MSI MEG Coreliquid S360 AIO Review – Pricey but worth it?

The MSI MEG Coreliquid S360 AIO is yet another component from MSI, whose name is pretty hard for me to remember.

So MSI sent this review unit to me and at first, I was quite uninspired to test it seeing how expensive this AIO is. But testing its thermal performance changed my perception of it. Well, to some extent. 

I just love how these bundled fans look. They just don’t look sharp – they feel sharp. So keep a bunch of band-aids handy. MSI claims you can’t hear them coming and I believe they are quite right about them.

And as per my hearing observation, these fans are one of the most silent fans I have tested recently on any of the 360mm AIOs I have reviewed. Sound test at 1:00 in the video above.

So I gotta give them the credit for pairing up one of the best fans from their catalog on this AIO. And these fans do have noise-damping rubber pads across its corners. These are solid high-performance fans and are already quite expensive. So pretty sure MSI chose to not implement any sort of RGB fans here, to keep the cost as low as possible. Still ouch though. 

Because this AIO has been through a few reviewers, some of the fins had bents on them. I can’t blame anyone for this as humans are just sloppy.

The tubes are easily bendable and the sleeves are pretty typical too. I have seen them behave the same across many AIOs, expensive or cheap ones – with such tearing across the corners. 

The pump is Asetek 7th generation pump so one can expect the best of the best performance out of it.

The pump has this whole plastic shell over it as a cover, which looks quite bulky and chunky. But it is quite light. It completely dismounts from the main pump and sticks back to the pump by the power of magnetism. But the strength isn’t too strong and hence the shell can pop out easily. Good thing our PCs don’t shake themselves like that booty.

On this magnetic shell, there are more panels that stick to this shell. And the magnetic strength of them is pretty strong. So pulling them out needs a bit of an effort. These panels basically do nothing and just hide the screw holes underneath them. 

The major benefit of this dismountable shell is that if you don’t need the extra bulkiness it provides in its overall design, you can remove it and still install a pump and a display that is fully functional. 

But it’s quite evident that if you live in a moderately dusty environment, the dust will not only settle on the exterior shell glass, but it can also settle on the display under it. So there are 2 things to wipe that damn dust off.

A good thing about the shell is that with it you have the flexibility to give directions to the many cables the pump throws out of it. 

And this pump has a fully functional 2.4-inch IPS display on it – pretty sure all of you must know that by now. But I found it to be not super bright or too vibrant. Especially when I try to recall how bright the screen of the Kraken Z63 was when I reviewed it. And the shell on top of it dims the brightness further down. 

Under the display, a PCB is clearly visible with some connectors on it. And due to limited time with this AIO, I couldn’t research what they are or what else they can do.

And then under that PCB is a fan that MSI claims can help cool down the surrounding VRMs and components around it. As this can drastically vary throughout the many different motherboards and setups – so I didn’t test it.

The base plate is quite flat.

The installation process is quite simple as with all the Asetek pumps-based AIOs. Just install the AMD backplate first as I was testing it with a Ryzen 9 3900X. 

Choose the correct mount and screws for the AMD socket. The manual is pretty to the point about what screws and mounts are for which socket. 

After screwing in the backplate on the back side of the motherboard, and putting the correct bracket under the pump, which will snap easily – just put the pump over the screws and tighten the 4 screws over it alternatively. As you can notice the outer shell wasn’t stuck on the pump during this whole process. 

But a word of caution – that if you are planning to put the pump in this similar orientation, that is when the tubes are facing towards the back side of the case, then your tall memory modules might not sit comfortably under it.

So just flip it horizontally and this problem will go away. 

You can install the radiator either on the front of a case that supports 360mm radiators there or towards the upper end. Wherever you choose to install them though – you can’t obviously make these gorgeous fans visible easily for your eyes to admire them.

The 3 fan connectors can easily hook into the pump daisy chained together which is pretty darn convenient.

Then the other 1 hub will go into the cpu_fan header on the motherboard.

And the JUSB port will go into one of the JUSB header.

And the SATA power connector can be directly connected to the power supply. 

The AIO overall looks pretty neat and would love to be in a black-themed case setup. The noticeable element would be the display on it and I feel I have shared enough about how it looks. 

The software lets you do all the necessary stuff like importing those silly meme GIFs you want. Or it can allow you to display your GPU/CPU stats with the few presets it has. These values will shuffle from 1 state to another. But you can only keep a maximum of 5 items here.

There are also a few fan curve presets that can help you customize the radiator, pump, and water block fan speeds. 

The silent mode is pretty silent and you’d hardly hear the fans producing any sound in that mode. But I did all of my tests in the game mode. Of course, you can customize each one of these parameters in the customize mode too. 

The drawback with fans connected to the pump is you can’t customize the fans with any 3rd party software. So you have to rely on MSI’s software to do that. The only other way is to not connect the fans to the pump. Which I am pretty sure not many would want to do.

Performance wise this is no doubt one of the best AIOs out there. For the limited number of 360mm AIOs I have tested, the Coreliquid S360 fared the best out of the bunch in both average and max temperatures inside an open case with these sets of different sustain power loads I threw on it. 

The premium for having a display on the pump is quite evident here. But MSI isn’t the only brand that does so. NZXT does the same. 

But the Kraken series currently costs cheaper than MSI on Amazon US right now. But it’s the opposite here in India and a Kraken will always cost more here for some reason. 

🛒Amazon India:
🛒MEG Coreliquid S360 – https://amzn.to/3vcDedA
🛒NZXT Kraken Z73 – https://amzn.to/3PxKh94
🛒Amazon US:
🛒MEG Coreliquid S360 – https://amzn.to/3PMxe3h
🛒NZXT Kraken Z73 – https://amzn.to/3v7aaUU
💬Discord: https://discord.gg/TsMHuPhjQ2

Clearly, MSI has better control over the pricing here. 

But then with the Kraken, we get twice the warranty. So paying about 5000 rupees or 60 us dollars more for a 2X warranty does sound more valuable to me. That is if I am going for an expensive display pump AIO like these. 

Because performance-wise they are anyway quite close to each other. With actually many other offerings that cost half the price but of course with no display slapped on the pump. 

So will I be recommending this AIO over the NZXT if you absolutely want a liquid cooler with a display over it? 

Well, clearly this math is very subjective as the polls here represent quite a balanced result. But I am honestly someone who won’t mind paying the extra bucks for the way-extra warranty on a component I own. 

But if you are someone who doesn’t want to stick to an AIO for that many years, and would be keener on trying out the new stuff that the future might bring – well then saving some money, for now, doesn’t sound that bad.

Yes – a cliffhanger conclusion. 

If you end up choosing any of these AIOs and want to support my efforts on this video then you can buy from the affiliate links above. 

So this is it, humans. Take care and MuBot out.