be quiet! Pure Rock, CPU Cooler with 150W TDP

The main reason I got this cooler was because of its height compared to the other coolers (CM 212 Black) I was researching. I had no problem with ram or case clearance (might be different for you). I've been using the be Quiet! Pure Rock cooler for 3 days now, and it's amazing. I overclocked my i7 920 to 4GHZ from 2.4 (couldn't go any further due to voltage). It's running at around 75C at max load with Prime95 (using all 16GB of RAM as well). I used SpeedFan to control the fan on the cooler, and I barely noticed an audible difference between 0 and 100% fan speed, while my GPU (RX 570) sounded like a jet engine at 100%. The cooler was easy to install (10 minutes). Be aware there is pre-applied thermal paste, and the small cover on it comes off easily. Learned that the hard way when it smeared on the table, but I had a tube of thermal paste lying around, so I wiped the somewhat old thermal paste off and used that paste. The durability was not that much worse than the Dark Rock 4 ($70) a family member has. At $36 this thing is a steal, especially for someone concerned with noise levels.

I'm very impressed with the quality of this unit, especially at this price point. It arrived in perfect condition, no bent fins, great packaging. While the pictures on Amazon show 130w TDP, my box says 150w. I'm using this on a ryzen am4 socket build. The am3 bracket clips included in this kit work great, just be patient because they can be tricky to install. The instructions are pretty much worthless, so a do a few dry runs before committing. Mounting with the am4 bracket forces you to use the horizontal position, fan parallel with the GPU. On my motherboard, this blocks a DIMM slot.The PURE ROCK comes with thermal paste pre installed. I removed it and replaced with Noctua NT-H1. With an overclocked Ryzen 1700 (3.9GHz), I'm seeing idle temps in the 36-38 degree range; Cinebench, 70-73 degrees; gaming 60-65 degrees. Even at full speed the fan is exceptionally quiet, my GPU is louder (Fury X pump noise).I highly recommend this to anyone looking to do a mild overclocking on a budget, or if you want a quiet PC.

All the past reviews remark on a lack of brackets for AM4, but that is now long past.Compared to my old Hyper 212 EVO that cooled a FX 8320E, the pure rock was MUCH easier to install, no silly X-bracket to sweat bullets over, just two brackets and a cross-bar with two screws. It's also slightly shorter than the 212 Evo but with more surface area, which is a plus!And even at full load, it's relatively quiet and keeps my idle temps for my Ryzen 2600X relatively cool and under loads, both synthetic and real-world. Grizzly Kryonaut is a great pairing with this cooler as well.

Let me start by saying that I love this cooler. I purchased it to replace a budget CPU cooler that I had bought when getting my initial PC built. That cooler had become Very loud and no longer effectively cooled my CPU. I was getting temps in the 80s under max load while idling at nearly 45C. Now everything is golden. The Fan really is quiet. I can hear my fridge running two rooms over before I notice the fan. Now my temps are back where i like them. 30C while idle and then a respectable upper 60C under load. Granted the cooler hasn't been fully broken in yet so there is time for some of this to equalize, but so far, I am more than pleased.Here is where it gets dicey. Installing this cooler if you already have your PC built and motherboard mounted is an absolute pain. My Case has a cover on the back so getting the existing backplate off and installing the one that came with this cooler was easy enough. However, even in my Full size ATX case I had problems with getting the heatsink and fan put together. on an 1151 intel chipset it the heatsink was difficult to secure while maintaining good pressure on CPU in order to not mess up the thermal application. Once the heatsink was mounted the fan brackets require you to have a lot of free room in order to spread them out and pull back over the heatsink to secure. With the mother board already mounted in my case I did not have enough room on either side because of the top of the case and my Graphics card. I was able to eventually secure the fan, but not without slicing my fingers up a bit.If you are installing as part of a fresh build you will have none of the above issue as space wont be an issue.All in all I am satisfied with the product and how it is functioning, though the hassle with set up for an already configured case might not be worth the effort for some.