Packaging and Overview

We are greeted by the Shadow Rock in the same way as the larger sibling with a direct and informative package that shows off the unit itself and highlights a few major features immediately for us. The strip down the side reads “premium” this time and while I’m unsure exactly where that lies in Be Quiet’s lexicon I am sure it is somewhere near the top and firmly in the enthusiast range.

The rear of the package has the wiredrawing of the Shadow Rock and gives us the layout of the top down design while highlighting more technical aspects of the cooler from the four 8mm heat pipes to the wave designed fins. The full specifications are found under the drawing and all and all I like the direct approach.

The first thing out of the box is all the various mounting pieces, a sturdy backplate and the ever important installation guide. The included tube of Dow Corning TC-5121 thermal compound is enough for maybe three applications so mind your instructions. The installation package is again quite small compared to most enthusiast coolers so let’s hope for an equally painless install.

The first real world look we get of the cooler is fittingly from the top down at the large 135mm Shadow Wings PWM fan strapped to the top. A similar fan used in the Dark Rock Pro 2 proved to be quite effective and silent as well so there is much to already look forward to.

From the side on we can already get the feeling of how much underneath space this cooler will allow from thing such as RAM and with as wide as the design seems the extra space might be needed more so as it encroaches into the realm of the 12-pin power plug on most ATX motherboards.

The last initial look at the Shadow Rock is the massive heat pipes. These are good for not only from a cooling standpoint but also because the large, 8mm pipes serve to support the majority of the cooler’s overall weight. These four heat pipes run through the block, not making direct contact, and dissipate their heat through the fins.