All set, ready to buy. I ordered the fractal case yesterday since shipping time is a week. Everything else ships much quicker.
So as I check various prices, you can’t miss this giant, most popular negative review on Amazon for the Dark Rock Slim and also Silent Wings 3 individually:
Long Scary Amazon Review
So first thing first, I am leaving the review for both the BeQuiet Dark Rock Pro 4 and BeQuiet Silent Wings 3 at the same time, so you can see the context of my review.
I want to start by addressing that I am a sound engineer, and a person with an ear that most just don’t have. I have difference in mini-decibel range (10th of a decibel), I am a recording engineer, with a psychology understanding of the brain, and I have built computers for a while now. I have tried more fans you can imagine, but actually listened to them besides of using them as well.
Here is what I can tell you for both of Dark Rock Pro 4 and BeQuiet Silent Wings:
They produce frequences below the level of human ear hearing, and above hearing range of normal human being.
We can hear from 20hz to 20,000 hz, but not everyone, some start hearing from 45 hz, and only hear up to 14,000 hz. Hearing is very important, but the way the brain works is even more important in this review.
The BeQuiet fans in Dark Rock Pro 4 are Silent Wing 3 fans, with 135 mm variation fan specific only to BeQuiet coolers. Those motors/bearing in the fan produce frequencies around 6hz and above 19,000 hz.
Why does it matter? Well, 5 hz is frequency of the brain, if the sound produced is around that frequency it affect the brain, and it can actually make the person very angry (without knowing) or make them sick, physically or mentally. Frequencies above 17 hz are very damaging to the ear drum, they make your ears hurt, and you will feel a dull pain in your eardrums. Reason why, is the follicles in the ear drum are damaged in the process, and the pain is of hair follicles dying. Hair follicles in our ears act as nerves that transfer fluctuation of sound as perceivable sound that is transferred directly to brain, and then decoded into a set of known memories within our database of the brain. The problem with high frequencies is that they damage the ears, make you go deaf eventually, and erode your ear canal follicles in the process. Here is a key issue on top of it, frequencies above 17khz are very seldom heard by a human ear, around 18,000 hz-19,000 khz is where the dangerous zone trully begins, you cannot hear those frequencies (most people) but you are killing your hearing, but your brain is subjected by the sound and goes “insane” after a while. To subject a person to a 19,000-20,000 khz will cause a person to go insane, as will producing 5 hz - 8 hz, that range is very dangerous as well.
I studied science behind it, so I understand it, but I am not paranoid about it.
After sitting for 2 hours next to 3 fans of Silent Wings 3, I started getting annoyed, and I could not figure it out at first. I started hearing my fridge more, I suddenly started hearing air conditioners around my house (that I never noticed), and those sounds started hurting my brain and ears.
I am a logical person, so I started to check outside and inside for any kind of malfunction. What I realized that the frequency of the fans heightened the perception of sounds around, but NOT in a good way. I isolated the issue to the 3 fans first. I removed them, and my pain in the ears and irratation has subsided by about 80%. I returned the fans back to Amazon, but was greeted with the same issue in 4-5 hours of sitting at my computer. My moods are very stable, and they are not fluctuating up and down by the way.
I realized that the fans in the Dark Rock Pro 4 are causing the same issue, but to a lesser degree. Due to them being less rpm, but the frequency is the same, just to a lesser degree.
After removing the cooler, I realized it was not loudness of the fans, but the frequency it produced. I ABSOLUTELY would recommend to STAY AWAY from these fans for health reasons.
That is of course if you belive me, I have nothing to gain by it, but wanted to warn people.
Also I don’t blame BeQuiet, as I am sure they are not aware of this, but maybe you will see that email and do a revision, because I care for people in this situation.
I will be sending them a separate email as well.
Other reasons for return: I am returning Dark Rock Pro 4 for several reasons, this is the main issue. Second issue is that cooling is very unstable. That part is more trivial now. It cannot compete with Corsair H105 that I had, and to me temps are jumping up and down. Tightening the bolts a bit less on the cpu, untill you hit the pressure is enough. Otherwise it will push the thermal paste all over, and thin it out too much where is more physical contact with the cooler, but no thermal paste to speak of now.
I would stay away from this cooler because of the fans first of all, and also, you cannot switch the fans to something else. It uses mounting mechanism that is specific to BeQuiet cooler. I would stay away altogether from it, because of those frequency issues, and unstable cooling performance. The fins are too closely stacked together, and fans cannot push substantial air through the fins to cool it. Fan is too low of rpm, and you cannot replace the fans with off-brand ones like Noctua.
Also, the cooler scuffs from tiniest contact of mounting brackets, chips the paint so easy…you will likely be pissed after a while. Fins bend so easy too, it’s crazy fragile, and black paint just flakes off the fins, and from the mounting brackets.
Quality is poor in my opinion, but I saw some success with it in HIGHLY ventilated case, but you have to be realistic too. I have Cooler Master Geminii S524 cooler, with 4 heatpipes total, and Dark Rock Pro 4 has 14 (7 on each side), my old Cooler Master has a downward fan and never pushes above 72 Celcius on full Noctua fan profile, with Dark Rock Pro 4 I have seen 68-70 on full RPM load. What?
Geminii S524 was $35 by the way. Good engineering vs not so good. BUT…I will give the cooler 3 stars, because it’s not garbage, but it’s poorly designed, and not optimized for overclocking stability. I run Intel i7 4790k at 4.8 ghz, but you are telling me that Geminii with 4 heatpipes handles the cpu just as good but with only 1 Noctua fan vs BeQuiet 2 fans?
Results may vary, but I know what I am talking about, and I have to say…if you want great performance, perhaps go with water cooling AIO, or Noctua’s high end air coolers.
Hopefully it explains it all, even when it comes to cooling with it. Cooler is fragile, fins, paint, and installation is semi-difficult if you have motherboard out of the case, but if it’s in the case mounted…my goodness…may the peace be with you, my friends…it will drive you nuts trying to put those bolts into the bracket.
Unless you have 4 arms and patience of a god.
This guy is schizophrenic, right? Who thinks to themself “Hmmm, my mood has changed, and my moods don’t change, so first thing’s first, lemme check for imperceptible transmissions from my various devices…”
I mean, right? Kind of need answer fast as I’m about to actually purchase an entire case-full of silent wings 3 fans. (3 case fans plus the cpu cooler.)
As for my noise, my build choices ended up being the common recommendations for silent-optimized builds, so a lot of reviews have info on similar setups. One of these on Amazon (for the dark rock slim I think) says his phone measures 0 - 2 dB when he lays it on the computer directly.
Mine reads 42 - 45 dB, but in fairness if I hold the phone near my face where I normally sit it’s more like 30 - 33 dB. Still much too loud for me. Unfortunately the possibility of the noise going away (soon, like next week!) has made the noise intolerable.