MAG CORELIQUID 360R swap process

[roy.mander160802e6]

I've bought the MSI MAG Core Liquid 360R back at 22-09-2020 (~40 months ago), which has displayed heats of 60-70 degrees celcius while idle and up to 80-90 celcius under load. Never really thought of much issues if this was all, until today.

Today my PC has randomly shut itself down and eventually showed 'CPU overheating, please check if cooling is placed correctly', or something like that. First I tried to replace the coolant paste with Artic MX-4 thermal compound. After replacing the thermal paste, dragon center still showed temperatures of up to 110 celcius while being idle. This is when I decided to replace the liquid cooler with the default AMD air cooler, which are supplied with the CPU's themself. The CPU temp dropped to below 50 celcius while idle (better than what the liquid cooler has ever showed).

Now I remembered the product announcement for the Liquid 360R, where you could apply for a swap. I filled in the information, but haven't received any confirmation of the apply. The waranty was 36 months, so its 4 months outside its waranty range.

Does anyone have experience with the swap and/ or knows if waranty plays a role here as MSI themself found sediment within the coolers causing the issue? What is the process, are you meant to get a confirmation or will MSI contact you?

 

[BrotherBelial]

The MA

I've bought the MSI MAG Core Liquid 360R back at 22-09-2020 (~40 months ago), which has displayed heats of 60-70 degrees celcius while idle and up to 80-90 celcius under load. Never really thought of much issues if this was all, until today.

Today my PC has randomly shut itself down and eventually showed 'CPU overheating, please check if cooling is placed correctly', or something like that. First I tried to replace the coolant paste with Artic MX-4 thermal compound. After replacing the thermal paste, dragon center still showed temperatures of up to 110 celcius while being idle. This is when I decided to replace the liquid cooler with the default AMD air cooler, which are supplied with the CPU's themself. The CPU temp dropped to below 50 celcius while idle (better than what the liquid cooler has ever showed).

Now I remembered the product announcement for the Liquid 360R, where you could apply for a swap. I filled in the information, but haven't received any confirmation of the apply. The waranty was 36 months, so its 4 months outside its waranty range.

Does anyone have experience with the swap and/ or knows if waranty plays a role here as MSI themself found sediment within the coolers causing the issue? What is the process, are you meant to get a confirmation or will MSI contact you?

TLDR: Save yourself time and money and just buy a different cooler, and if you want an MSI one, buy an MPG or MEG branded one, and if it's a K series, make sure it's a V2.

MAG CORELIQUED 360Rand 240R are bad coolers. I went through 2 coolers in a little over 2 years. The first time was through the replacement program I filled in the form and they got back to me. and sent me a replacement. My cooler was less than 6 months old before I started seeing idle temps of 60c, then about 18 months later my 240R V2 started doing the same thing but ramping up to 80-90c on boot. The second time was a pain in the [***CENSORED***] with MSI telling me I had to go through the store I got my original cooler from, and the shop telling me it had gone past the two-year return date, and all warranty issues had to be taken up with MSI. In the end MSI said I could send it to them if I paid the £60 shipping. So I put that £60 towards a new cooler.

 

[roy.mander160802e6]

The MA

TLDR: Save yourself time and money and just buy a different cooler, and if you want an MSI one, buy an MPG or MEG branded one, and if it's a K series, make sure it's a V2.

MAG CORELIQUED 360Rand 240R are bad coolers. I went through 2 coolers in a little over 2 years. The first time was through the replacement program I filled in the form and they got back to me. and sent me a replacement. My cooler was less than 6 months old before I started seeing idle temps of 60c, then about 18 months later my 240R V2 started doing the same thing but ramping up to 80-90c on boot. The second time was a pain in the [***CENSORED***] with MSI telling me I had to go through the store I got my original cooler from, and the shop telling me it had gone past the two-year return date, and all warranty issues had to be taken up with MSI. In the end MSI said I could send it to them if I paid the £60 shipping. So I put that £60 towards a new cooler.

