manufacturers placed a fan to increase airflow between the fins thus improving the overall cooling efficiency of the cooler (some used that one fan only while others used two and even 3 in push and pull configuration). Today we finally see most CPU Cooler manufacturers walk down that same path and although for the majority of consumers even single tower CPU Coolers offer the best bang for their buck for overclockers, enthusiasts and even professionals in some cases dual tower models are well worth the extra cost. Be Quiet! has been in the business of manufacturing some of the best CPU Coolers around and today we will be checking out their latest Dark Rock Pro 3 CPU Cooler.

   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.

   It hasn't really been that long since be Quiet! released the Dark Rock Pro 2 CPU Cooler so we didn't really expect to see many differences with the Dark Rock Pro 3 model and it turns out that we were partially right. Well after taking a quick look at the specifications sheet of the brand new Dark Rock Pro 3 we see that compared to its predecessor it features a higher thermal design power (250W/220W), is also equipped with two SilentWings fans 120mm and 135mm in size (uses the newer 6 pole models however), has slightly more aluminum fins in total (90/88), also features seven 6mm thick nickel plated all-copper heatpipes and is both slightly lighter (1197g/1250g) and smaller (150x137x163mm/147x138x166mm). So it seems that be Quiet! did work on the design of the cooler quite a bit so the only thing left for us to do is to check and see whether or not the modifications they made are extensive enough to boost performance even further compared to its predecessor.