The MSI Situation Just Gets Worse...

Hey there! This is our new studio, studio number six, and this is actually a rental. We're staying here for a little while while we await the finished construction of our new home, which I'm excited to show you more about in the future, but that would explain why occasionally you see flip-flop between the old studio and this one. We have a backlog of videos filmed at the

old place that still need to be published. The other thing I want to talk about is this video right here, the one you're about to see. This is the timeline of it, and it just, there's something that we need to address. So, fairly recently, it came to my attention that I think Jay and a few others released videos around a fiasco involving ASUS. I admittedly have

from him and I think others came out around the same time this one's going live. My goal is not to feed off of the negativity of others and to kind of just dogpile on companies because we're just in a let's hate company mood. Like, that's not what this is about. I filmed this over a month ago, I think in mid-April, and I'd been kind of sitting

on it, waiting for the right time to publish. I had it in the calendar planned for late May, and we're pretty much there now. I don't want to wait any longer because we're about to travel to Taiwan for Computex 2023. That'll be exciting stuff. So, I just wanted to make you aware of the fact that this was not the plan. I did not know, I did

not foresee that issues with a different company were going to come up around the same time as this one, but I think it's important you guys hear me out on this and see kind of the same things I'm seeing. It's not good. And I only wish that MSI would take this issue more seriously. So, without further ado, I hope you will stick around. We deep clean

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offering our viewers a $50 coupon by using code GREGSAVE50 at checkout. Again, that's GREGSAVE50 at checkout. Click the link in the description to learn more. I still, to this day, receive emails from people all across the planet experiencing premature clogging with their MSI AIOs. This goes back to a couple of videos, actually more than that, that we released documenting this issue. First, we ran into it

in a fix or flop video, and then we ran into another instance of it, and that kind of sparked just several emails, especially from folks in the local area who were having similar symptoms. Their rigs were sometimes even just idling, and they would randomly shut off. And while that might seem like a power issue on the surface, what is usually happening here is the rig is

just shutting down because the CPU is getting way too hot way too fast. Under any sort of load whatsoever, without proper circulation in a loop like this, the CPU will just collect more and more heat. It can't evacuate the heat because there's no circulation here, and the rig shuts down because the chip hits T-junction and throttles all the way into oblivion, and it suddenly can't pull

back voltage anymore to mitigate that heat output, and so it just cuts itself off. It's good that CPUs do this because it prevents them from totally wrecking themselves, but obviously a system that turns off randomly and prematurely because of a clogged AIO that is only six months old is pretty ridiculous. And if you think I'm joking about the whole email thing, I've got one from Mihair,

Boyadzeyan, April 13th, Alfonso E., April 10th, Twisted Jester, April 5th, the list goes on. And the recurring theme here is that none of these individuals live within the US or Canada. That is an important distinction because MSI decided to treat those outside of the US or Canada differently when it came to the RMA process. And if you're wondering what we mean by premature clogging, again, I

invite you to check out our earlier videos on this topic linked below. Our first Fix or Flop video where we ran into this issue for the first time ever was what I think sparked MSI's initial recall but not a recall announcement. You can see it here on one of their webpages. This grossly downplays, I believe, the severity of the issue. Firstly, they say a small portion

of their AIOs have been affected by this, but again, just based on the sheer number of emails I get on a weekly basis around this issue, I know MSI is probably getting 10, 100, maybe 1,000 times more than that. It depends on how many of these they sold. It's clear that this is not a quote small portion, but of course, PR, marketing, they're going to downplay

it where they can. On top of this, further down, you'll see there's a place to enter a serial number. And this is where you can check to see if your AIO qualifies for the advanced RMA, as MSI calls it, where they'll send you a replacement AIO prior to you having to send your defective unit to them. This is how I think it should be addressed everywhere.

This is an acknowledgement by MSI that their products were widely just defective. If they can't last six months, they shouldn't be sold, right? There are plenty of AIOs out there that last several years before typically the pump kicks the can, not the loop clogs. You can flush the loop out if you want, but in my experience, more often than not, it's the Asetek pump in most

cases. I think it's a coolant pump or something in here, but the pump in question will die before the loop clogs. If it is treated properly, it's very clear in the case of the 240R as well as the 360R, these loops were not treated properly and they were clogging. And you can see this really nasty, thick brown gunk was filling up specifically the small fins in

the block side of the pump that are in charge of pulling heat away from the CPU. This reduction in surface area effectively cuts the efficiency of the cooler by a huge amount. And that's why these CPUs overheat so quickly. What really surprised me was MSI's willingness to adopt changes regarding the RMA process for us here in the States and debatably Canada, though I've been told different

things about Canada. The advanced RMA didn't exist up front. We pressed them on this, we told them, hey, folks are going to have their systems down for several weeks because they're going to be waiting to not only ship their defective AIOs to you, but then you're going to have to investigate them, make sure they're clogged, and then send a replacement unit back to them, whether you

overnight it or not. The fact is the process will take at least a few days, probably. In my experience, it'll take a few weeks. And if it's happening in the sheer number of cases that we're running into, this needs to be addressed more proactively. And to their credit, at least with regard to the States, they changed the traditional RMA process for these AIOs to an advanced

RMA, which again means they're going to send you a replacement AIO before you have to send their defective unit back. That's cool. I'm totally fine with that. Look, companies are going to make mistakes. It happens to the best of them. It certainly happens to the worst of them. You're never going to have a perfect company that runs things perfectly all the time and never has issues.

