How well does a $17 cooler actually work?

so I'm kind of bored like you guys with

a lot of the stuff going on in the PC

industry right now so I just started

perusing Amazon looking for weird things

and anytime I do that you guys seem to

enjoy it cuz sometimes we find stuff

that we never expected like a gamer

refrigerator a little desk fridge um

$100 monitor that apparently has really

good gaming specs part of Amazon basics

in collaboration with AOC mini PCS that

actually have pretty decent specs that

cost a significant amount less than you

would expect and gamer finger socks

anyway that's not we're going to talk

about today these are future videos

coming up but today we're going to talk

about this this is the dark Rock PX4 not

to be confused with be quiet's dark Rock

I'm not quite sure how they're getting

away with the naming scheme but I

digress this is a

$16.98 cooler what could go

wrong Hey

Day d m d

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freebi okay so in terms of specs though

uh it's 120 mm by 72 x 152 so it's 152

mm High 72 mm whatever right for the all

people tend to care about is the height

it's actually 72 mm thick 120 mm

diameter so it's a 120 mm fan does

support l LGA 1700 so that was my first

concern is like will it work with the

latest socket also does LGA 1200 115x so

all the 1150s 1152 1156 amds am5 and am4

cool it says it can handle 200 watts of

TDP so we might start with a 13900 K and

see how it can do and then instead of

changing like our actual CPU I'll

probably just turn off cores to

represent other CPUs believe it or not

it actually works pretty close that way

to to figure out what the actual like

thermal capabilities are

has four pure copper heat pipes which

are technically going to be face change

all heat pipes are face change pipes uh

or vapor chamber I should say um and

then the fan speed says 700 to 1800 RPM

and it's a four four pin pwm 22.3 DB

that's really low so I'm curious

accessories included 1 G tube of high

performance thermal paste back plate

mounting set for Intel and AMD and a PX4

manual I'm going to be using the thermal

paste it comes with the reason for that

is if you buy any reputable brand

thermal paste it will probably cost more

than the cooler itself so we're going to

see if you were on an extreme budget

whether or not this

cooler can get the job

done it actually doesn't look that bad

to be honest it actually reminds me very

close of like the VR V5 cooler that I

did um also too if you're watching this

video let me let me tell you right now

I'm going to be putting the link to this

down in the cart below or down in the

description below if you have any

interest in this cooler and it performs

even somewhat decent I highly recommend

you pick one up no it's not sponsored I

bought it okay we all know after this

video this will be a $30 cooler we all

know how it works okay it sucks I can

only do a video one time like this and

then the brand goes and screws it up for

everybody else um and then eventually

the price will probably come back down

but for $16 I can't what's the exact

amount I know it was $16 I want to know

what the change is cuz I I don't want to

just randomly say an amount

$159 it was actually 8% on sale normally

$17.99 first review a truly impressive

performance for the price pretty quiet

and keeps mid-tier CPUs cool they're

running a 12600 K and it keeps it around

58c under all course stress test 58c I'm

going to I'm actually going to call

maybe shenanigans on that temp I have a

12900 K and it cools it really fine

don't need a water cooler does the job

for me and then another one says screws

are too big to fit so anyway one person

is running at 12900 K so I will start

with a

13900 uh K and then we'll see like if I

turn off cores and make it like a

something like represent maybe like a 13

700k or something like that we'll see

what happens silica this is all you get

in the box so the Fan's already attached

which is nice and it uses essentially

identical Clips to how the be quiet

stuff is like it's identical so I'm

starting to wonder if this is maybe like

a odm OEM Rebrand kind of a thing um the

fans actually the fan actually seems

like a decent quality the the the cage

is a little bit on the thin side but it

actually has rubber mounts um which are

anti vibration which would be nice the

screws to mount it down are like

captured in there with like a cat clip

they are spring-loaded so you might need

to remove the fan maybe I don't know it

seems to accommodate the fan just fine

you can see it's Offset you can actually

see how the pipes like Bend like that so

the fan would go on the Ram side that

way you're pushing air towards the back

of the case and your rear fan could pick

up that heat and just exhausted out the

back um it's black I don't know if it's

a Sak coat it could be a sah coat it

could be a ceramic coat for this price

