bequiet Dark Rock TF Review

Today we look at the bequiet Dark Rock TF cooler - worth the £60+ asking price?

[xezee]

Apparently, this is the only video showing DR TF AMD installation. These AMD remarks really made me smile :)

[amunderdog]

I know this is an old video, but it still is.
So I wanted to address Leo's problem with OC thermals.
OC with an air cooler seems to need very aggressive fan curves.
If you let temps rise and have the PWM fans respond, the cooler will get behind and the temps can run away.
The case and CPU fans RPM's, should respond early and stay ahead of rising temperatures.

[Tseuqgninaem]

I know this is an old video but you are are only one of two channels to review the P360a case. I want to know if this Cooler fits in case without touching the glass panel of the P360a

[johnrafale]

So top flow(dark rock tf) is better then side flow(dark rock pro 3)?

[MrMittens]

I'm thinking of pairing the DR TF with an 'Aorus z390 extreme' in a Silverstone Grandia GD08 case. I'm not sure if it'll work with the z390 extreme board though due to the large heatsinks on the VRMs.

[drshovelhands]

great review, really useful. I'm in the battle of deciding for an aftermarket cooler for my first ever build and I'm a bit stuck picking a cooler. at the minute my stock cooler is throttling at 83/84 on some of the more demanding games (witcher 3). I play to improve overall airflow with the replacement heatsink in the case
I have an fx8350 in a microATX case with a max cooler height of 152mm. Apparently the 8350 is particularly hot under load
anyone care to recommend other coolers I could take a look at on the uk side of the ocean?

[Eyeopeness]

I'm still using X58 a legendary platform, I won't be changing anytime soon either.

[airixxxx]

Hello, great review. Do you think it would fit on an EVGA Hadron Air with an Asus Impact VII motherboard?

[johnbovay]

Thank you for confirming my misgivings and doubts about the Dark Rock TF's mounting hardware and its claimed TDP rating.

It seems that the Noctua NH-C14S remains the only large, down-draft CPU cooler on the market that's worth considering for installation on a socket AM3+ system.

[ratanvenkatesan]

Remember the old Pentium 4 days when it was Intel that needed proper cooling? Memories...

[ETILHK]

So it's not perfect, and there are better options, but seems like it gets the job done. I also like philosophy behind the brand, looks and build quality. I guess I made my decision.

[Nargs]

thanks mate, this helped me make my decision

[PaddyMayneUK]

Love the look of that Silverstone case, review please ! NAG NAG NAG. :)

[elijahmodnar]

shouldnt a review for (any) cpu cooler be conducted in a conventional pc case and not this impractical case??

[keenable]

Heat pipe orientation matters, DONT installing the cooler with the bends pointing upwards!

[brooklynforge]

I resent the fanboy comment, I go with AMD because they are better for multi-threading and Intel has been a dick as a company in the past.

[techtipsuk]

Whether anyone would use on an older mobo is totally irrelevant IMO. It supports them, end of story.

[TheRitualChannel]

Direct contact heat pipes are OVERRATED 🤣

[olivialambert]

Whilst I am an AMD fangirl I went for AMD for a number of reasons. Of course there is the price per performance benefit, mid range (top AMD) CPUs are incredibly cheap vs Intel. Secondly AMD almost never change their socket whilst Intel have been changing sockets like crazy. Thus when it came time to upgrade my Phenom II there wasn't a socket to change, no new mobo, no new build, no new RAM. Now they will be changing socket with their next CPU in a few months, AMD Zen, and that includes an upgrade to DDR4 etc. so thats more a point in the past and future, not present. Next we have Intel's business plan, they think very little of their customers. AMD will provide great heatsinks to bin, they will happily provide overclocking software and make it easy to overclock and they genuinely work for their customers. Intel are absolute dicks. They change sockets often for no reason but to force a new rebuild, they love locking out most CPUs from overclocking and they only build the CPUs as good as needed to make a sale rather than as good as they can be, a money saving effort as shown by the Skylake heat spreader and its poor thermal paste vs most other CPUs from both brands being soldered to the IHS. Finally as a gamer an AMD CPU is all thats needed. Until this week I have been using a Phenom II with an AMD Fury (the worst combination for AMD CPUs) and yet I have been happily playing every single modern game out, I have tested myself on SteamVR and I have been playing the vive itself. All of this, no issues at all. The Phenom II is starting to lack cache and so my upgrade had to be done some time this year, but as the FX CPUs have outstanding cache similar to/beyond the i7 it won't be an issue for a long time (similar to if you ignore the clustered CPU effect of AMD, otherwise more). The Phenom II had more than enough computing power for all modern games at ultra graphics and as such the new FX has been throttling its multiplier and dropping from 4000MHz to around 3500MHz or even 2800MHz whilst playing games at above my monitor's refresh rate. Indeed at around 3000MHz I scored just under 9.0 on SteamVR and have hit above that without overclocks on my CPU or GPU. Ie. the 8370 will be good for top gaming for the next few years just as the Phenom II lasted happily for 6 years on top graphics. Indeed my motherboard is still in use. DirectX 12 will heavily favour multicore processors. DX 11 allowed for multicore but still stressed 1 CPU a lot more than the rest (even moreso with AMD GPUs). DX 12 will spread the load across all 8 cores very evenly giving a huge boost to AMD processors. And finally lets not forget that a CPU cooler lasts a long time. You don't buy one £150 processor and one £70 heatsink every single time. You buy one £150 processor every few years and you buy one £70 heatsink every few processors. Once again that pushes the price performance towards AMD. I went AMD, for my Motherboard, RAM, CPU and heatsink for 2 computers I spent £590. The same for 2 Intel computers would make £1110. If nothing else think of the 1-2 extra GPUs you could buy in that time with AMD. And that is why I am an AMD fangirl. GPUs are for another reason, but to put it quickly nvidia are dicks to their customers and gamers in general and AMD GPUs will absolutely dominate nvidia in dx12, particularly pre-1080/1070 cards. Another benefit is most future games supporting AMD GPUs due to their use in both Xbox and PS4. Fangirl, yes. The intelligent choice anyway, yes.