Kaby Lake 7700K 5GHz AIO Cooler Mega Test

bequiet! Silent Loop 240

Price @ OCUK:  £114.99

Technical Specification

Radiator Dimensions	 277x124x30mm
CPU	 Intel 775 115x, 1366, 2011, 2011-3.  AMD FM1/2 AM2/2+/3/3+
FPI	 16
Water ChannelsÂ	 12
Fan Speed	 2x120mm fan @ 2000rpm
Airflow	 65.51FM
Air Pressure	 2.23mmH2OÂ
Fan Noise level	 36.9dB(A)Â

 

Up Close

The first thing to say about bequiet is that their packaging always looks as sexy as hell.  Put it this way, if Batman bought an AIO, we think he’d probably pluck the Silent Loop 240 off the shelf with no hesitation what-so-ever.

  

 

Inside it’s the same egg box card as we’ve seen on all but the high end Corsairs, nowt wrong with that though, as long as it does its job, I’d rather pay for the product than the packaging. 

  

 

bequiet separate the fittings into Intel and AMD bags to make life that little bit easier, and as you can see, along with all the brackets required, they also include the biggest tube of TIM we’ve seen bundled with an AIO, as well as a fan splitter.

 

 

The 2x120mm Pure wings fans really do look smart, although at a rated 37.3dB(A) for just 1600rpm I think they’re a little on the noisy side for the output. 

 

 

The Radiator is a nice bit of kit.  Ok, so it doesn’t have perspex running boards or carbon fibre detail, but then neither is it generic OEM.  The tubing is gloss rubber with gloss black spiral anti kink wraps on it (remember those).  At 390mm, there’s a heck of a lot more tubing than we normally see on a 240mm AIO which can only be a good thing right???

 

 

If you ignore the OC3D watermark you’ll see that the cold head has a rather nice brushed aluminium effect to it, with the be quiet logo picked out in high shine graphics.  Ok so, it doesn’t light up, but who cares, this is class right here gents, best you appreciate it. 

 

 

The copper contact plate of the silent loop 240 is coated in mirror quality Nickel.  Well, when we say mirror quality, we mean the sort of mirrors you get at the fayre that make you look all distorted.  Now, while this might seem a bit of a laugh, the pertinent point is that that the surface isn’t as flat as it’s trying to make out. 

 

 

The radiator on the other hand is no smoke show.  perfect in it’s quality and with a fin density of just 16 as opposed to the more usual 20-21, bucking the trend somewhat.  This will either be a good thing….Or a bad thing.  Time and torture testing will tell. 

 

 

Let’s just pick out a bit of detail on the radiator shall we.  What are we looking at here?  Well to the un-initiated, what your observing is an inner layer of material that lies beneath the screw holes that prevents the screws over penetrating into the fin stack beneath.  We’re not 100% certain, but we can’t remember seeing this done so nicely on an AIO, and certainly not one in this test.

 

The other thing to note about the silent loop is that the terminations are actually via compression fittings, all of which means that should you want to extend to a full custom loop at some point, you may well be able to re use some of the components herein.  But hey, even if you don’t, they still look proper don’t they. 

  

 

And so to the instructions.  Those of you you that read our reviews will realise that we (or more specifically me) have something of a love hate relationship with be quiet.  Why so, well just take a loo at the instructions below.  assuming you’ve not zoomed the image up, this is basically the size of the image you have to work from.  It’s a good job the text makes everything abundantly clear isn’t it! 

 

When we saw that in the pile of AIOs we had to test there was a be quiet product, our hearts sank just a little bit.  Why?  Well their air coolers are an absolute sod to fit.  I’m sorry, but they are, whether you do it as per instructions or otherwise, there are many more systems out there that are much easier.  But wait, this is an AIO, I mean, how hard can it be?

  

 

How hard can it be???? We’ll tell you how hard it can be, this is the first out of all the coolers in this Mega test that have required two people working together to fit it.  The problem we think is that unlike all other manufactures, who have an indexed slot system on the fittings that allows for various Intel mounts, the bequiet offering doesn’t, when fitting you simply have to guess where the screws need to be on the slots and then offer it up,  all this at the same time as trying to hold the back plate in place.  We could go on, but we won’t as we think you get the idea.

  

 

Sadly our woes weren’t over when we finally got everything in and fired up, as the generous tubing was so generous it couldn’t help but curve upwards to the point where it contacted the fan blades.  It took a fair bit of wiggling to get it into a position where it was only pushing up against the point where the two cowlings meet.  far from ideal, and if we were putting this in a case long term we’d be more than a little nervous about it shifting and fowling the fan blades.