Hmmm, you would expect that the v2 ones would be fixed as they did find issues with the original ones... the 80-90c on boot are familiar to me with the 360R, If I do get offered a v2 as replacement from the product announcement, I will give it another shot. If not, I will look for another cooler as you suggested.

So far, with the default AMD air cooler, the PC hasn't been this quiet in... forever. Can't remember it being this quiet and still keeping the CPU cold. With the replacement program process, the first one, was that also a pain to go through?

 

[BrotherBelial]

Hmmm, you would expect that the v2 ones would be fixed as they did find issues with the original ones... the 80-90c on boot are familiar to me with the 360R, If I do get offered a v2 as replacement from the product announcement, I will give it another shot. If not, I will look for another cooler as you suggested.

So far, with the default AMD air cooler, the PC hasn't been this quiet in... forever. Can't remember it being this quiet and still keeping the CPU cold. With the replacement program process, the first one, was that also a pain to go through?

It was straightforward and very easy to get the first replacement.

 

[roy.mander160802e6]

It was straightforward and very easy to get the first replacement.

Hmm, I've send a mail to MSI for more information, as the RMA mail is a bit unclear about the swap program.

The mail has 1 section that states:
"
If the unit is out of warranty or is physically damaged (which is not covered by the warranty) you will be contacted with a quote for the costs of the repair. For details of the terms covered under the limited warranty, please consult your warranty booklet.
"
Its just a default RMA mail I think, with no mention of the swap program.

As my 360R is 4 months without warranty, this could mean that I would have to pay for a swap... in that case I'm better off by looking for a different brand liquid cooler and keep the fans of the 360R to be used as case fans.

 

[BrotherBelial]

Hmm, I've send a mail to MSI for more information, as the RMA mail is a bit unclear about the swap program.

The mail has 1 section that states:
"
If the unit is out of warranty or is physically damaged (which is not covered by the warranty) you will be contacted with a quote for the costs of the repair. For details of the terms covered under the limited warranty, please consult your warranty booklet.
"
Its just a default RMA mail I think, with no mention of the swap program.

As my 360R is 4 months without warranty, this could mean that I would have to pay for a swap... in that case I'm better off by looking for a different brand liquid cooler and keep the fans of the 360R to be used as case fans.

It would seem that way. They are not going to swap something that was out of warranty. No company would, unless it was a risk to life.

 

[roy.mander160802e6]

It would seem that way. They are not going to swap something that was out of warranty. No company would, unless it was a risk to life.

Quick update: I've contacted MSI for more information and according to MSI the affected liquid coolers for the swap program will get replaced for free after the repair center has looked at it to make sure we haven't misused or abused it ourself. Even when they are out of warranty.

The reply:
"
Yes, your device is eligible for a free replacement, there will be no costs added even when it's out of warranty.

However, if our repair center deems that the unit has been misused, abused, or if any unauthorized modifications have been made, then the repair will be chargeable.
In case of any further questions, please let us know. Have a great day!
"

I've send mine to the repair center now and will give another update once I get more news. So far I'm impressed by the service of MSI

 

[BrotherBelial]

Quick update: I've contacted MSI for more information and according to MSI the affected liquid coolers for the swap program will get replaced for free after the repair center has looked at it to make sure we haven't misused or abused it ourself. Even when they are out of warranty.

The reply:
"
Yes, your device is eligible for a free replacement, there will be no costs added even when it's out of warranty.

However, if our repair center deems that the unit has been misused, abused, or if any unauthorized modifications have been made, then the repair will be chargeable.
In case of any further questions, please let us know. Have a great day!
"

I've send mine to the repair center now and will give another update once I get more news. So far I'm impressed by the service of MSI

Well I'm happy to be wrong on this.

 

[citay]

Couple of notes:

which has displayed heats of 60-70 degrees celcius while idle and up to 80-90 celcius under load. Never really thought of much issues if this was all, until today.

