MSI MAG CORELIQUID 360R Reader Review by wazzickle - Dec 2020
As a small-form factor enthusiast, I’ve been building HTPCs for a few years, relying on my Playstation 4 for any gaming needs, but I recently sold it and have decided to move to PC gaming, and as such have started to consider liquid cooling. Could I get better results than regular air-cooling, at a reasonable price point? MSI kindly donated the CoreLiquid 360R (I don’t know about you, but it took me a few weeks of seeing that word before I worked out that it was Core – liquid, not Co – reliquid) for me to see if I can eke out any improvements.
My standard gaming setup wasn’t quite right for this – firstly, my i5 10500, while helping me towards 100+ fps at QHD at full settings in modern games like Call of Duty: Warzone, only has a TDP of 65W, not really tasking any proper cooling setup. Secondly, my case, the NCase M1, can only fit a 120mm radiator. Fortunately, I’ve been looking at expanding my inventory anyway. Here’s my test setup:
Case: DeepCool E-shield
Motherboard: MSI B75IA
CPU: i5 3570k
RAM: 2x 8Gb Crucial Ballistix DDR3 1600MHz
Storage: 500 Gb Samsung 850 Evo
GPU: Asus Strix 1070
PSU: Corsair TX550M
OS: Windows 10
Monitor: LG 27” QHD IPS
Thermal Paste: Arctic MX-4
I’m not experienced or skilled at overclocking so I set the MSI UEFI to auto-overclock – it being eight-year old tech, we shouldn’t expect much improvement, recent auto-overclocking software using AI. The auto-overclocking software requires several reboots in order to settle down and find it’s target so care was taken to make sure it was happy and stable before running each test.
We’ll be using Cinebench R23 to compare four cooling options in total: a No-Fan CR80EH, a funky little passive-cooling set of copper heatpipes that look like an old gramophone, rated to dissipate up to 80W of TDP, where the i5 3570k outputs up to 77W, so we don’t have much headroom there and we’ll expect thermals to be high and performance potentially low as a result, but at least we’ll have no moving parts.
Next up is another AIO, a 120mm Corsair H55, second-hand but in seemingly good shape, acquired alongside the i5 3570k and motherboard as a bundle. The regular fan has been replaced with a Noctua NF12-SB. Noteworthy is that neither of these cooling options come with RGB at all, indicating my preference for a cleaner look.
The object of the review, the MSI CoreLiquid 360R, is next. Pcpartpicker lied in telling me that the 360mm radiator would fit in the DeepCool E-shield, but without a hearty Dremelling, or installing the radiator vertically behind the front panel – severely limiting it’s cooling power – it won’t fit inside the case. Solution? Have it outside the case, on top. This means that any noise won’t be dampened by the case itself, but this case isn’t designed for noise dampening so the loss there will be small. To make it as fair a test as possible, I’ve removed the side panels and the solitary case fan for all the cooling options, and left the Corsair H55 in the same position.
Lastly, a stock Intel cooler – always a good baseline in terms of money, at the very least.
Re: MSI MAG CORELIQUID 360R Reader Review by wazzickle - Dec 2020
Installation
For a first-time liquid cooler, I found the instructions and amount of connecting cables and potential arrangements quite confusing. More detailed instructions, and/or some sort of virtual visual tool in the download as a step-by-step guide would be useful.
All the kit you could need is included. The liquid tubes themselves are quite stiff and made life a bit difficult, especially given in my case, I couldn't actually fit the whole shebang inside, it currently being worn like a helmet.
RGB
I finally bit the bullet and decided to see what RGB actually looked like, and I must say, if I were into that sort of thing, I could get used to it. If there were some easy way to unify it with an MSI GPU - as I expected the download software to handle - and, perhaps, the new Inwin 309, I could be tempted to pay extra to stay within the MSI ecosystem.
