Review be quiet! Pure Rock 2 Review: Quiet, Affordable Performance

AlistairAB

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This review is missing something important. The Cooler Master Hyper 212, 212 Black, or 212 Black RGB. You know, the cooler everyone is comparing with this one.
 
Nobody is comparing anything to the 212 series coolers anymore, because they are not the go to choice for budget cooling and haven't been for a long time.

What WOULD be nice to see however is a comparison to the likes of the Deepcool Gammaxx 400, the NEW Gammaxx 400S, any of the various revisions of the Scythe Mugen 5 (rev. B, C) or something like the Thermalright True spirit 140 direct which itself is only about 40 bucks and pretty much flattens any other cooler in that price range. Unfortunately, it's too tall for some cases, so a shorter unit with a 120mm fan becomes a necessity sometimes, but there is almost, almost always a better choice than the 212 EVO. Heck, even some of the little Arctic freezer eSports coolers, like the one in this comparison, are better than that. Most of them are a lot quieter too.
 

PapaCrazy

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Damn they're not messing around with that base block. Not sure I've ever seen the technique of encasing the copper and then machining down so the copper is exposed through a faint layer of aluminum. It removes any air gaps without insulating the heat pipe. Plus, BeQuiet puts heatsinks on the base block. It's the combination of small details like this that make a good cooler.
 
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bit_user

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Damn they're not messing around with that base block. Not sure I've ever seen the technique of encasing the copper and then machining down so the copper is exposed through a faint layer of aluminum. It removes any air gaps without insulating the heat pipe.
I like the airgaps normally left by direct-touch heatpipes. It gives excess TIM somewhere to go. I've even contemplated filing channels in the bases of my other heatsinks.
 
Nobody is comparing anything to the 212 series coolers anymore, because they are not the go to choice for budget cooling and haven't been for a long time.

What WOULD be nice to see however is a comparison to the likes of the Deepcool Gammaxx 400, the NEW Gammaxx 400S, any of the various revisions of the Scythe Mugen 5 (rev. B, C) or something like the Thermalright True spirit 140 direct which itself is only about 40 bucks and pretty much flattens any other cooler in that price range. Unfortunately, it's too tall for some cases, so a shorter unit with a 120mm fan becomes a necessity sometimes, but there is almost, almost always a better choice than the 212 EVO. Heck, even some of the little Arctic freezer eSports coolers, like the one in this comparison, are better than that. Most of them are a lot quieter too.

Lots of people say that, but like it or not the 212 is still a very popular cooler stocked on store shelves everywhere. The 212 is still an easily obtainable cooler for almost every one. Several of the ones you listed most be ordered, for some they are not even available for order. My local MicroCenter finally starting carrying Noctua, they've always had the 212.

Its hard to judge performance without a a baseline and benchmarks. Its ok not to be as detailed as GamersNexus's charts, but comparing it to another cooler or two would be nice.
 
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Speaking of "be quiet!" in regards to noise vs performance, I really would have liked to see a comparison against a Noctua solution, since Noctua is really a (if not, "the") leader in silent performance for air coolers (w/caveat of higher price, I know).

Even the same cooler paired with a Noctua fan instead of their Pure Wings fan would have been nice to see.
 

dennphill

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Boy! Sure looks very nice in that gold color in the top of the review! Very attreactive. But looking at other pictures it looks like it's really just silver or alu or dark gray. That's what marketing will get you.
 

sadsteve

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Boy! Sure looks very nice in that gold color in the top of the review! Very attreactive. But looking at other pictures it looks like it's really just silver or alu or dark gray. That's what marketing will get you.

Maybe they didn't adjust for the light source properly.
 
Lots of people say that, but like it or not the 212 is still a very popular cooler stocked on store shelves everywhere. The 212 is still an easily obtainable cooler for almost every one. Several of the ones you listed most be ordered, for some they are not even available for order. My local MicroCenter finally starting carrying Noctua, they've always had the 212.

Its hard to judge performance without a a baseline and benchmarks. Its ok not to be as detailed as GamersNexus's charts, but comparing it to another cooler or two would be nice.
It's popular, to people who don't know any better. If you ask any highly experienced and up to date enthusiast you are only rarely going to get a recommendation for any of the 212 EVO coolers because there are cheaper coolers that have better performance. They are not available everywhere though so in some regions the 212 coolers might be the best cheap option available. Usually, that is not the case though.
 
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rubix_1011

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Boy! Sure looks very nice in that gold color in the top of the review! Very attreactive. But looking at other pictures it looks like it's really just silver or alu or dark gray. That's what marketing will get you.

No, its due to the ambient lighting that I applied for the primary product face shot. The fin stack itself is silver in color. Here is it with more blue, but I felt it was too dark overall.

f7ppWON.jpg


The 212's don't perform nearly as well as other coolers at similar or less price...that's the reason they aren't included and others are. My argument is that continuing to buy something like the 212 and making it a 'popular' choice does not make it a good choice.
 
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rubix_1011

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You don't NEED excess TM if there are no airgaps. LOL.

That was kind of the point of providing the shots of the steel straightedge and the thermal paste patch; to show some indication as to how the cooler base is finished and how well the compound spread from installation.

I'm actually going to start providing these on all the reviews from now on, including AIOs.
 
Good review, and its not a bad cooler for a single fan with its relative low speed.

This kind of review would be great if you could wide up the cooler list a bit perhaps adding other real cheaper coolers like the Gammaxx 400 and/or "popular" ones like the Hyper 212 Black too.

