be quiet! Pure Loop 2 280MM AIO Cooler Review

How Much Does it Cost?

Pure Loop 2 is available from today with a recommended retail price of $99.90 / €89.90 / £84.99 (120mm), of $114.90 / €104.90 / £99.99 (240mm), $124.90 / €114.90 / £109.99 (280mm), and $139.90 / €129.90 / £125.99 (360mm). We’ll have up-to-date retail links for you shortly, but you can check for stock and prices on Amazon UK here.

Overview

be quiet! has always been regarded as a premium brand, and while they have released some more affordable versions of their products over the years, I don’t think they’ve ever faltered on quality. The Pure Loop 2 may largely look like a typical AIO, and it is fair to say it’s even priced like any other AIO cooler too, but it has a few tricks that really set it apart from the competition.

Firstly, the new fans are pretty awesome, they’re working behind the scenes to ensure they’re delivering a much more consistent performance than their older models. It’s only a small detail, but say the PWM signal is 800RPM, due to air resistance, pressure and other factors they may only be spinning at say, 750 RPM (just an example). In that case, the fans will increase or decrease their speed as required till the true RPM matches what your system is reporting.

The double-decoupled pump design is another great innovation, moving it away from the block and radiator to the tubing, where the flexible hose can more easily absorb vibrations and noise. This results in less noise overall from the pump, a small but welcome thing, that’s for sure. Furthermore, the pump is now PWM controllable, rather than fixed to 100% as it was in the old model, so you can turn it down quieter when you need to.

The performance is obviously very good too, competitive with the rest of the market, but at this price, it’s fair to say that be quiet! have the lead on the competition. They have more advanced fans, a more interesting pump design, and the fact that you get both a refillable loop design with a bottle of liquid included and a tube of thermal paste, means you can maintain and service to cooler yourself over its life span to maintain the best performance.

However, this is certainly cooler for PC users who know what they’re doing. Your typical first-time system builder likely won’t be confident in refilling the loop, as it can be topped up when needed. Enthusiast users will know more about tuning the fans and pump to their requirements too. Out of the box, the performance is… mid-tier in acoustics and cooling. However, my own experiments showed me that dropping the fan RPM even lower made it virtually silent with next to no drop in cooling performance, and pushing the fans harder resulted in very little increase in acoustics, but a significant drop in CPU temperatures, so it’s best to setup the fan and pump PWM requirements to suit the needs of your CPUs TDP, and your preference for noise levels.

Should I Buy One?

be quiet! has taken a very good cooler and tweaked pretty much every aspect of it to make it a truly great cooler. It performs better, it’s better made, the fans are more advanced, the pump is better, the loop is fillable, it now has ARGB, and so much more, yet the price isn’t more than the competition that lacks these features… so it’s a no brainer really, it’s just a solid all-around AIO cooler!