MSI MEG CORELIQUID S360 AIO Liquid Cooler Review

A Closer Look

Out of the box, the MSI MEG CORELIQUID S360 certainly has a very stark and immediately impressive aesthetic. Admittedly, your eyes are mostly drawn to the CPU block, but on the whole, this seems to represent a very sleek and professional design. – As with all cooling products, however, there are clearly a number of individual components that go into the overall design. Let us, therefore, take a closer look at each part before we draw any conclusions.

CPU Block

At an initial glance, the CPU block looks rather bulky, and that’s because it is. There are, however, more than a few secrets lurking under the surface here that the casual glance may not initially have you notice.

The first one is the fact that the top of the CPU block is actually just a plastic (acrylic) cover. Effectively there to give it a more attractive aesthetic, underneath you get a closer look at that Asetek 7th-gen pump as well as the 2.4″ IPS display screen. Keep looking though as there’s another surprising, but nice, inclusion!

Although this is not the first time we’ve seen this utilised within an AIO cooler, the MSI MEG CORELIQUID S360 has a small fan located under the display PCB. This effectively acts as some secondary cooling specifically for the components surrounding the CPU socket. This includes the VRM, RAM, and general motherboard area. – Does it make a huge difference? Probably not, with it encouraging some direct airflow around the areas, however, it surely can’t hurt! Especially for those of you who perhaps like tinkering with CPU/RAM overclocking which can make the surrounding areas notably warmer!

The cover for the CPU block, although showing a highly reflective surface, is actually see-through and does allow the IPS display from below to easily pass though. With the side sections clipping off, however, I’m not entirely certain why this is so… Well… Dismantable. – I see nothing in removing the side trims that could possibly help or assist its performance and not even in terms of RAM compatibility such the pump is a relatively nice compact unit.

As you might have guessed though, and better highlighted with the cover off, the CPU block for the MSI MEG CORELIQUID S360 is rather tall (roughly 3 inches). As such, although still not standing anywhere near as tall as an air cooler tower, its overall height may still surprise you and especially so when fitted inside your system.

In terms of the 2.4″ IPS display, yes, we are going to go into more detail on this in the ‘installation’ part of this review. So keep reading if you want to see our thoughts on that.

Contact Plate

The contact plate consists of a highly polished copper surface that should provide an excellent point of heat transfer from the CPU. – Coming pre-applied with thermal paste (although removed by us prior to testing as per our methodology) this easily handles one of the most difficult and controversial aspects of cooler installation.

In something of a moderate side note, however, although this CPU cooler is officially compatible out of the box for both Intel LGA 1700 and AMD Threadrupper TR4, I’m not sure a circular design will provide the best coverage for those chipsets given that they are more notably rectangular in size. Admittedly though, there have been many reports of ‘squared’ contact plates providing uneven pressure (and, by proxy, bad thermal compound spreading) that perhaps still makes a ‘circle’ the best choice.

Radiator

The radiator itself is a black rectangular block. Yes, I know that sounds incredibly simplistic, but that’s honestly all we have to say about 90% of AIO coolers we review. Radiators are, by and large, the most standardised and boring aspect of their design.

On the plus side, however, and unlike many other manufacturers who tend to just stick with the black rad, MSI has at least gone to the effort of having the ‘MEG’ logo embossed into the side of the metal. – It’s a nice touch and certainly gives a nice little visual nod to an otherwise quite boring and generic component.

Fans

As this is a 360mm AIO liquid cooler, it should surprise you to learn that you are provided with 3 x 120mm fans. – Being MSI’s own MEG SILENT GALE P12 design, this is certainly a very encouraging choice as it would suggest that they have been both designed and configured to work optimally with the MEG CORELIQUID S360.

Aesthetically, with their predominantly black and silver highlight design, they look really impressive and, overall, work exceptionally well with the overall professional design.

Although the fans lack(?) ARGB lighting, I honestly think that these are still very nice to look at. A notable highlight is the MSI dragon logo which has been lightly embossed into the centre of the fan. It’s a small, but exceptionally nice touch that really grabs your attention when the light just flicks off it.

Coming as a hydrodynamic bearing design, all going well, these will not just shift a solid amount of air, but they should also do so with minimal acoustic output. On the whole, the fans are yet another exceptionally encouraging component that suggests that the MSI MEG CORELIQUID S360 is going to provide us with some highly impressive test results!

Overall

I would freely concede that an assembled but uninstalled AIO liquid cooler is not the easiest thing to photograph. With cables going everywhere, it does have the tendency to look like a bit of a mess (with, unfortunately, not much you can do about it). – On the whole though, if you imagine those cables away, the MSI MEG CORELIQUID S360 looks amazingly solid both in terms of its design and aesthetic. – I really like this AIO cooler, and more so the fact that it looks fantastic without any kind of reliance on ARGB lighting or fancy colours.

I am left with no doubt that the MSI MEG CORELIQUID S360 has been specifically designed and created as a premium-level product targeting some of the best AIO performance a 360mm solution can offer. – I have absolutely no doubt that this is going to provide us with some exceptionally impressive test results.

Before we get onto that though, there is the small matter of actually getting this fitted to our test bench!