Performance
Our benchmarks begin with the 105W AMD Ryzen 9 5950X CPU operating at stock speeds. We run the popular Cinebench R23 multi-core benchmark for an extended period and chart the average CPU temperature from the last five minutes of 100 per cent load.
No point beating around the bush, we were expecting more from the Dark Rock TF 2. Might the cooler perform better in a HTPC chassis? Perhaps, yet in a typical tower, where the onus is on front-to-back airflow, stock results are comparable to coolers costing almost half as much. Heck, be quiet!'s own £44 Shadow Rock Slim 2, with just a single fan, is more effective.
True to form, Dark Rock TF 2 does remain wonderfully quiet at all times, making it a useful choice for a horizontal enclosure destined for the living room.
Upping the ante using settings proven to be stable, we raise the CPU multiplier to 45x on all cores and increase voltage to 1.25V. The modest overclock pushes CPU power up to 200W and represents a sterner challenge for all of the coolers on show.
We didn't see that coming. With the overclock in place, Dark Rock TF 2 was unable to keep core temperature below 95°C, resulting in an automatic system shutdown. Our logs reveal that motherboard components and nearby memory do register a slight reduction in temperature, yet that doesn't change the fact that the cooler is unable to complete the benchmark on our Ryzen 9 5950X test platform.