be quiet! BK024 Dark Rock Slim, CPU Cooler, 180W TDP, Silent Wings 3 120mm PWM Fan, Compact Construction

My real-world experience with the BeQuiet "Slim":I've been building my 3D workstations with Noctua CPU Coolers for more than 12 years. Excellent performance, build quality and technical support. But, they're expensive, HUGE, and let's face it. FUGLY! Babypoop brown and fleshtone may look fine lurking in a dark case, but will never look good behind glass side panels! My most recent build needed to be relatively low-cost, and I wanted to *actually* have access to all the RAM slots without removing the CPU fans and/or the cooler. So, I switched to the BeQuiet Slim. Smaller size, easy access to RAM slots, and looks very cool in black.With the BeQuiet cooler my AMD RyZen 2700X (modestly overclocked to 4.125MHz) is stable and fairly quiet. CPU temps are hovering around 70 degrees celsius under continuous heavy 3D rendering loads for *days*! It bears mentioning that I have four 140mm high output Noctua fans (in Grey) in the case, as well as an additional Noctua "puller" fan on the BeQuiet Slim.Cheers!

TLDR: Insane performance (with 2 fans), fits with ram, silent.Long version:I was upgrading from my AMD Ryzen 3600 to an AMD Ryzen 9 5900x and knew I'd need a great cooling solution.I originally bought the Dark Rock, but it was way too big. Wouldn't fit with my ram so I initiated a return.I then bought the Dark Rock Slim and decided that since it comes with mounting brackets for a second fan I would purchase a Silent Wings 3 120mm PWM and slap it on the front to pull air, too.It was a pain in the bum to get the fans on, but when I turned the computer on and started stress testing I noticed something remarkable.My temperatures aren't just low -- they're hard to believe.I'm seeing 24C at idle, and anywhere from 27-30C doing normal work.With an extremely taxing load I'm not seeing anything higher than 55C. I briefly got to 60.. and I mean briefly, when I had 3 separate chrome windows open with 10 windows in each with a chrome extension that was refreshing each tab with a hard refresh every 1 second. Some tabs were YouTube videos, a couple were large data sheets, some were websites, and I even had a Google Video Chat going on too. Plus I can't hear the fans on this heatsink. I can hear all the other fans, but not these! This test I did is not for the faint of heart and my last CPU would not have been able to keep up. I know because I've tried!After my own stress test I turned on Cinebench and observed my performance then, too - and at 100% CPU utilization running all out I never got higher than 56C.I mean... Guys.. Gals... There is ZERO reason to buy a bigger heat sink system when you can get performance like this.Now... Is it because I have 2 fans on the system? I definitely think it's helping!Did I happen to do the worlds most perfect CPU/Heatsink application with the most perfect amount of silicone thermal paste (by the way, I used the paste provided by BeQuiet) and a perfect spread... maybe? Probably not... Anywho.. I'm thrilled. Like... really thrilled. I'm amazed. I still can't believe it.Biostar 450 motherboardMSI 3060ti gfxAMD Ryzen 9 5900x cpu32gb GSkill 3200 ram600 watt "gold" psuPNY 1TB ssdDark Rock SLIM + 2nd (extra) BeQuiet Silent Wings 3 120pwm3 monitors:34in samsung ultrawide 2k28in samsung 4k wide24in dell touchscreen

I built my system 2.5 years ago with the stock AMD Wraith cooler. Cooling was quite adequate, but fairly loud. Recently I began getting high temperatures and the cooling fan was ramping up all the time - turned out the cooler mounting bracket just snapped.Rather than just get replacement brackets (which might well break, being a cheap and dumb design), I opted for the Dark Rock Slim unit (on the BeQuiet! website it indicates the normal Dark Rock model would interfere with my RAM slots on this motherboard). Installation was a bit awkward, mostly getting the fan clipped to the heatsink, because of power cables and the mobo being mounted in the case. Typical new-build would be a snap if the heatsink & fan were installed before placement in the case. Still, not terribly difficult as it was.This thing is almost inaudible up to about 60% and non-intrusive up to about 80%. Because this thing cools so well, I don't need my fan curve to go anywhere near 80%.Tip: (Windows) get Fan Control by Rem0o and tune your fans. It's a great little program with many features.