be quiet! has announced the Pure Rock Slim 3 CPU tower cooler for entry-level gaming and multimedia systems. It represents the latest evolution of the brand’s affordable series, building on the design strengths of the Pure Rock Slim 2. The Pure Rock Slim 3 offers an asymmetrical tower design with great hardware compatibility, making it handy for small-form-factor cases.
The Pure Rock Slim 3 measures 90mm (L) x 108.5mm (W) x 127mm (H) and weighs 412g. It features a unique compact tower profile that enables full compatibility with all memory modules, saving you time both during installation and upgrades. You can pair it with any modern platform, including Intel’s LGA1851/1700 and AMD’s AM5/AM4, secured in place using be quiet!’s easy-to-install mounting system. Furthermore, it comes with pre-applied thermal paste, making your life – and especially that of novice PC builders – much easier.
It uses three nickel-plated 6mm heat pipes that are in direct contact with the CPU, effectively transferring heat to its aluminium fin stack. Though its design constraints didn’t allow for a colour-matched fin stack, be quiet! tops it with a black cover to blend in better with most builds. A 100mm PWM fan provides air circulation to remove heat from these fins, said to operate silently even at maximum speed, with an advertised 24.8dBA of noise. But, in case this isn’t sufficient, you can always tune your preferred balance between airflow and acoustics.
According to be quiet!, the Pure Rock Slim 3 can handle up to 130W TDP chips, which limits it to low- to mid-range processors. In other words, the Pure Rock Slim 3 is better paired with energy efficient CPUs such as the Ryzen 5 9600X or Core i5-13400F, which sounds about right considering how even the larger Pure Rock Pro 3 struggles with high-power CPUs like the Intel Core i9-13900K.
“Pure Rock Slim 3 is designed to make silent, efficient cooling accessible to everyone,” said Aaron Licht, CEO of be quiet!. “With its improved, rock-solid mounting system and whisper-quiet operation, we’re giving PC builders of all experience levels a cooler that’s easy to install and delivers high performance for compact systems.”
The Pure Rock Slim 3 will be available starting October 28, at $29.90 / €26.90, backed by a three-year warranty. This puts it among well-known budget coolers such as Cooler Master’s Hyper 212 and ID-Cooling’s Frozen A620 Pro SE, so it would be interesting to see how it would fare against them.
