be quiet! Shadow Rock Slim  - CPU Cooler - 160W TDP

My super old Corsair closed loop CPU water cooling block died so I needed a not too expensive cooler to tide me over until I do a new full computer build. This cooler was well-reviewed on several sites.First impressions:This fan is big! Maybe I was so used to staring at my tiny watercooler block? That being said the actual heat sink is fairly thin. Big fan = good cooling with low RPMs.Install:The only down side is that the instructions were printed pretty tiny and thus hard to read. The backplate is held in place by plastic retaining clips. No you don't have to snap them on to the base of the screws - they are meant only to hold the backplate in place temporarily until you can affix the screws on the main side. Came with plenty of thermal paste although most enthusiasts will prob want to pick up their own "high end" thermal paste. I cleaned the CPU with some acetone and applied a thin layer of paste. The heatsink base is well polished. For my Z68 Mobo I screwed on two arms onto the cooler base and these lined up well with the backplate holes. No issues - everything lined up well.Use:This cooler really impressed me. With my i7-2600K clocked to 3.5 (stock is 3.4) GHz, I'm getting temps in the mid 40's (C) under full load.Would recommend!

This cooler is compact and is very well-built. The aluminum finish on top compliments metallic/silver cases very nicely makes for a clean, elegant and industrial appearance.Cooling performance is acceptable - it's on par with Hyper 212 Evo and performs better than my Corsair H75 liquid cooler without the added noise.As far as price/performance is concerned - It performs better than Cryorig H7 for a few dollars more and looks significantly better than Noctua coolers while being a bit cheaper. I personally think the cooler is sitting at a very good spot. Build quality is on par with Noctua without the elegant packaging and case badges.I think Bequiet coolers deserve a lot more attention than what I'm seeing based on the 4 reviews left so far. Traditionally speaking, good looking air coolers are rare (hence all the people going AIO liquid coolers), however, this item looks much sleeker in person compared to all my Corsair liquid coolers and is way quieter in comparison.I think I will be buying more Bequiet! products in the future. :)

This unit is replacing a Corsair H60 liquid cooling setup that had been running on an Intel i7 3770 for 6 years. The cooler is working well and keeps the CPU at 38 C at idle using the included thermal paste. No real added noise level to the system to keep it at that level is a plus. My biggest complaint is the HSF mounting setup for the 1155 pin CPU. Following the instructions as diagrammed didn't really work and took a little extra ingenuity to get it to mount right. However once that was figured out it mounted fine and seems pretty sturdy. I'll give Corsair better marks for their mounting setup for this pin CPU. Other than that the cooler is good for the money and does a good job keeping the CPU cool.

Well. It's dead silent and keeps my non OC card sitting at a whopping 30-35C. I do have a fractal R5 AtX w/o windows with the cages removed and stock fans. All in all once I toyed with my fan settings and speed in my mobos BiOS I found an optimal manual setting with ultimate cooling per sound performance. This thing does its job well.Only difficulty was the installation. REALLY READ the instructions and take your time. Took me a while playing with the plates and screws and all. Recommend watching some videos online.Other than that. Great buy and will keep this post updates.