be quiet! Silent Loop 280 review - Final words and conclusion

Final words and conclusion

For their first ever AIO liquid cooler series release, be quiet! is offering a very interesting series. The performance at default clock frequencies remains to be a little ... well let's call it mainstream, but certainly good enough. Once you start to overclock you'll notice that the cooling setup has quiet some capacity. normally I don't even dar to try out 1.45 Volts on the processor, and while this cooler cannot deal with it properly, it could do it barely. Obviously you will not need such a high voltage for your processor tweak. 1.3 Volts on Haswell/Broadwell/Skylake is sufficient, and at such voltages the cooler has enough capacity to keep temps very acceptable.

Noise

Noise levels, at defaults (not overclocked) this is an incredible silent product, on our ASUS Sabertooth we simply leave the default fan profile for what it is, and yeah we reached 35 DBa under full processor load. Up-tp 1.35 Volts (tweaked) the noise levels remain very acceptable, after that nature kicks in. To yes, bequiet! offers quite a bit of airflow and remain really silent (under normal conditions). We'd classify the cooler as a performance product and thus it matches mainstream to high-end cooling, cooling capacity is definitely good enough for even a nice overclock. 

Aesthetics 

The overall looks are very good as far as I am concerned, all black design make the rad / fans / pump look nice. I however have mentioned this in the article already, I find the be quiet! logo at the top side of the cooling block a little too much out there - it needs to be more subtle or hidden. I actually do believe that people will stay away from this product just of that exposure.

Design

Overall it is an easy to install with the mounting system, prefilled... it's one of the most easy and comfortable kits on the market to use and install. The black design will make this kit match up nicely in any PC. It simply is a good alternative toward heatpipe coolers with the added benefits of being fairly quiet whilst offering very nice looks. We like the simplicity, only one wire goes from the water-block to the motherboard, and then the fan just needs a FAN header on your mobo as well. Installation is simply a breeze, easy and fast. No skills are required other than the need for ten minutes to install the kit.

Pricing

The 280 kit as tested today will cost roughly 149 USD / Euro, obviously you will not reach the 'enthusiast' segment of cooling. Currently, I received these prices. €109 (120mm), €129 (240mm), €149 (280mm), these are however msrp, not street prices. But the performance is definitely good for a 280mm rad based product, but remains to be just that if you compare it to proper LCS gear like say an EK custom loop. Let me also remind you that you can easily spend 200/300 EUR on tubing, radiators, cooling blocks, reservoirs and so on whereas this all in one kit can be found for a just over a 100 bucks. 

Final words

The Silent Loop might be a perfect product for the ones that need a little style and silence on their non-overclocked product. If you do not tweak your processor, this will be among the most silent products you have ever owned. Once you need more than 1.30 Volts on a modern age Core i7 processor (I am basing my findings on quad-core here) the product will slowly become a bit more noisy under hefty processor load. But at say 1.30 Volts you can reach 4.6~4.8 GHz on your processor cores and still find yourself in an in-audible environment, which is good. This means you'll have decent extra capacity to overclock and tweak your processor as well. If you are wondering about the temperatures you have seen at 1.3 Volts, well... this is the nature of the  processor tested. You will likely not even need 1.3V if you stick in the 4400~4600 MHz range. Overall the Silent Loop 280mm manages really well with the tested Core i7 4790K processor we fired off at it. For a fist in the series, nice job be quiet! Worthy of our recommendation and a recommended award.

Handy related downloads:

• Prime95
• SiSoft Sandra
• AIDA
• CPU-Z
• HWMonitor