You tend to buy a 360mm AIO for its great cooling performance, so you should get very suspicious if the cooling performance is miserable instead. Because it means that something has to be wrong.

So far, with the default AMD air cooler, the PC hasn't been this quiet in... forever. Can't remember it being this quiet and still keeping the CPU cold.

That's because the fans on your radiator were on a fan curve that reacts to CPU temperature, not coolant temperature inside the radiator or anything like that. You have to understand the mechanism of failure here: That CoreLiquid -R series is prone to a fatal sludge buildup, sometimes you can notice this by the pump making unusual noises, like so, like so or like so for example. This means that the coolant does no longer move through the system because it's mostly clogged up.

To the CPU, this pretty much has the effect of there only being the little pump unit / water block on the CPU, and the tubing and the radiator might as well not even be there. Any air cooler will have much more heatsink surface and cooling performance than just that tiny pump unit of an AIO, which is absolutely useless of removing any heat if the coolant doesn't transport it to the radiator quickly. On a water cooler, the entire heatsink surface is outsourced to the radiator. The radiator has a huge surface area, but that's completely irrelevant if it becomes decoupled via lack of coolant circulation.

The little coolant that is stagnant in the pump unit will be at boiling temperature, the cooling at the radiator will be at room temperature, as it's not moving. The sensors report the insanely high CPU temperature, which makes the fan control put the fans on the radiator into overdrive. But at that point, the radiator is completely decoupled from what's happening at the CPU, you might as well have ripped off all the tubing. The fans are trying to cool down a coolant up there in the radiator that is already cool.

All the noise this whole time was for nothing, because the problem was never with the radiator performance, it was always with the coolant circulation.

 

[Alan J T]

and the shop telling me it had gone past the two-year return date, and all warranty issues had to be taken up with MSI.

This sounds correct as your the V2 Cooler would have the same Start and End date for the Warranty as the one it replaced you do not get another two or 3 years warranty with the replacement but just the remainder of the first one

 

[diddlyu153802da]

This is weird, I am going through the exact same thing and saw the email that said if it's out of warranty blah blah. Mine is being picked up Monday so will see what happens!

 

[BrotherBelial]

This sounds correct as your the V2 Cooler would have the same Start and End date for the Warranty as the one it replaced you do not get another two or 3 years warranty with the replacement but just the remainder of the first one

I understand that, but the fact MSI kept telling me that it had to be returned by the shop for them to even look at it, and were telling me the V2 was still under warranty with MSI. I feel it basically boiled down to MSI not wanting to pay the shipping, that would have worked out at more than the cost of the cooler to buy new at £120(cost of sending and returning), costing £60 to send via DHL from the UK to Poland.

 

[roy.mander160802e6]

Update on the RMA / Swap process:
Send my Liquid cooler on the 26th of Januari to the MSI repair center in Poland, which arrived on the 31st.

At "2024-02-06 08:23" the RMA received the status "Arrived and under repair.
At "2024-02-06 09:54" the status became "Repairing".
And at 2024-02-06 11:05 it was Send.

I did not receive any track and trace code, but received the new MAG Coreliquid 360R V2 today. The attached document to the new cooler had the closed status "swapped".

So in the end I received a new liquid cooler as part of the swap program, even though it was out of the warranty period. I'm impressed by the MSI service, where my next parts will be MSI as well.

Edit, Some short notes:
- The mail for the swap process is a default RMA mail, which can be confusing as it mentions warranty, which is out of scope for the swap process
- It was unclear that you could follow your service status at account.msi.com
- The 360R under my products changed to " MAG CORELIQUID 360R V2", so as Alan mentioned before, no new 3 year warranty.

And Yes I should have noticed before that my liquid cooler was faulty, but it was doing fine, although a bit more loud. Eventually it did start making noises, the same noises as what citay shared. In the end it was just fully clogged up and didn't cool at all anymore.

