be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5

INTRODUCTION

After waiting for way too long, it is finally here, the next-gen Dark Rock Pro. It's time to take a closer look at the be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5 and find out how good it truly is!

WHAT'S IN THE BOX?

be quiet!'s newest high-end dual tower air cooler comes inside an iconic be quiet! styled box. Once everything is removed from the box, you will find the following items:

• be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5 & Fans
• Installation Hardware AMD & Intel
• Thermal Paste
• Screwdriver

Down below you will also find a short summary of the coolers specs:

COMPATIBILITY

Similar to all recently released be quiet! products, the Dark Rock Pro 5 uses the same type of installation hardware found on their Silent and Pure Loop lineup. Thanks to the multi-platform approach, the Dark Rock Pro 5 keeps a relatively long compatibility list featuring all the nowadays relevant sockets.

A very exciting new aspect of the newest generation in contrast to the previous one, is that the central mounting bridge present on the Pro 4 is finally gone. The new generation comes with all the mounting mechanics necessary on the heatsink side already pre-installed and hard-mounted to it. Thanks to this, the installation procedure turned out to be significantly easier and thus more enjoyable as a whole. Additionally, in previous generations, an installation of a Dark Rock was notoriously hard inside a standing PC. Thanks to the new approach, it is just as easy as with other high-end coolers.

Down below you will find the full compatibility list:

INDIVIDUAL COMPONENTS

FAN

The fans coming with the Dark Rock Pro 5 are unreleased versions of be quiet!'s recently released Silent Wing 4 lineup.

On the right side of the cooler, a 120mm sized 2000RPM quick PWM fan is mounted to the heatsink using regular fan clips. Unfortunately, no additional information about the fans amount of air or static pressure is known.

In between the two towers, a 135mm 1700RPM Silent Wing 4 is mounted down. Instead of relying on fan clips, this fan is hard-mounted to the cover covering the top side of the cooler. Due to this permanent connection, removing the top cover will automatically pull the fan out of its position.

Both fans are powered using a regular PWM connection, however, instead of including a PWM splitter, as be quiet! did on previous coolers, the fans on the Pro 4 can be connected to each other using a proprietary connection forwarding the PWM signal. But don't worry about proprietary things, as soon as the cable exits the middle fan, it is back to ordinary 4-Pin PWM connectable to your CPU_FAN header.

A quite pleasant surprise was the type of fan clip be quiet! used on the right fan. Instead of the straight clip used on the Pro 4, the new clip has a little out-sticking middle section protruding out of the heatsink. This makes installation and removable significantly easier.

HEATSINK

The most important aspect of any air cooler is still the heatsink. And for the Dark Rock Pro 5, be quiet! did an excellent job.

At roughly 165mm in height, the Dark Rock Pro 5 boasts a symmetrical dual tower heatsink.

While both towers are equally thick on their outer edges, one of them becomes thinner towards the center compared to the other one.

Similarly to every other Dark Rock previously released, the heatsink of the Pro 5 comes in an all-black finish with its surface material being the same ceramic coating be quiet! used before.

Another interesting aspect about the Dark Rock Pro 5 is its mini-heatsink present on top of its base. Although something remotely similar was already present on the Dark Rock Pro 4, the one on the Pro 5 is significantly more effective by spreading across the whole base.

BASE

At the bottom of the cooler, we will find a similar nickel-plated copper base. However, instead of only using 6x heat pipes, the Pro 5 boats a total of 7. Going up from the base, the pipes create an array of 5 rows. The first and last row group the most outer heat pipes in serial, a design approach be quiet! already used on previous models.

Speed Switch

The outer shell of the top cover is magnetically attached to the rest of the cover. Underneath and easily reachable, we will find a little speed dial.

Similar to the Silent Wing 4 Pros, we can manually throttle the max speed of both fans to 1300 and 1700RPM respectively.