Noise
| No-Fan CR80EH: |
dBidledelta = 0 dB |
dBloaddelta = 0 dB |
| Corsair H55: |
dBidledelta = 5 dB |
dBloaddelta = 10 dB |
| MSI CoreLiquid 360: |
dBidledelta = 13 dB |
dBloaddelta = 15 dB |
| Intel stock cooler: |
dBidledelta = 14 dB |
dBloaddelta = 15 dB |
The Nofan clearly wins in the noise stakes – it’s hard to imagine how we could hear the flow and evaporation of whatever liquid is inside the heatpipes (likely to be water, alcohol, propylene glycol, or a mixture of the above, and at low pressure leading to far lower boiling points.) The Corsair H55 only uses one fan, and is unsurprisingly a decent amount quieter than the MSI. Anecdotally, the Intel stock cooler sounds a lot louder than the MSI CoreLiquid 360, regardless of the numbers – different types of sounds will seem louder than others. One caveat is that the stock cooler didn’t work with the noise-reducing fan power extension cable supplied with the CoreLiquid, but the H55 did work with it.
These tests were all done with the case sides off, and in the case of the CoreLiquid, outside of the case itself. Moreover, none of them would be loud enough to bother me in the case of either regular usage as an office workhorse, or for gaming, only an issue in the case of HTPC usage, for which I have a separate system.
Conclusion: it’s a wash.
Performance
The No-Fan, with only 3W of TDP headroom for a regularly-clocked i5 3570k, did not complete the Cinebench test – it didn’t throttle but when I saw the temperature reach 100o, that was enough for me to abort. It didn’t seem to be running very quickly, either.
Although the stock cooler achieved ~ 5% better results than either of the AIOs, and all else seeming equal, it’s hard to believe that it was 5% better at cooling, and even though every effort was made to keep all the other factors from interfering, and tests repeated, it’s likely something else was responsible. You know what computers are like – electrons and programs aren’t supposed to have personalities, but they do seem to behave as if they do from time to time.
Both the AIOs performed roughly the same, at around 2550 points. Conclusion: this system isn’t meaty enough to get the best out of the MSI CoreLiquid.
Cooling
| No-Fan CR80EH: |
Tidledelta = 22 |
Tloaddelta = 80+ |
| Corsair H55: |
Tidledelta = 10 |
Tloaddelta = 31 |
| MSI CoreLiquid 360: |
Tidledelta = 4 |
Tloaddelta = 22 |
| Intel Stock Cooler: |
Tidledelta = 9 |
Tloaddelta = 42 |
It doesn’t make sense to claim that the MSI CoreLiquid performs twice as well as the stock cooler, both because the results are different depending on whether we look at load vs idle, but more importantly because that’s not how temperatures work. What we can say is that the MSI CoreLiquid 360 did a fantastic job of keeping my i5 working under conditions that will extend its’ life compared to the other cooling options under consideration, but by how much, we couldn’t say – it’s likely that regular clearing of dust and replacement of thermal paste are significantly more important in extending the lifespan of this CPU. For those with high-cooling needs, looking to stress and overclock their high-performance processors, we can say that this will do a great job of keeping your processor within its' limits much better than silent-cooling, regular air-cooling and even a single-rad AIO.
Conclusion: the 360mm AIO will keep any CPU nice and chilled, like a fine white wine.
Overall:
Pros:
Performs significantly better than other options, both idle and under load, and with a negligible increase in noise
Build quality and rotatability of cooling block
Reasonably-priced for a triple-rad AIO
RGB
Cons:
Potential extra cost of upgrading case to fit
Questionable benefits for most use cases
RGB
Would I buy a 360mm, triple-radiator AIO? Almost certainly not, because the extra performance isn’t worth the price I’d pay, but if I did, I would buy this one.
Re: MSI MAG CORELIQUID 360R Reader Review by wazzickle - Dec 2020
Quote:
Conclusion: the 360mm AIO will keep any CPU nice and chilled, like a fine white wine.
Made me laugh:)
thanks for changing your rigs aboujt to get the stats :)
Sorry you cant ge tthe charts to work - I also have no idea how to do them!!!
Re: MSI MAG CORELIQUID 360R Reader Review by wazzickle - Dec 2020
Well, unless you want to those interactive js charts like most of the German sites have (hover over something and it recalcs 100% as that row), then an image is surely the easiest thing?
Just do them in Excel or whatever, copy to Imgur and away you go.
Re: MSI MAG CORELIQUID 360R Reader Review by wazzickle - Dec 2020