it's hard to say I hope it's not just

paint cuz paint actually could insulate

and hurt its performance a little bit um

you can actually see right there um we

do have the uh four copper heat pipes

that are exposed copper and they are

shaved flat and then you have sort of

the heat sink in between which is kind

of soldered between the Heat pipes to

help dissipate heat across the uh IHS

into the cooler past that the in the uh

mounting hardware I already talked about

what it supports these spacers being

kind of like a baby blue are interesting

normally these are just

black um additional Clips so if you want

to set it up as a push pool that could

help uh if the fan moves enough air the

Cooler's not thick enough or dense

enough to really necessarily need Push

Pull I don't think adding Push Pull

would really add to the cooling

capabilities of it but you never know

here are the 115x am these These are the

Intel 11700 these are the Intel brackets

and then we obviously have pretty

standard stuff like I have seen these

exact mounts in a ton of other cooler

boxes like this looks identical to the

uh be quiet so I'm starting to really

wonder if this is literally a knockoff

of like a like a dark Rock mini kind of

a

deal um these are our Intel AMD brackets

so this is what actually gets mounted

down onto the

motherboard and then you can see how

they have these

studs not this stud right here it's got

these studs which is what these threads

thread down on also too they give you 1

G of thermal

paste there's not a lot in here so get

it right the first time because you all

know on on 12th gen and up CPUs the IHS

is pretty big and you can tell by how

much of the plunger is sticking out

versus how long the actual tube is that

less than half of that is filled so you

need more than an average P size or

grain of rice these days to clear and

cover an IHS they do give you a spatula

too that way you can like spread the

paste um yeah we'll be maybe I'll show

you guys once the thermal paste is on

the CPU before I apply the cooler just

how much there was prior to uh

installation so here's the hardware

installed everything clear so far at

least on our motherboard this is kind of

a crowded board with the block and stuff

here um so you can see it all fits just

fine doesn't hit any of our standoff or

not standoff but our caps right here

should spread just

fine that's a fair amount of paste

actually so you definitely will

get an application out of it not to

though that's for sure cuz there's not

much left in there and this might seem

like an awful lot of thermal paste

believe it or not

for a 12300 it's actually not a lot now

when it comes to trying to spread it it

definitely feels like a thick cake

frosting but there's plenty on here and

yeah it may not look like it's getting

all all the way to the edges or

something but it still will spread once

it's uh down under tension and I still

have a little bit on the on the spatula

there at the same time when it gets warm

it'll get liquidy and then it will sort

of fill in the gaps a little better what

I'm going to do is I'm going to put

another little drop right in the center

cuz there's still some left and that'll

help promote some of the spread thermal

paste applications are not as sensitive

as people might like to try and make

them out to be so the orientation you're

kind of you're not necessarily locked in

you could rotate it uh if you wanted as

as long as the overhang as you can see

there is some overhang here to allow for

AMD sockets as well if you want to turn

them so let's say you have a case that

you need to exhaust out the top or

something like that um you might have

some clearance issues with the extra

width hitting something like over here

or maybe even interfering with that

inside stick of ram so I only used two

sticks of ram in any of my systems so it

wasn't a problem for this build so as

you can see I'm going to have I'm

actually going to have some interference

right here I actually touched the pace a

little bit but it hits the fan hits

right here the cooler clears it but the

fan is actually hitting it now you see

how the fan is overhanging down on the

bottom I can actually just undo these

clamp these clips and then I can scoot

the fan up maybe to make it a little bit

more flush with the

bottom like that so now we should clear

it kind of looks stupid hanging off the

top but this is the thing is really

tight with this particular type of um

heat sink for the vrms so now we're down

so I just wanted to show right there

this is the kind of stuff that I think

when you read reviews like on Amazon and

stuff maybe less experienced Builders

might just be like oh my gosh it hits

and then that's it they're like uh they

don't realize that they can adjust the

fan height and this is true for almost

any cooler on this type of motherboard

it's very unflattering angles is brought

to you by trying to reach power button

