be quiet! Silent Loop 3 420mm AIO CPU Cooler Review
Performance
Straight away, we can see that this is one of the best coolers we’ve ever tested, and whatever be quiet! has done with their new pump design, improved radiators, and those amazing fans, which are clearly doing everything we could ever want from an AIO. Only the much more expensive Q60 beats it by 1c, but that cooler is £299, and nowhere near as quiet.
Using our optimised settings, it’s still one of the best, scoring about the same as the Light Loop 360mm AIO, the main difference being the new 140mm Silent Wings 4 fans didn’t have to spin as quickly to achieve this result.
At just 33 dBa at idle and 38 dBa at load, it’s easily one of the quietest coolers we’ve tested, it’s barely more than a breathy whisper of fans when running at full load. Keep in mind that while many other coolers matched this acoustic performance, and a few even beat it, the be quiet! Silent Loop 3 took them to school when it came to cooling performance.
The results for optimised settings were just the same, no change, but honestly the temperatures are so good, you could dial back the RPM even further to have this cooler running virtually silent. If it can cool our i9 this easily, it’ll handle anything else you can throw at it.