beQuiet Silent Loop 360mm AIO Watercooling Review

  

Up Close:  Radiator and Cold Plate

The Silent Loop 360 is an impressive size, measuring, as it does 397x124x30mm (LxWxD).  be quiet haven’t really made any attempts to pimp out the rad in anyway, so don’t expect the smart graphics and snazzy looking panels seen on many of the competition.

  

 

The rad is spray painted in silk black.  Unfortunately, when we came to mount the rad we found that the paint was very thinly applied, and scratched off easily as we maneuvered the rad within the confines of the case.  We also observed, and can be seen in the image below that the chap who does the painting doesn’t spend much time on the fins, and as can also be seen a few of the fins were quite badly damaged, which is quite unusual these days.  Now, it has to be said, that neither of these issues will affect the performance of the rad, heck, the lack of paint might even improve it, but from an aesthetics point of view and with regards to build quality we thought you ladies ought to know.

  

 

With 16 fins per inch, and 11 visible water channels, the Silent Loop 360 has quite an open configuration.  If we’re honest, it may not make the best use of those excellent Silent Wings 2 fans.

  

 

The design of the 360 appears to be the same as that of the 240m certainly the end tanks are identical.  be quiet have opted for compression fittings on both the rad and the pump, which means that should you choose to, you can add to the system or merely use a part of it in a future project.  

  

 

The pump/cold-plate assembly is the same as the 240, featuring as it does, reverse flow technology.  It doesn’t illuminate in use, but it does have a simple but elegant be quiet logo picked out in raised chrome on the brushed Aluminium effect back ground, giving the whole assembly a very classy look to it.  

  

 

Along with the 3 pin power lead, the cold-plate has a refill port.  We should add the system is designed to be zero maintenance, but should you choose to add another rad or a GPU to the system, then you will need to top things up.  We also think it’s thoughtful that be quiet have made the anti kink coil covered tubing 390mm long, as they recognise that the longer rad will naturally put the end tanks further away from the CPU.

  

 

The contact Plate is Copper, but is covered in a Nickel Plate.  Although highly reflective, the reflection of the ruler shows that it isn’t as flat as it could be, and does have more than a few blemishes on it.  Still, if it does the job, who cares.