bequiet! Shadow Rock Slim Heatsink Review

As with any computer component the designers set out to accomplish a goal and sometimes those goals overlap the different product lines.  Early in this review we mentioned that bequiet! has two cooler lines, the Dark Rock and the Shadow Rock.  These were created to help gain market share and while the cooler may not be the least expensive you are buying thermal and audio performance over the competition.

The interesting thing about the Shadow Rock Slim is that despite the decision to leave the metal raw and untreated they did spent some time making the cooler look good.  A good example of this is the brushed aluminum cover located on top.  This is a pure design element that shows that you can make any cooler look exceptional. 

During our testing we used the Asus turbo fan profile to control the PWM fan.  Despite the name the Turbo profile is actually quite silent when the system is properly cooled however, when CPU temps start to approach 50c the fan speed will ramp up and cause even the bequiet! fan to become audible.  We are happy to say that the larger 135mm fan design did quite well at keeping the Shadow Rock Slim cool and basically confirmed the 160w TDP rating on the box.

Installation was rather straight forward and consisted of picking the proper mounting rails for our system and bolting everything together.  The actual installation process was somewhat cumbersome considering that you have to access both sides of the motherboard to properly install the Shadow Rock Slim on LGA 1155. We recommend doing this outside of a case to make the process as painless as possible.

Traditional Tower Design
Silent 135mm Cooling Fan
Four Heatpipe Design
Thick Fin Radiator
Brushed Heatsink Cover
160w Power Handling

Mounting system is cumbersome and time consuming