be quiet! Pure Loop 2 AIO Review
Up Close
Up Close
When you think about fans that have a specific aesthetic it’s easy to think of Noctua and their famous, albeit it unique, colour scheme. We think that be quiet! have managed to produce a series of black fans that are similarly iconic. Black seems to be the default fan colour for non-RGB options, yet the grooved blades are so obviously be quiet! fans that the Pure Loop 2 box is immediately recognisable.
There is an art to packaging the contents of a box, and it’s one that be quiet! have absolutely nailed with the internals of the Pure Loop 2 AIO. A place for everything and everything in its place as the old saying goes. In these days where most of us purchase our hardware from online emporiums knowing it will arrive in mint condition is a big tick in the box.
By now you’ve seen enough AIOs to get the jist of how they look. We like the understated aesthetics of the be quiet! Pure Loop 2 AIO, even the simple white identifier on the side of the radiator.
By decoupling the pump both at the pump housing and here in the tubing, the Pure Loop 2 promises to be as quiet as it’s possible to make an AIO pump. We’d expect nothing less from the masters of quiet PC systems. It’s in their name after all.
The very silver heatsink topper is going to divide the audience we think. The key point of the Pure Loop 2 design is its all-black aesthetic and this goes against that ethos.
Here is the main event of the Pure Loop 2, the new Pure Wings 3 fans. Their unique selling point is the inclusion of the be quiet! closed loop motor control. Rather than relying upon the motherboard to actually read the fan speed, compare it to the desired speed, and then adjust it on the fly, most systems just set it to what you tell it and never actually find out how quickly the fan is or isn’t spinning. The Pure Wings 3 goes for a closed loop controller which actually does what you might expect your motherboard to do, namely see if the speed the fan is actually spinning is what it should, and adjust it constantly. Even as your fan ages and thus slows, it’ll speed things up to ensure you get the full cooling effect. It’s a genius bit of technology, particularly key on a set of fans designed for radiator use as we have here.
If you’ve had your AIO for a while you’re bound to have heard times when suddenly the air bubbles pound through your pump with a heart-stopping gurgle. By including some extra coolant and providing us with an easy-fill port (remove the screw you can see below) you can keep it topped up, enhancing long-term cooling performance as well as lessening noise.
Installed into our famous Maximus XI and the toasty Core i9-9900K we’re all ready to find out how the Pure Loop stacks up against the competition in a number of fan speeds. You can also see how the decoupling of the pump tidies up the CPU area by greatly reducing its footprint.
