be quiet! Shadow Rock 3 CPU Cooler Review

Shadow Rock 3: Big Cooling, Minimal Noise for Less Than $50

I have a longstanding love/hate relationship with be quiet! CPU coolers. I personally own two of their previous flagship Dark Rock Pro 3 coolers. I love that cooler. It performs very close to the best offerings from benchmark coolers like the Noctua NH-D15 and Deep Cool Assassin III, but is much more silent than any competitive tower coolers.

To this point, it is still my personal favorite air cooler among all that I’ve ever used. Unfortunately, the mounting system on it was just a nightmare, and historically, the mounting system has been my biggest complaint about the entire be quiet! cooler product line. With the latest iterations of their coolers they have taken some major steps to improve this, but they’re still not on par with the excellent mounting systems used by Noctua and Scythe.

The newest be quiet! model is a new version of their silence-optimized line, the Shadow Rock 3, and it continues the company’s well-deserved reputation of quality coolers, and (in this reviewer’s opinion) frustrating mounting.

Cooler Design

Once you open the box, the first thing you’ll notice is that the be quiet! Shadow Rock 3 is a very attractive cooler. The top cover of the cooler is made of brushed aluminum with striking black contrasting the bright silver.

True to be quiet!’s traditional looks, you will find no RGB on this cooler, and it does not need it. The next most striking thing about this cooler is the size. The Shadow Rock 3 is very large for a cooler in this price range ($49.90 MSRP), standing at a specified 163mm tall, 130 mm wide, and 121 mm deep (though it actually measures just under 165 mm tall and 131 mm wide).

Speaking of the fan clips, be quiet! have re-engineered the clips so that they sit more flush against the cooler and would have less chance of contacting other components (such as the rear of a GPU). The downside with this new flush mount design is that once the fan is attached, it is very troublesome to remove or reposition the fan.

Cooler Installation

The new mounting system that be quiet! designed for the Shadow Rock 3 is definitely superior to previous systems, but there is still room for improvement.

Intel LGA115x motherboards will require the use of an included backplate, while HEDT and AMD systems will utilize the factory backplate. Once the mounting brackets are attached to the motherboard, it’s time to place the center mounting bracket and mount the cooler.

This is where it gets frustrating. The center bracket is not attached to the cooler base permanently, and due to the design, it is very easy for it to slip out of position during mounting. The cooler’s offset design (which is great for insuring clearance for tall RAM) means that you have to hold it with one hand while mounting, or it will simply fall backwards.

As the center bracket is not permanently attached, and the mounting screws for this bracket are not captive. You have to use the pass-through hole on top of the cooler to secure the rear side of the bracket. The pass-through is not large enough for the screw, so you will need to position the screw underneath first, and hope it doesn’t fall out while you’re trying to secure the front first.

My own initial attempt at mounting the cooler ended up with it being out of position. If be quiet! had simply made these screws captive, it would have solved every issue I encountered.

As it is now, I found the mounting process to be frustrating, which is sadly, an improvement over some previous experiences with be quiet! cooler mounting. With all that said, most users would be mounting the cooler only a few times during its lifetime, and the frustration of mounting would be of little concern.

Thermal and Noise Performance

The real importance of this product is how it performs. I will admit that I was a little concerned at the direct contact heat pipe design on the Shadow Rock 3 initially. For most CPUs, a direct contact design is fine, but on Ryzen 3000 processors, the actual CCX dies are offset from the center of the CPU. Because of this, a soldered heat spreader plate at the bottom of a cooler is probably a better choice for Ryzen 3000 processors, especially if one gets into processors with multiple CCX units.

The other issue with direct contact heat pipe designs, is that they are rarely flat, and often have high or low spots in the contact plate, as well as gaps between the heat pipes.

Judging from a razor blade test, be quiet! did a very nice job of keeping the contact plate flat and smooth on the Shadow Rock 3.

The 3800x processor that was used in my testing has 8 cores in a single CCX, offset to the lower left of the CPU, so I was very curious about how the Shadow Rock 3’s direct contact heat pipe design would do. I am pleased to report a very satisfactory performance.

Thermals

For testing, I ran the OCCT small FFT stress test for 20 minutes on an open test bed.

IC Diamond Graphite Thermal Pad used on all coolers for consistency in testing. All tests conducted at room temperature of 24 C.

The Shadow Rock 3 performed almost identically (within margin of error) to the twin tower, Scythe Fuma Revision B, and was not far behind the much more expensive Mugen 5 ARGB. What makes that more impressive is that both of those coolers utilize two fans, while the Shadow Rock 3 was using only a single fan.

Noise Levels

More impressive were the noise levels (or lack thereof) with this cooler. At idle, and up to 1,000 RPM, the included Shadow Wings 2 fan was simply inaudible, and generated less noise than other system components.

(Note: noise testing with Shadow Rock 3 performed with a measured noise floor of 27.9 dBA; previous results tested with 36.4 dBA ambient. This only affects idle noise comparisons here. – Ed.)

Under load, at the maximum 1700 RPM, this cooler came in only slightly behind the Dark Rock Pro 3 in terms of noise, but it emitted much less noise than any of the other similarly performing competing coolers.

Conclusion

I’ll be honest, I love be quiet! coolers. They always seem to put out products that perform well while living up to the company namesake. I just consistently hate their mounting mechanism designs.

Even after the improvements in their latest revisions, I think there is still a lot of work to do. If not for the mounting difficulties, this cooler would be on top of my list of recommendations. As it is, I still think it’s a very worthwhile purchase.

be quiet! Shadow Rock 3 CPU Cooler: $49.90 USD

Bottom line: At just under $50 USD, the Shadow Rock 3 offers amazing performance for the price, and amazing silence at any price.