Although quite useful for low-powered builds, we would still advise you to set the dial to max performance whilst setting up an appropriate fan curve.

APPEARANCE

In contrast to the previous edition, the Dark Rock Pro 5 features a significantly more polished, or modern design. Where previously, the Pro 4 was covered using aluminum plates and fans, the most obvious feature of the Pro 5's design will be the top cover.

The cover is partially filled by a mesh filter with a portion of plastic in the center featuring a white be quiet logo.

Generally, the all-black design of the Dark Rock Pro 5 is an iconic staple of the Dark Rock lineup. A design approach that we always enjoyed thanks to its easy integration and cleanness in every use-case.

Compared to the previous generation, the design looks more polished and updated, fit to be called a 2023 update.

BENCHMARK

We benchmarked the cooler using our new CPU Cooler Benchmark Machine featuring 3 different Workloads at 320, 250, and 120W.

To our very surprise, the be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5 was one of the very first air coolers that managed to survive the 320W workload. Therefore, all three workloads were applied.

120W

On the "light" workload at 120W, the Dark Rock Pro 5 managed to keep the CPU at 32.9°C, .6°C in front of the Noctua NH-D15. Compared to all coolers, especially the previous generation Dark Rock Pro 4, the new iteration boasts some serious performance improvements making it perform significantly better than most other air coolers.

Slowly lowering the fan speed allowed us to create a noise-to-performance curve. On this, we were able to observe how much of an improvement the updated cooler truly is.

Compared to the NH-D15, the DRP5 was keeping up a better ratio almost all the way down, with only exactly 50% fan speed on both coolers was on Noctua's side.

250W

At 250W, the Dark Rock Pro 5 kept the CPU at 64.3°C above ambient, again, in front of the NH-D15 and at the very top of all air coolers.

The corresponding noise-to-performance graph looks surprisingly similar to the 120W. From start to finish, the Dark Rock Pro 5 was always one of the best air coolers out there, while losing to the NH-D15 solely on a single measuring point.

320W

As a premiere for us, the be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5 managed to keep up with our 320W workload, a workload that was previously solely for the best-in-class AIOs.

Although the DRP5 kept the CPU at the last spot of our list with 85.5°C above ambient, every other air cooler is already gone at this point, making this a new best-in-class result.

The corresponding noise-to-performance line isn't really a line and more a dot. But even if the DRP5 managed to only create a single measuring point during the 320W workload, at least it did, something that no air cooler was able to do before it.

CONCLUSION

Astonishing. 

Although the new be quiet! Dark Rock Pro 5 already scored some major points thanks to its quite good build quality and overall design & aesthetic, we became truly impressed once we saw the benchmark results.

Compared to any other air cooler we have benchmarked in the past, be quiet's new Dark Rock Pro 5 is on a whole other level. For both 120W and 250W workloads, the DRP5 was at the top of the graph, dominating even bigger 360mm AIOs. However, while doing so, the noise created by the cooler is kept at an absolute minimum from start to finish, finally pushing the Noctua NH-D15 off its throne.

The biggest surprise came once we started the 320W workload. Although we weren't hopefully as we have never seen an air cooler survive this level of heat for longer than a few seconds, the new Dark Rock Pro did it. It not only did it, but it also managed to create a few measuring points allowing us to create a noise-to-performance line. And as the cherry on top, at 320W, the DRP5 outperformed a 360mm AIO.

Thanks to all the changes to the heatsink, additional heat pipe, and improved fans, be quiet! created a new cooler which should now be considered as being the best-in-class.

But another great change implemented in the Dark Rock Pro 5 is the updated mounting mechanic. Thanks to the central mounting bridge being finally a thing of the past, the DRP5 installation procedure has improved significantly making it at least equal to other high-end cooler alternatives.

Due to all the performance reasons mentioned above, as well as its clean and modern design, we are definitely recommending the Dark Rock Pro 5 for every consumer-grade use case.