At first we would like to thank be quiet! for sending out their SILENT LOOP 240mm Liquid CPU Cooler for testing and reviewing.

 

 

 

About be quiet! :

 

“be quiet! is a premium brand manufacturer of power supplies and cooling solutions for your desktop PC.

 

The Number 1 for power supplies in Germany

 

be quiet! products are convincing which is proved by reaching and defending the market leadership in PSU business in Germany since 2006 *. This is validated and accompanied by numerous awards for both power supplies and cooling solutions.

 

Repeated winner: Manufacturer of the year

 

be quiet! is awarded for nine times in a row as “Manufacturer of the Year” in the power supply category by the readers of the well-known German hardware magazine PC Games Hardware. In the category “fans”, be quiet! earns the first rank for five consecutive times and belongs to the Top 3 CPU cooler brands for more than three years in a row. The community of Hardwareluxx also voted be quiet! as “Manufacturer of the Year” in the PSU category for four consecutive years.

 

Exceptionally quiet operation

 

be quiet! sticks to its name: More than ten years experience in the field of noise reduction and silence make be quiet! products probably the most silent one on the market.

 

Undoubted fans have a large impact of the noise levels of be quiet! products. Due we are using our specially developed SilentWings fans in nearly all of our range. They are equipped with various noise reducing features. Thanks to these we ensure a really silent operation - our products reach the best balance between cooling performance and a virtually inaudible operation.”

 

Superior Cooling and Silence

 

With Silent Loop be quiet! brings whisper-silent technology to the world of All-in-One watercooling, making liquid cooling an attractive option for those who want to heavily overclock CPUs for maximum processing performance or cool high-power PC systems.

 

All-in-One water cooling provides everything you need in one package

Innovative decoupled reverse-flow pump assures excellent cooling efficiency with whisper-quiet operation

Two Pure Wings 2 120mm PWM fans feature airflow-optimized fan blades and variable speed operation

Full copper radiator maximizes heat transfer for peak cooling performance

Refill port and flexible bend-protection tubes extend the product’s life span and promote easy handling

Compatible with Intel® and AMDTM sockets, and sized to permit full use of RAM slots

Product conception, design and quality control in Germany

 

Applications

 

Demanding PC systems

Heavily overclocked systems

High-resolution gaming and multimedia systems

Any PC that requires superior quietness, such as audio editing, studio work, or simply a HTPC

 

Feature Details

 

Ultra-quiet Operation

 

Innovative decoupled reverse-flow pump provides low-noise operation with less vibration

Thanks to the technique “reverse-flow” the pump draws the liquid coolant from an outer cavity of the pump housing across the base plate and discharges the warmed liquid coolant through a second level inside

Two Pure Wings 2 120mm PWM fans include an array of optimizations for quiet airflow

unique airflow-optimized fan blade design reduces noise-generating fan turbulence

high-quality rifle bearing technology contributes to a long lifespan of up to 80,000 hours

PWM speed control function allows for optimum balance between quiet operations and efficient cooling

 

Superior Cooling Performance

 

Full copper radiator maximizes heat transfer for peak cooling performance

Nickel-plated coldplate allows the use of heat-conducting metallic paste, thus improving heat transfer and overall cooling efficiency

Extremely high TDP rating supports heavily overclocked CPUs and demanding systems

Increased air pressure thanks to a highly efficient blade design of the two 120mm Pure Wings 2 PWM fans, making these fans the perfect partners to work with the radiator

 

Maximum Compatibility and Convenience

 

Flexible bend- and pinch-protected tubes take the worry out of routing supply lines

Small and thoughtful heat exchanger design supports full use of RAM slots

Refill port extends the product’s useful lifespan and promotes silent operation

Compatible with Intel® and AMDTM sockets

Convenient radiator mounting is compatible to most case designs

 

Outstanding Service and Support

 

3-year manufacturer's warranty

Quick support is available via the international hotline, Mondays to Fridays from 9:00am to 5:30pm CET: +49 (0) 40-736 76 86 – 98

 

 

In this article we will revisit the be quiet! SILENT LOOP 240mm AIO Liquid cooler, but this time on the Ryzen platform. This model was made in cooperation with Alphacool, which is a very-known manufacturer in the water cooling segment area, which has cooperated with other brands such as Cooler Master and Fractal design in the past. This model is sitting in the middle between the 120mm version and the 280mm unit and features a dual 120mm fan solution, a 30mm height radiator, one reverse-flow pump with a mirror polished dark nickel contact plate but also bend-protected tubes.

The product is shipped in a medium-sized cardboard enclosure, with a photo of the product on the top cover, along with the dimension of the radiator:

 

 

 

On one of the box laterals, we will get to see the technical information, in plenty of detail:

 

 

 

Even the bottom portion of the box contains detailed information regarding the whole cooling system, but also some extra notes on the included Pure Wings 2 fans and the reverse-flow pump:

 

 

 

After lifting the top cover, we will get to see the documentation, which is held in a transparent, re-sealable plastic bag:

 

 

 

The inside contents are carefully packed in custom-mold cardboard, but each component is also wrapped in a transparent plastic bag, for additional protection:

 

 

 

As bundle, the cooler comes with the accessories for the Intel/AMD mounting systems but also an extra Alphacool bag for the AM4 socket installation:

 

 

 

As documentation, we do receive the usual manual, but also an added leaflet:

 

 

 

The manual does inform us on the installation procedure for each socket, except AM4:

 

 

 

