Be quiet silent loop water cooler fail

With the very hot weather in the United Kingdom this summer, we decided to try to improve the cooling on our computers by replacing our air-cooled heatsinks with a sealed loop water cooling system.

At the end of July, we purchased a pair of be quiet Silent Loop AIO 240mm water coolers from https://www.quietpc.com/bq-silent-loop at £115 each to install into our workstation computers which we use for both work and VR gaming.

The initial installation of the cooler systems went without any issues but after approx. 2 months the cooler in Andrews's computer started making grinding noises and so we thought there could be air in the closed loop so we refilled and removed all the air from the system but the problem remained and after a few hours of running the noise would turn to a high pitch squeal like a metal to metal worn bearing noise.

We removed the cooler from the computer and fitted the old air cooler back into the machine and everything was quiet again!

This week after only 77 days of use, the be quiet Silent Loop AIO water cooler in my computer started to make the same noises and despite removing the pump and radiator and rotating the components with the pump running to try to move any air in the loop, the high pitch squealing was still there and after a hours use on the computer it started to also make a loud rattle and vibrate badly.

Another problem I found with the radiator block fans was when they would run above 40% speed they would resonate badly and vibrate.

I have now replaced the water cooler with an air-cooled heatsink again and the computer is now quiet.

The manufacturer's website shows that the silent loop has a “3-year manufacturer’s warranty“ but unfortunately we did not keep the boxes for the cooling systems so we can't return them as they are both clearly faulty but need to return in their original packaging.

After this experience with water cooling, we are going to stick with air-cooled systems in the future.