Cooling

be quiet! Shadow Rock 3 CPU Cooler Review

How Much Does it Cost?

With an MSRP of around £49.99, the be quiet! Shadow Rock 3 finds itself very competitively priced for what could be considered, in the grand scheme of things, to be a mid to upper-mid tier CPU air cooler.

In comparative terms, the pricing is actually more than excellent. It’s notably less expensive than the higher-tier alternatives, yet in many ways performs just as well if not better!

Overview

You have to credit be quiet! for getting a lot of the important things right with the Shadow Rock 3. Admittedly, and as we noted in the installation part of the review, fitting this to your PC is still a little trickier than it really needed to be. Putting that singular aspect to one side, however, there’s more than a little going in favor of this air cooler.

It looks excellent, it performs a lot better than you might expect for a reasonably small package, and taking into consideration it’s whisper-quiet operating noise, it’s an absolutely solid option!

Should I Buy One?

If I was trying to sell this cooler to you, I would probably say (in a nutshell) that be quiet! has been able to achieve a comparatively high-end level of performance out of the Shadow Rock 3 for consumers on a budget below £50. In other words, it performs nearly as well as some of the major players while costing notably less cash.

To be honest, I’m moderately surprised that this isn’t the angle be quiet! has taken with this product as a whole. Quite frankly, it fits the remit perfectly.

If you are, looking for high-end performance in a mid-tier price range, the be quiet! Shadow Rock 3 is undoubtedly one of the best CPU air coolers currently available on the market!

Pros

Excellent design
Solid levels of temperature control
Amazingly quiet!
Very well priced
Performance well beyond its relatively small size
3-year warranty from be quiet!

Cons

The be quiet! air cooler installation methodology has improved significantly, but it still has some problems. Like many cooler manufacturers, they need to stop attempting to reinvent the wheel.