The be quiet! Dark Rock 5 is a "baby" version of the well-performer Dark Rock Pro 5 and Elite series that be quiet! introduces at the market as good air coolers. The Dark Rock 5 is rated for "only" 210 TDP CPUs, which caught our interest in how this product will perform, compared with the Dark Rock Pro 5 and the Dark Rock Elite as well, keeping in mind its much smaller dimensions and only one 120mm fan included.

The Dark Rock 5 introduces a single tower with an asymmetrical design that offers perfect RAM installation compatibility with good performance. The product has six heat pipes and a rather simple installation method. It supports both Intel and AMD platforms and in any case, users should take a look over be quiet! website for product compatibility, we don't feel they won't have any problem fitting this product even at middle-sized towers. The retail package is complete and inside you will find mounting brackets for adding a second 120mm fan if you want and a long Philips screwdriver that is needed for installation. Thermal paste is also present, even if not be quiet! branded (no name). The included brackets are not hard to install and there is some effort during the final step, just turn few times the included screwdriver on both sides to get an easy installation process.

Passing to the performance, be quiet! rates this product as capable of up to 210Watt TDP, while its bigger brothers (Dark Rock Pro 5 and Dark Pro Elite) are rated for much higher TDPs up to 280Watt. That means for sure this product will perform "worse" than them, however, numbers don't always tell the whole truth. Armed with a modified 120mm Silent Wings 4, the Dark Rock 5 has its place at our benchmarks and can go close to the Dark Rock Pro 5 even at 222watt TDP with only 1.73 Celsius, and the best part is that it won't thermal throttle. The included fan can go down to 0rpm, but we leave the same fan curve for all tests to have direct comparisons.

Coming to the retail price, the Dark Rock 5 will cost close to €69.90, the Dark Rock Pro 5 is around €82,00, and the Dark Rock Elite up to €107.00. All three products have 3 years of warranty and different performance/price ratios. The Dark Rock Elite is in its class and while pricey does deliver top (air) cooling performance. We feel that the Dark Rock 5 is a balanced product with smaller dimensions than the Dark Rock Pro 5, which drops performance, however not to the degree we would be worried. In other words, if you are looking for a small quality and good performance CPU Cooler, the Dark Rock 5 can easily handle even the AMD 7950X processor and possibly even the upcoming 9000 series. Its retail price is good, but the competition, like the Arctic Freezer 36 series, is much lower priced (20.71 Euro), with worse performance of course. It's all about choices and the be quiet! Dark Rock 5 series won't let you down in any case.