Anyways, I guess the Arctic Freezer 34 espot DUO has a new budget contender now. Ive seen reviews of the Arctic with only 1 cooler and the temp readings diference wasn't more than 1~2°C.
 

rubix_1011

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I haven't been sent the Gammaxx coolers to cover, so I don't have any data for reference on them. Typically, I'll get requests to cover them when there are new components coming to market or updates to existing components from the vendor themselves.

I would have to request components specifically, but this also comes with a stipulation that they get a full coverage review rather than being used as reference data, which consequently has to meet approval from senior editorial staff and for hardware which is new/relevant/updated/etc.
 
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Do you have access to a Thermalright True spirit direct 140? I might have to buy one, send it to you to review and then you can send it back to me to use for a build at some point. Is that something you'd be able to do, get an ok for a review from the overlords? If so, let me know and I'll talk to you about in private. That would be a very good cooler to use in these comparisons because even though it is a 140mm cooler, it is VERY small, and has extremely good performance.

Hell, I might buy a Gammaxx 400S as well.

I really need to get an anemometer, manometer and a sound level meter and build a test box and start doing some things of my own.
 
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bit_user

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You don't NEED excess TM if there are no airgaps. LOL.
So, my preferred way to apply TIM is with a bead. With the razor blade method, I have worries about small air bubbles getting trapped.

However, if you dab a bead of TIM on the heatspreader and then smash it down, it's impossible to get the thinnest layer and still get full coverage. This is where the channels normally found between direct-touch heatpipes prove useful.
 
I haven't been sent the Gammaxx coolers to cover, so I don't have any data for reference on them. Typically, I'll get requests to cover them when there are new components coming to market or updates to existing components from the vendor themselves.

I would have to request components specifically, but this also comes with a stipulation that they get a full coverage review rather than being used as reference data, which consequently has to meet approval from senior editorial staff and for hardware which is new/relevant/updated/etc.


That will be great, where I llive (South America) brands like Noctua, BeQuiet, etc. (the "superior" or "elite" ones if you like) are really hard to find and the prices, if you find them, are usually way higher than in any other part of the world (mostly due to importing tariffs and taxes, the currency conversion and the high internal taxes). It sucks, simple as that.
So for us brands like DeepCool and the Gammaxx 400, GTE, etc. are like a life saver. We also have access to decent priced Cooler Master stuff too, thats why adding the likes of the Hyper 212 series will be very welcome.

When I got my Gammaxx GTE I knew it wont give me the performance of the Hyper 212 Black (which was out of stock) or a Noctua NH-U12S (no where to be found) but on the other hand it was a very good price, for a decent cooler with a very pleasent noise level and that it fit and was easy to install on my case. Performance wise I don't think is great, but still much better than the stock cooler I was using (like 8°C~14°C less depending ont he benchamrk and/or situation).
 

bit_user

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The 212's don't perform nearly as well as other coolers at similar or less price...that's the reason they aren't included and others are. My argument is that continuing to buy something like the 212 and making it a 'popular' choice does not make it a good choice.
But one argument for including popular models of yesteryear is to show people how much they could benefit by upgrading their cooler. Or, why not to reuse that old cooler in a new(ish), maybe spare-parts build.
 

Co BIY

Splendid
I think these reviews need to explain the use case for the cooler. Is this budget cooler capable of cooling a OC i5 in a game rig or is this a budget model only suitable for cooling a Pentium.

I think a good standard to put in the charts is the current Intel and AMD stock coolers. To show whether it even pays to upgrade.

I think an interesting shot for the thermal camera would be through the fins perhaps with the fan turned on and off to show thermal transfer through the pipes and fins.
 
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I think these reviews need to explain the use case for the cooler. Is this budget cooler capable of cooling a OC i5 in a game rig or is this a budget model only suitable for cooling a Pentium.

I think a good standard to put in the charts is the current Intel and AMD stock coolers. To show whether it even pays to upgrade.

I think an interesting shot for the thermal camera would be through the fins perhaps with the fan turned on and off to show thermal transfer through the pipes and fins.

If it does not said otherwise in the article, it was probably an open test bench.

And yeah it will be nice to see the AMD and Intel stock cooler in here too, but theres a big problem with it, well two in fact, you have to do twice the test, since you will need a for both diferent CPUs (and what CPU are you going to use?, there are soo many). And the other problem will be that no all CPU come with a stock cooler on thier box, for instance Intel K series, so no much point to test with a stock cooler that didn't come in the box and you already know is not enough for that particular CPU.
 
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rubix_1011

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Using data collected from multiple cooling evaluations, we can compare the be quiet! Pure Rock 2 with other coolers of similar size and price. All data capture took place using our i7-5930k running at 4.2Ghz @ 1.20v on a MSI X99S XPower AC motherboard, 16GB of Crucial Ballistix DDR-2400 and housed within a Corsair Graphite 760T chassis. Power comes from a 1200watt be quiet! Dark Power Pro.

The same hardware are used for every cooling test on every cooler, mostly that it is inside a case for testing, not an open bench.

An (older) overclocked 6-core i7 that is known to produce a lot of heat is still a good way to validate if a cooler is able to perform well. When the 10th gen Intel CPUs are available, there is a plan to upgrade this testing bench for something like the 10900k.
 

rubix_1011

Contributing Writer
Moderator
I think an interesting shot for the thermal camera would be through the fins perhaps with the fan turned on and off to show thermal transfer through the pipes and fins.

This is what is being done with the existing thermal captures; to show what the cooler is doing when it is working under loads. Disabling the fan creates a scenario where heat would continue to build without effective dissipation, depicting where a fan or PWM curve would have failed, which isn't indicative of standard installation.

It would over-emphasize the thermal load and resulting heat soak by making it appear the cooler is 'hotter' than it would be under normal operation, which is a misrepresentation of how the cooler functions as part of a normal install (fan used).