it's installed you can see it clears the

GPU and stuff just fine let me try and

turn it an angle you guys can see so

that's one of the things some of the big

coolers have a problem with is they're

so wide that they interfere with the GPU

cooler or the GPU if it has a top slot

that's like real close to the CPU this

particular board happens to have like a

half slot thing sort of because of the

display in between the cooler which

helps I do wish the cooler was a little

taller before the the main heat sing

started cuz then we wouldn't have issues

with like it hitting on the vrm and

stuff like that but once I got the

cooler mounted down I was able to lower

the fan a little bit so now you can see

we don't have nearly as much hanging off

the top I wanted as much air going

through the fins as possible possible

now one thing I've noticed is like just

handling it trying to get it mounted

down and stuff the fins are really thin

so it's easy to bend them like I bent

these over here as you can see The

Middle's kind of pushed down a little

bit they definitely feel like you're

getting what you paid for so I feel like

if this is a ripoff of like a be quiet

cooler that they just took the design

and applied a cheaper material to it

what I'm going to do right now too

because I want to know what the maximum

cooling capability is I'm going to start

by having the fan profile set to like

Turbo and then if that's just not enough

we might just end up going full speed

the whole time I can feel the air flow

all the way out here though okay so

we're on stock out of the box settings

with XMP profiled for our Ram as you can

see right now just sitting in the

desktop our package is at 36 our cores

are between thir 29 and 35 not terrible

I did have uh the Nvidia driver

installing for this GPU I just popped on

here and you can see that the hottest

core we got to so far was

68 uh coup 68 there as well 60 on that

one not a very heavily multi-threaded

task obviously I'm going to go ahead and

just start with C bench I expect this to

be a disaster I also kind of want C

bench to heat up that paste and liquefy

it real quick to get it to spread nicely

then we'll look at real case real world

scenarios of like gaming and stuff like

that and just browsing to see what the

CPU temperature looks like because cin

bench is not real world it is a stress

test on purpose that'll push your CPU

harder than just about any no average

consumer sitting at home playing games

surfing the internet doing documents

taxes writing doing homework whatever

surfing browsing getting emails will

never ever ever see their CPU get pushed

like cine bench if you're a professional

you might but you're also not going to

be buying this cooler if you're

professional either cuz you already know

better than to spend that little on a

cooler so let's go ahead and just start

multicore and see what happens here

we're looking here this is what we're

looking at I'm expecting to see 100 C

instantly there it is 100 C instantly on

the package our clock speeds are slowing

down because of it actually we're at 51

allore I mean 5'4 allcore is the max

that we I think 54 is the max we expect

to see maybe

55 uh with like aios and stuff it

dropped down to 5,000

already but it still gave us a 36,6 A7

now has it's gimped our performance a

bit because of the fact that the 100 C

it pulled 323 Watts that means this

motherboard is also still pushing the

CPU farther than it's supposed because

253 watts is where we're supposed to max

out so that means the optimized defaults

for this motherboard are already like

affecting our performance and that's a

bigger gripe that we have about the way

motherboard manufacturers Implement

their own bio settings on top of the

Intel recommended so what I'm going to

do is I'm going to go back into the BIOS

I'm going to put on the Intel limits and

see there's 236 252 look at that 8991 90

so we're not even throttling technically

we're at 51 gigs which is now

realistically within the

so see people see the up to and they

start to go oh well I'm not getting 5.5

like it said on the up to out of the box

but that's 5.5 based on some very

specific criteria also including

ridiculous cooling if you can keep it

down to like 60° under load like a crazy

water cooling setup or something and you

get the voltage dialed in just right you

could probably get that 5.5 on this

cooler but even the fact that we saw

5.1 at

all uh allcore and we did hit 100 C

right towards the end but look we got

37,9 so still lower than a 30 13900 K

should be hitting it should be landing

around 39,000 or so but again we're on a

$17 cooler let's keep that in mind so

real quickly I'm going to do some

voltage adjustment to this just to see

if I can get us to stay in the higher

boost Clocks by now adjusting voltage

again these are problems with the

platform not the cooler all right so

here we go let's

[Music]

