be quiet! has a solid offering with the Dark Rock TF. Top-flow coolers are not as popular as they once were, but are still viable and useful. The Dark Rock TF not only cools the CPU, but provides airflow over the motherboard's power circuitry and RAM, which keeps the surrounding area a bit cooler than with a traditional tower cooler. That said, performance when it comes to cooling the CPU itself is quite solid. While it won't take on ultra-high-end coolers, be quiet!'s design did fair well against the Noctua NH-C14S. The one area the Dark Rock TF does excel in over nearly every other cooler tested is noise. It was 3 dBA quieter than the Noctua NH-C14S and just missed tying for the top spot by 1 dBA.

Another plus is the cooler's low-profile option since users can remove the top fan to further slim the cooler down, and while performance will suffer, it's still a nice option for cases where space is scarce. As always, the build quality was good, with no issues or problems to report on. I am also happy to report that the fit and finish was exceptional. Good packaging is also a nice touch. While it doesn't help performance, it certainly doesn't hurt either. Finally, a solid three year warranty offers users some peace of mind.

Still, be quiet! has a good deal of room for improvement with the Dark Rock TF. First, it's expensive for what you get, and the mounting hardware is just dreadful by today's standards. The cooler will be difficult to install if a system is already inside a case to begin with. A cooler requiring a small wrench or spanner to install is also a big no-go in my book. The other major issue is the fact that it makes one of the motherboard's DIMM slots completely unusable. While RAM can technically fit under it without any problems, the heatpipes actively block or touch the system memory, and while it does clear the first expansion slot, it is a very close call. Granted changing the coolers orientation can fix this issue but it poses other potential clearance problems. What makes it harder still is the Noctua NH-C14S. The Dark Rock TF is by no means bad but for the few negatives it does have and the Noctua does not, which limits its appeal. However, a few changes in the future could easily see this cooler be the better option.

I personally really do like the Dark Rock TF: It looks good, performs well, but just doesn't quite edge out its closest competitor, which is too bad because if it were only about looks, I would definitely take the be quiet! over the Noctua every day of the week.

If you want good performance with ultra-low noise levels, the be quiet! Dark Rock TF delivers, but be mindful of memory clearance.