Performance

We’ll take a look, first, at the Peak test results. This very same test had the Intel stock cooler cooking at near the i5-2500’s thermal maximum. As you can see, the Dark Rock Pro 2 fared much better and produced some nice results considering and even managed to record a lower overall RAM temperature despite looming over top of the DIMMs. Noise at 100% RPM was also noticeably less by nearly 9 dB(A).

The Peak test may be the absolute worst you can throw at a heatsink as far as performance but usually that isn’t what we subject our systems to day in and day out. The real world test gives us a more practical look at the coolers capabilities and the difference between it and stock are still substantial.