Performance
We have three comparison coolers to get us up and running. Noctua's NH-U12A is in our estimation one of the best air coolers that money can buy, and Corsair's iCue 115i Elite Capellix represents a popular alternative to the Silent Loop 2 in the increasingly crowded 280mm all-in-one segment.
Our benchmarks begin with the 105W AMD Ryzen 5950X CPU running at stock speeds. We run the popular Cinebench R23 multi-core benchmark for an extended period and chart the average CPU temperature from the last five minutes of 100 percent load.
These are high-quality coolers and all three have absolutely no problem taming a 16-core, 32-thread chip working flat out. There's not a lot in it at default voltages, though strictly speaking, the 280mm liquid coolers have a slight edge over the dual-fan air cooler.
All three coolers manage to keep noise levels down to an agreeable level. You can barely tell they're working when idle - particularly the eerily quiet Noctua - and noise output under load is a smooth hum that is by no means off-putting. Hard to quibble with any of these coolers at stock settings.
Upping the ante while maintaining rock-solid stability, we raise the CPU multiplier to 45x on all cores and increase voltage to 1.25V. The modest overclock pushes CPU power up to 200W and represents a suitable challenge for coolers of this ilk.
The two 280mm liquid coolers, from different ODMs, are once again closely matched. Either way, under 80°C with 16 cores skipping along at 4.5GHz is an excellent result.
Noise output is one area in which all-in-one liquid coolers have noticeably improved in recent years. be quiet! claims to be one of the best in that regard, and that certainly aligns with what we're seeing inside our test platform.