be quiet! Pure Loop 240mm AIO Liquid Cooler Review

Installation

Starting with one of the most fundamental aspects, and an aspect that everyone should start with, the manual provided with the Pure Loop is excellent both in terms of the information provided and it’s quality.

Coming with a lot of written information, as well as many useful diagrams, while it does take a little reading, be quiet! has ensured that as long as you’re paying attention, you shouldn’t have any difficulties along the way.

As something of a very minor criticism, the vast majority of parts for this AIO cooler are contained within sealed plastic bags. Put simply, once they’re open, you don’t have anywhere left to put the parts you either didn’t need or accidentally opened up. It’s a small grumble, put I wish be quiet! had included resealable bags here because when it came to us putting this all back in the box following our testing, we largely had no option but to stick everything in the 1-2 big resealable bags they did provide. Something that would clearly make the process more difficult the next time we (or someone else) came to use this cooler.

With that being said, there are many other aspects that easily outweigh this gripe. For example, the be quiet Pure Loop 240 comes complete with a surprisingly generous amount of ‘top-up’ fluid for the cooler. As you may be aware, over time (and we’re talking years) AIO systems do eventually begin to lose a little of the liquid and, as such, while the Pure Loop 240mm is perfectly ready to rock out of the box, it’s really fantastic that be quiet! has thought about the long-term usage here.

Finally, although you are provided with some thermal paste within a tube, as you can see below, it’s not exactly an overly generous portion. Put simply, while you certainly have enough for 1 (and maybe 2) applications here, if you’re new to AIO cooler installations, you might just want to have a bit of extra thermal compound on hand as, if you get it wrong on the first installation, you might not quite have enough here for the second.

Mounting

In terms of the mounting system, the good news is be quiet! has chosen a system that, although having it’s mildly fiddly moments, is certainly not difficult and, based on the excellent instructions, is certainly more than easy to understand.

The only we encountered was when we went to switch our test bench on. Seeing a boot loop, this is nearly always indicative that the cooler hasn’t made good contact with the processor. So, a second check found that despite the mounting system ‘feeling’ tight, there was still apparently another 2-3 twists of a screw driver to get this down correctly.

So, in brief, you have to attach the mounting bracket quite firm and perhaps a little more than a number of people would feel entirely comfortable with. Once done, however, it ran absolutely perfectly on the second attempt.

Overall Thoughts

From out of the box and onto our test bench, the be quiet! Pure Loop 240mm took us roughly 20 minutes to install. It would’ve been about 10-15, but we probably spent at least 5 trying to figure out why it was boot-looping. With that minor aspect out of the way, however, the good news is that unlike some prior be quiet! coolers, this isn’t actually that difficult to install. Yes, there are parts of it that are fiddly work for fat hands, but on the whole, be you new or experienced in AIO coolers, you shouldn’t have any problems fitting this to your system.

And, we should add, with that lighting in effect, the pump head actually looks pretty damn cool!