see he

85c 5.3 GHz all core right there 5.2 GHz

on the efficiency core this is more in

line with I'm expecting to see 97 that's

like right there 99 no one of the cores

hit it

37408 right let's do something now like

cyberpunk so it just like hard crash

launching cyberpunk so it means I have

to bring the voltage up some but again

my voltage and it just did a full like

reset of the system that voltage I set

was really for cine bench I didn't think

I I haven't been able to run a single

13900 K even at stock speed is at minus

125 or 115 so I'm surprised like the

most I ever got to was about- 100 I'm

probably going to go like - 90 right now

to see cuz I think that'll still be fine

for things like games and such so using

my Fleer camera here while I'm waiting

for the system to restart cuz it hung

again it's being really stupid for me

right now um I wanted to kind of show

how the heat dissipation works here

through the uh heat pipes so you can

clearly see like looking down it it it's

kind of hard to see the heat but if you

look straight on you can actually see

the heat pipes for sure and you can see

how hot it is towards the bottom versus

how cool it gets towards the top so you

notice a lot of that heat starts to not

really radiate across the um the fins

themselves and so we get to the point to

where you can see that it's actually

dissipating heat so this is basically

where like the efficiency of the cooling

down in the cooler down here in the

bottom half is really having to do most

of the work when it comes to a heat sink

so this is why the large heat sinks

matter because you have more surface

area and more Cooling in that confined

area by the time it gets to the top of

the cooler there's not a whole lot of

heat up there for it to dissipate so

really only half the cooler is doing the

work to be honest um but that's where a

small cooler like this definitely and

having less fins um definitely starts to

show some of its limitations okay we're

back and I threw the 4080 on here cuz I

went you know what if we're going to do

this we're going to do this right we

need to add as many frames as possible

152.5 170 watt 175 Watts CP is at 80c 82

81 88 now there is a turbo fan profile

applied to the fan it's not running 100%

so it's going to respond to some of that

usage look at the C temp

70s 60s on the E cores but we're still

getting the full 5.5 on all the cores

remember throttling is at 100 C so we're

20° below that right now and please

ignore how terrible the game looks right

now because of the fact that it's 1080p

what I'm looking for is any sort of

fluctuation in in the temperatures here

now keep in mind this is also an open

air test bench so if you have a chassis

that doesn't have good Cooling or

exchange of heat then it's something

that will uh why is that guy trying to

kill me then it will obviously increase

your temperatures and remember I do have

this thing undervolted so out of the box

it probably would have been with the

auto bios optimizing crap it definitely

would have been running probably in the

' 90s maybe near

100° okay so now you can see how real

world gaming looks let me uh set this

now to 1440p and I want to see if by

reducing the the frame rate if we get

any reduce reduction in

temperatures or if this is just the

amount of stuff it's having to do around

the world oh yeah see there's 75

77 73 74

79 so now we can see look at that we

dropped like 40 Watts about 40 Watts

just by upping our resolution so we were

definitely CPU bound which is one of the

things that was leading to our higher

temp so that's good you know if you're

running a high resolution graphics card

now you can see your temps are even

lower oh there's 85 for a sec so I must

have loaded something in the

background and now our wat uses just

back up a little

bit so a little bit of of a temperature

Improvement by going to a higher

resolution and being less CPU bound okay

so I've essentially created a 13600 here

so my ratio limit set to 5 GHz for the P

cores e cor set to 3.7 I also have a uh

power limit in there of 154 Watts which

is what the 13600 is so essentially I've

just created like an i5 out of it with a

lot of cash but we don't care about the

cash right now we just care about the

