The Pure Rock Slim 2 air cooler is the newest air cooler by be quiet! A compact tower design with a Pure Wings 2 92mm fan and rated for 130-watt TDP. After doing some temperature testing on my test PC, the Pure Rock Slim 2 is an impressive air cooler for only $25 USD. I did find one small disappointment that I wasn’t expecting in a be quiet! product.
WHAT YOU GET FOR $25 USD
The be quiet! Pure Rock Slim 2 is a compact tower air cooler that doesn’t interfere with tall RAM sticks. Comes with extra fan clips to add a second 92mm fan for a push-pull configuration. At 135mm tall, the Slim 2 is ideal for cases with limited height clearance or Small Form Factor (SFF) builds.
The AMD mounting clip comes pre-installed out of the box. The new AMD mounting clip has two adjustable clip ends.
If you have an Intel processor, some assembly is required. Unscrew the AMD mounting clip and screw in the Intel mounting clip. Unlike the Dark Rock Pro air cooler, the Slim 2 doesn’t come with a be quiet! screwdriver.
The 130-watt TDP rating makes the Slim 2 suitable for all AMD Ryzen processors at stock speeds. My rule for overclocking is to have a cooler with twice the rated TDP of the processor.
- Overclocking low-wattage processor (65 watts or less), the 130-watt TDP provides plenty of headroom.
- Overclocking a high-wattage processor (95 watts or higher), get a larger air cooler or an AIO instead.
TESTING THE AIR COOLER
I’ll be comparing the AMD Athlon 3000G stock cooler with the be quiet! Pure Rock Slim 2 tower cooler.
My test PC has an AMD Athlon 3000G processor, 8GB G.Skill 2666MHz RAM, and an Asrock Pro4 B450 AM4 ATX motherboard. The thermal paste is the Arctic Silver 5. The room temperature while testing was 30-degrees Celsius.
The BIOS setting is the standard fan mode:
- The stock cooler ran at under 2,300 RPMs.
- The tower cooler ran at under 1,300 RPMS.
The Cinebench R23 10-minute test ran three times on each cooler. I averaged the three processor temperatures reported in HWInfo for each cooler.
- Stock cooler had an average temperature of 67-degree Celsius.
- Tower cooler had an average temperature of 61-degree Celsius.
The tower cooler was 6-degrees lower than the stock cooler. A 10% difference between the two coolers.
A SMALL DISAPPOINTMENT
I’m a big fan (pun intended) of be quiet! products. When I took the Slim 2 out of the box, I found bent fins along the front of the air cooler. The packaging had no exterior damage, so it wasn’t damaged in shipping. This slight damage happened at the factory and wasn’t pulled by quality control.
From what I’ve read on the Internet, bent fins are not uncommon in be quiet! tower air coolers. The bent fins don’t affect performance and are hidden underneath the attached fan. For a $25 air cooler, it’s not worth the trouble to return or replace under warranty.
Should you get the be quiet! Pure Rock Slim 2 air cooler? If you need a compact air cooler for $25 USD, you can’t go wrong with the Slim 2.