For the AM4 installation, we must follow the instructions we do find on the extra leaflet, which informs us to use an extra 2mm washer along with the 0.6mm one, which was provided in the original packaging:

 

 

 

In more detail, we do have the Intel socket mounting accessories, which do also include the adhesive backplate, the pump mounting mechanism and screws for the older AMD sockets, the pump mounting mechanism built specifically for the AM4 socket that is joined by the extra washers, screws for mounting the two fans onto the radiator, screws for mounting the radiator onto the case, the accessories for fixing the pump onto the backplate, an adapter cable for running the two fans off a single PWM header but also one be quiet! thermal compound:

 

 

 

We have placed separately the mounting plates along with the other accessories, needed for the AM4 installation:

 

 

 

Here are the accessories in more detail:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The supplied Pure Wings 2 120mm PWM fans can rotate with a maximum speed of 2000RPM, do produce a maximum airflow of 66.51cfm at 12V, are equipped with a rifle bearing and are using a 4-pole fan motor technology. Their lifespan is rated at 80000 hours, with an operating temperature at about 25 degrees Celsius:

 

 

 

The fans are rated 12V at 0.3A:

 

 

 

 

Next we do have the actual pump and the radiator; the radiator is 277mm x 124mm x 30mm and is attached to the low-profile pump thanks to flexible, bend-protected tubes which do measure 39cm in length:

 

 

 

On the radiator we can clearly see the mounting holes for the fans but for also mounting onto the computer case:

 

 

 

 

The fittings are made of metal for a professional look but also for durability; these are usually found with custom loop setups:

 

 

 

A brushed aluminum cover can be found on the top pump area, with a middle manufacturer logo; we can see again two more metallic fittings, while the cut-away corners give the pump an unique look:

 

 

 

 

On the side of the pump, we do have a power cable, but also one port for actually refilling the unit, as seen in the product manual:

 

 

 

The contact plate on the bottom is quite large and has a mirror look, something we haven’t seen with other AIOs in like….ages:

 

 

 

The pump power connector was also designed for reporting the internal RPM and comes with three wires:

 

 

 

One of the first installation steps we can take is to mount the brackets onto the pump; they were designed in such a way so they would be attached one to the other:

 

 

 

 

Next, we will take the long thumbscrews, use the provided springs, insert the two washers (black and white), attach the assembly to the bracket into the designed holes and secure it with the provided nuts:

 

 

 

 

Afterwards, we can take the long screws, along with the smaller ones for attaching the fans onto the radiator, but also for mounting the radiator onto the computer case:

 

 

 

 

 

The mounting system was designed to make use of the stock AM4 aluminum backplate, so make sure to have it available! We will simply use the four screws to secure the pump onto the Ryzen 7 1700 CPU, after applying thermal interface between the two:

 

 

 

 

For testing out the be quiet! SILENT LOOP 240mm Liquid CPU Cooler, we have installed it on our ASUS X370 Crosshair VI Hero motherboard, which did have the AMD Ryzen 7 1700 CPU mounted along with a GEIL PC4 25600 3200MHz CL16 8GBx2 Samsung B-die based kit. For storage we have mounted an OCZ Vector 150 240GB SSD, the video interface was assured by a KFA2 GTX 1060 OC 6GB video card and all was installed inside a Cooler Master ATCS 840 Tower Case.

 

We did configure an all-core overclock to 3.9GHz via the UEFI interface, at a voltage of 1.337V. Why choose the Ryzen 7 1700 you may ask? Well…the answer is pretty simple: this CPU is the only one from the Ryzen 7 series which does not feature a +20 degrees Celsius offset for the tCTL reading so we are getting more accurate temperatures from the monitoring programs.

 

In order to heat up the cooling system and stabilize at the maximum temperature, we have ran Prime95 (Blend) and afterwards we have logged the highest temperature via the HWiNFO64 utility. During the testing procedure, the ambient temperature was held steady at 27.9 degrees Celsius.

 

 

(click to enlarge)

 

While the cores do report a very low temperature in IDLE mode, in Full Load at the mentioned overclock we have got about 71.8 degrees Celsius (maximum temperature), which is very acceptable overall.

The SILENT LOOP 240mm Liquid CPU Cooler from be quiet! is built in cooperation with Alphacool from high quality components, which can be often found on custom loops. While the installation procedure may be a little tricky for people that haven’t got in contact with liquid cooling systems before, all can be performed flawlessly if we do follow the instructions from the manual. Besides the reverse-flow pump and the 277 x 124 x 30 radiator, we do also get two Pure Wings 2 120mm fans which can rotate up to 2000RPM; this model does rely completely on the fan speed regulation of the motherboard, so we may get different results depending on the preset fan curve of each manufacturer.

 

The installation procedure on the AM4 platform does make use of an extra set of thicker washers, but also the stock AMD backplate; some manufacturers do use the backplates with a bit of adhesive on them, which does help a bit when mounting the pump onto the CPU.

 

While the SILENT LOOP 240mm remains dead silent in less intensive tasks or games, when we do start hammering the CPU with stress testing tools such as Prime95 (Blend), the fans can rev up to their maximum rotational speed, while producing 46.1 dBA (still acceptable considering that we are dealing with an overclocked system and high summer temperatures).

 

The be quiet! SILENT LOOP 240mm Liquid CPU Cooler can be found online for about 119 Euros.

be quiet! SILENT LOOP 240mm Liquid CPU Cooler is Recommended for:

 

 

We would like to thank again to be quiet! for making this review possible!