core uh usage and stuff I don't have a

core voltage offset set right now so I

am curious as to what it's going to try

and run at cuz it certainly shouldn't

try to run at like 1.3 or anything

stupid like that I think I could have

looked right here in advance view but

that's fine I know where it is in

hardware monitor and I'm more versed

with this so yeah 1.25 2 volts that's

completely unnecessary so let's see what

this looks like it's at

1.99 1.54 so it did reduce the voltage

based on the core counts we look at this

79c 80 1C here 154 Watts our limit so

it's shot above it by about 5 Watts but

ADC we're getting our full core clock 5

GHz and

3.7 82c Max the cores

are where are my core Temps at they are

here so my cores are running

at high 70s low 80s and mid 60s on the E

cores that gave us a 22,7 I'm going to

look up the 13600 cinebench R23 score

score right now I'm just curious if it

actually landed where it should well I'm

seeing people complain about some 13600

K scoring 21,000 in R23 so apparently

I'm doing all right let's bump up the

core ratio a little bit let's go like

5.2 and 3.9 let's just see what happens

there 92

93 that's cuz our voltage probably went

up significantly too

huh oh 1.

225 at the 22866 not much of an

improvement I'm going go minus 50 real

quick and then I think we're going to

call it a day because I think we've

shown that like this cooler is more than

capable of running a mid-range CPU core

temps are in the high 70s low 80s mid to

low 60s on the

eour yeah the temperature looks great I

mean 84c 82c remember 100 C is where we

throttle like full hard throttle starts

at really more like 95 to 100 but 84 C

is our Max right there my voltage is

running at

1.54 there a 22,000 551 so we lost

hardly any score a little bit of score

by going down 100 MHz all right check it

out high 60s mid-60s it's only pulling

105 watt 107 Watts so one thing I want

to point out is the reason why it was

going above 154 is because of the fact

that my long-term or my short-term turbo

timer was actually set to like 4,000

watts or something crazy right so I had

to set that down also to like the 154

but an actual 13600 case Max load TDP is

181 Watts so we're we' stayed within

that we're getting full 5.1 GHz all core

3.9 GHz EC core it's only pulling 104

watts and look at this 66c while running

around there you go there's a pretty

obvious

uh pretty obvious shock I was truly not

expecting the cooler might look nice all

black rubber on the corners of the fan

and stuff but just cuz it looks nice

doesn't mean it performs well but here

you go this is a perfect example

of if you don't want to run like a

stupid basic little chunk of aluminum

box cooler that might come with your

ryzen CPU or your AMD or your Intel CPU

for right now before the brand starts to

raise the price which I guarantee

they're going to do after this video you

can spend $17 us with free shipping I

got that free shipping with prime by the

way so if you have prime it was free

even without hitting the $35 minimum

because it was free shipping on the item

that's insane if you don't have Prime

then I I don't know what the shipping

would have been honestly I don't know

and I got it next day I ordered it

yesterday okay so that's insane that we

have a $17 cooler it's it's also insane

that they're probably going to increase

the price of this cooler to like 30

bucks at that point it won't be worth it

cuz you'll find other coolers like the

V2 V5 and stuff that actually are better

performing coolers for that price so if

you're on a hard press

budget go buy it now there's a link down

in the description below it's an Amazon

affiliate link it does help the channel

but go and buy it now for 17 bucks and

then while you're at it we've got I

don't know maybe you need the finger

socks I don't know the little gaming

cooler or something I don't know where

I'm going to do that stuff yet I just

bought it cuz I'm like this is dumb it

kind of goes in with my video the other

day where i'm like they'll put the word

gaming on anything to make people buy it

so we'll see anyway thanks for watching

guys $17 cooler it's absolutely nuts

this is the cheapest cooler I've ever

reviewed and it's probably the best

performing cooler at its price point I