be quiet! Dark Rock 4

be quiet! rates the Dark Rock 4 for 190W, enough for most current mid-range AM5 and LGA1700 chips running stock or lightly tuned, though it's not the cooler we'd pick for a heavily overclocked flagship CPU.

A single 135mm Silent Wings 3 fan is the whole story here, rated at 21.4dBA, and be quiet!'s reputation for noise engineering holds up in practice: it's genuinely one of the quieter coolers at this TDP rating, at the cost of the extra performance a second fan would add.

AM4/AM5 and LGA1700/1200 are supported out of the box, and be quiet!'s mounting hardware is straightforward if not quite as polished as Noctua's SecuFirm2 system.

The all-black finish with copper heatpipes and be quiet!'s split-fin heatsink design looks understated next to RGB-heavy competitors, which is exactly the point for a brand built around not drawing attention to itself.

Against be quiet!'s own Shadow Rock 4, covered elsewhere on this site, the Dark Rock 4 uses a wider heatsink and typically edges it out thermally at a similar noise level, so we'd pick the Dark Rock 4 first unless case width is tight. Against the Dark Rock 5, also on this site, the 5 is the newer dual-fan design with a real thermal advantage, so anyone who can spend a bit more should look there instead.