INTRODUCTION

   I may not enjoy using small PC systems mainly because I’ve gotten used to working with the largest towers available in the market for as far back as i can remember but most people i know have no problem with that and since they care not about serious overclocking nor do they care about high-end CPU performance they almost always turn towards low-profile CPU cooling solutions. Now as you all know in the market currently there are the medium sized low-profile CPU coolers which are not very smaller compared to regular tower coolers and are aimed towards small ATX cases and the really compact low-profile CPU coolers which are targeted towards mini-ITX and mini-ATX cases. Be quiet! released the medium-sized Shadow Rock LP low-profile CPU cooler a few months back and since many of you asked for it we decided to check and see how it compares against other low-profile models.

   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.

   With a height of just 75.4mm the Shadow Rock LP by be quiet! may not be among the very few compact low-profile C-Type (top-down) CPU coolers that have appeared in the market lately (like for example the NH-L9x65 by Noctua) but at the same time since it's also not large (unlike for example the NH-C14 again by Noctua) it lands somewhere in between and thus can be used not only in regular ATX compatible cases but also in many (if not most) mini-ITX and mini-ATX ones. It also features a pretty good TDP (Thermal Design Power) of 130W and comes fitted with a Silent Wings 2 120mm rifle-bearing PWM fan which features an MTBF (mean time between failures) of 80.000 hours. As usual however the real question is just how good is it so let's move forward and see.