be quiet! Dark Rock Slim Review

Introduction

The Dark Rock line of air coolers is among the best in the industry, and the best that be quiet! is offering. Let's take a look if the most compatible (ultra-slim) model can compete with the other ones!

What's in the Box?

The ultra-compatible Dark Rock Slim out of be quiet!'s Dark Rock line of air coolers comes in the usual be quiet! styled box containing some imagery and the usual specs.

Once every object is removed from the box, we will find the following items:

• be quiet! Dark Rock Slim Heatsink
• Silent Wing 3 120mm PWM
• Intel Mounting
• AMD Mounting
• 2x Sets of Clips
• Thermal Paste

Although it is a beloved item among many PC builders, the be quiet! Dark Rock Slim is the first be quiet! cooler that we encountered that doesn't come with one of be quiet!s iconic Philips Head screwdrivers... Although this is a very saddening moment as we wanted to one day have a double-digit collection, we have to remind you that due to the heatsink's thickness, any other screwdriver (including the one you used to open up your case) will be usable to install this cooler. Therefore we do understand the lack of necessity to include one with this model.

Down below we also attached a short summary of the most important specs:

Compatibility

The Dark Rock Slim comes with a compatibility list long enough to be considered complete for today's standard. Additionally, we would like to mention that the Dark Rock Slim now also comes with an LGA 1700 Mounting Kit included for newer intel 12th gen CPUs.

Individual Components

Fan

The Fan that comes included with a Dark Rock Slim is one of be quiet!'s High-End Line Silent Wing 3 Fans. However, despite it looking like a regular Silent Wing 3 120mm Fan, this one comes with a 1500RPM max rotation speed. 

This slightly higher (yes only 50RPM), the fan does not come with any other information available. However, due to the difference being only 50rpm, we will just assume that this fan will perform exactly like a regular 120mm Silent Wing within the margin of error.

Ignoring this odd change in fan speed, the Fan is also coming with a 220mm long PWM cable.

Heatsink

The heatsink of the Dark Rock Slim looks exactly how the same would suggest. Slim.

Compared to a Dark Rock 4, the Slim version is basically a third of the size.

By rutting away heatsink fin real-estate on both sides of the cooler, be quiet! created a heatsink that appears to be the bare minimum to still be able to fit in those 4 Heatpipes that are used in there.

With close to no room to spare, the Dark Rock Slim comes in at only 50mm Heatsink width, or 72mm with the fan combined.

At the bottom of the cooler be quiet! made use of a copper nickel-plated base that we would describe as suitable for today's standards.

Due to the Heatsink being so extremely thin, even with the fan combined, there is nothing that could create an issue on the left and right of the cooler. No matter how tall the VRM Heatsink or Ram sticks are, they will most definitely fit whilst using this cooler.

Appearance

Compared to basically every other Air cooler out of the Dark Rock Series, the Slim fits in perfectly. 

With the iconic all-black ceramic-coated design paired with the orange be quiet! logo on the heatsink, there is nothing else than a feeling of strength when looking at this cooler. This is not even being reduced by the cooler's ridiculous thin design, something that already bothered us on other models.

Additionally, the quality also did not take a hit with this form factor. No wiggle, no cut corners, nothing, it is truly a Dark Rock Series cooler.

Benchmark

We tested the Dark Rock Slim on top of our usual bench table.

While cooling down our 3900X, the Dark Rock Slim managed to keep the CPU at 55°C above ambient, just a single degree behind the Dark Rock 4.

On the Noise-to-Performance end, the Dark Rock Slim managed to perform exactly as we expected. Compared to a thicker Dark Rock 4, the Slim version performs exactly like it, just without that 10% performance headroom created by the thicker radiator and 135mm-sized fan.

All in all, the Dark Rock Slim performed even better than we expected. Being extremely close to the Dark Rock 4 in our benchmark, it turned out that the Slim version can handle pretty significant cooling jobs after all.

Conclusion

The be quiet! Dark Rock Slim left us pretty baffled after we finished our benchmarks. Not only did it perform significantly better than we expected considering its ridiculous form factor and Fan speed, but it did so while not being far behind its significantly bigger Dark Rock 4.

But the Dark Rock Slim's biggest advantage comes in its noise. From start to finish, our Microphone had an extremely hard time even acknowledging that the fan was spinning in the room.

However, we do believe that the "slimness" of the Dark Rock Slim is a bit exaggerated. Although we can confirm a 100% compatibility with whatever skyscraper Ram or VRM Heatsink you could find, the distance to the Slim is a bit too much. In our opinion, the Slim could have been manufactured with fins a bit longer, thus making the Heatsink 1-2cm thicker. This could have created to necessary overhead in performance needed to be safely used on higher-class CPUs.

But don't take the last paragraph the wrong way, the Dark Rock Slim is a very good performing cooler considering its size. And even the quality part did not take a cut. However, we can only recommend this cooler to be used on CPUs in the mid-tier range. Intel i5 12600k, 5600x would be a perfect fit. For anything above that, we would recommend going with the higher-tier Dark Rock 4. For low-performance tasks, the difference will be unnoticeable, but the bigger Heatsink and Fan will come in handy once these Turbo-clocks kick in. But for any use cases involving the CPUs mentioned above (or below them), we can absolutely recommend the be quiet! Dark Rock Slim.