 

[roy.mander160802e6]

It has never ran this cold before
No rgb lights yet though as I need a jrainbow splitter. The 2 available spots are in use by the case and the system fans.

 

[citay]

Yes, runs very cool now. That's a nice looking system. Are you Dutch by chance?

You should now enable XMP for your RAM, so it runs at the proper speed.
Currently it runs at the slow DDR4-2133 that's meant for the first boot, before the BIOS is updated and XMP is enabled.

 

[roy.mander160802e6]

Yes, runs very cool now. That's a nice looking system. Are you Dutch by chance?

You should now enable XMP for your RAM, so it runs at the proper speed.
Currently it runs at the slow DDR4-2133 that's meant for the first boot, before the BIOS is updated and XMP is enabled.

Yes, I am Dutch indeed

I disabled XMP a while ago to troubleshoot another issue, haven't enabled it since. Should enable it again as I'm improving my system anyway atm.

The issue I was trouble shooting turned out to be my GPU. The MSI Lightning Z 2080ti shutsdown after it uses more than 60% power. Got to send it to a repair shop someday. Until then, playing with a 60% power limit is just fine.

The reason I upgraded my system, is because my previous case (MSI Sekira 500G) was too heavy and too tall for my PC mount. I bought a new desk where I can mount the PC below the desk, although limited to 25kg and 543mm height. (Sekira is around 584mm height). I did add some new fans while I took this new case. Sadly the MSI Pano cases are not available in The Netherlands yet.
I might have damaged the displayport on my Monitor (MSI MPG341CQR) while changing my setup... While adjusting my Monitor arm, the display cable got torn out (minor force). The port itself no longer works (tried multiple cables) and there are some minor bents visible. Sadly this means I have to use HDMI now.

 

[citay]

The MSI Lightning Z 2080ti shutsdown after it uses more than 60% power. Got to send it to a repair shop someday. Until then, playing with a 60% power limit is just fine.

You sure it's not the PSU?

 

[roy.mander160802e6]

You sure it's not the PSU?

Positive.

Issue started when I had the "Gigabyte Aorus P750W". Was not a fan of this PSU and wanted custom Cablemod cables anyway.
Upgraded the PSU with the "Corsair HX850i", which sadly didn't fix the issue. Cablemod set didn't change the situation either.

Using GPU-Z sensor logs I found out that the GPU died after pulling a certain amount of power, after which all GPU sensors are no longer reading. At this point the GPU goes into full fan mode, where the other components keep working (Audio output keeps on going and which is also why I have these logs).

 

[BrotherBelial]

Glad it was quick and easy for you. I hope yours lasts longer than my V2 did.

 

[diddlyu153802da]

Update on the RMA / Swap process:
Send my Liquid cooler on the 26th of Januari to the MSI repair center in Poland, which arrived on the 31st.

At "2024-02-06 08:23" the RMA received the status "Arrived and under repair.
At "2024-02-06 09:54" the status became "Repairing".
And at 2024-02-06 11:05 it was Send.

I did not receive any track and trace code, but received the new MAG Coreliquid 360R V2 today. The attached document to the new cooler had the closed status "swapped".

So in the end I received a new liquid cooler as part of the swap program, even though it was out of the warranty period. I'm impressed by the MSI service, where my next parts will be MSI as well.

Edit, Some short notes:
- The mail for the swap process is a default RMA mail, which can be confusing as it mentions warranty, which is out of scope for the swap process
- It was unclear that you could follow your service status at account.msi.com
- The 360R under my products changed to " MAG CORELIQUID 360R V2", so as Alan mentioned before, no new 3 year warranty.

And Yes I should have noticed before that my liquid cooler was faulty, but it was doing fine, although a bit more loud. Eventually it did start making noises, the same noises as what citay shared. In the end it was just fully clogged up and didn't cool at all anymore.

They have sent me something that's being delivered Thursday, status says "repaired" no tracking number. Hopefully I get thr same result as you! My old h100i has been trying it's best to keep my pc cool these last couple of weeks