Whether it's a robot or a human assembling things or making decisions at a high level, mistakes happen. So that wasn't what I was pissed off about. The problem was once we got to that point, I'm like, great, okay, cool. So we're going to start seeing things speed up here and folks are going to get their issues addressed quickly. And then the emails kept coming in, though.

I kept getting emails from folks who lived in Great Britain or the Philippines or an insert country here that wasn't the US or Canada. And then I'd go back to the MSI reps and say, hey, what's going on here? Why are these people not being helped? Why are they being told that their serial numbers don't qualify for the advanced RMA? Oh, well, it's because they're not

in the US and we can't control what other regions do with regard to their RMA processes and defective units, blah, blah, blah. Like, are you serious? Like, I'm talking to MSI Taiwan. This is MSI HQ. How do you guys not have control over how RMAs are handled, especially when it comes to products you guys screwed up from the get-go? These aren't just random off-the-wall cases. Again,

you're going to have defective products from time to time. This is a serious systemic issue here. And it doesn't seem to me like you're taking this very seriously in other parts of the world. Is this because the only media that appear to be bringing this up are US-based? Do you assume that just half my audience is from the US and so we'll appease half of them.

It's good enough. We're not going to worry about it in anyone else. It's fine. I mean, the US is a very small portion of the world's population, so it might seem like half on our channel, but I'm willing to bet there are many more people who are being affected negatively by this than there are people being affected positively by it, because just the sheer numbers. What,

300 million people in the US and then you've got another 7 point something billion who could potentially be affected and who aren't being treated the same way? That's a serious problem. What's going on? And we have precedent too from other companies who have run into similar issues. I know Lian Li had an issue with their Galahad AIOs. They treated everyone exactly the same, were super proactive

about getting replacements out. I think Fractal Design, as much as I don't like Fractal for personal reasons, at this point in time, even Fractal Design addressed this head on to their credit. But MSI is choosing not to. And I think the MSI issue is an even broader one. These AIOs were very affordable. The 240Rs and 360Rs in particular were very entry level AIOs from a price

perspective, and that's why I personally like using them. Little did I know, and little did most of you know at that time, that these things were going to kick the can in six months. Super premature for any AIO, let alone a hundred plus dollar one from a quote unquote reputable brand. So that's where we are with that. I still receive emails to this day. MSI, to

my knowledge, still has not chosen to treat them any differently. And it's literally just a product of where you live. Now I've gotten responses like, well, what do you expect? This is normal. This is how companies treat. It's nothing unique to MSI, blah, blah, blah. But again, I've given you two cases from two other PC tech companies that treated everyone, no matter where you lived, exactly

the same. It was their screw up. They handled it swiftly. MSI is choosing not to. So that's my issue. And that's why I pledged to all of you that I would be avoiding MSI products where possible on my channel going forward. We've turned down offers from companies that wanted to include MSI products. I mean, money in probably at this point, well north of $10,000. I mean,

we're talking mid five figures at this point. We've turned down a lot of money to avoid MSI out of sheer principle, because I don't think it's right to work with a company that's willing to treat one section of their audience differently than another when it comes to an issue that they brought on themselves by manufacturing a crappy AIO. Now this rig that I showed you in

the beginning has an MSI AIO in it. It's not a 240R, it's actually a P240. This one I don't think is affected the same way the 240Rs were, but I'm willing to take it apart just to see. As far as I know, this being Lisa's rig, she's gamed on it quite a bit recently, hasn't had any issues, but I'm curious. I want to take it apart.

I want to see what's inside. I want to see if we have discolored fluid. At the very least, we were seeing again like a slightly pale orange color in the coolant, and I don't think that's how it should look. If it's a glycol or water-based solution, it should largely be clear. So let's see what we find. I think it's kind of funny, I've actually got Corsair

fans over the radiator. Make no mistake though, this is still an MSI AIO. I don't know why I did this back when we built it. I've got to admit, one of the reasons why I wanted to use this AIO in this rig at the time was because there were no cables stemming from the block. The pump's actually in the radiator section of this assembly. So you

get a really nice clean sleek look here, no cable mess, the Dragon logo off to one side. Again, I just cannot in good faith use a product like this knowing this is how MSI handles these issues. You can see we had thermal paste applied. Now apart from the dust, this square section here is actually where the pump is located in these units. Now folks thought there

was a commonality between this location and the premature clogging. However, many AIOs use this layout. It's a way to circumvent an Asetek patent. This alone should not be the reason why a loop is clogging. Again, it's going to slightly reduce the effectiveness of the radiator in theory because you're reducing the amount of surface area, the amount of fins that can dissipate heat. But other than that,

again, I don't see this alone being the culprit. I think it has more to do with the fluid being used in these clothed systems. Now again, I want to stress that I'm not expecting to find anything wrong with this unit. I think the coolant's going to look fine. I don't think we're going to see any clogging, any debris that shouldn't be there, any sort of bacterial

growth like we saw before. That said, if we do see that in here, the first thing I'm going to do is reach out to folks who have these AIOs and have been running them for a year or more to see if this is again a product-wide issue. I did not test thermals before this. I did not see any issues with gameplay. Typically, if your CPU is

throttling heavily, you're going to see a huge performance cut in game. Lisa plays again on this rig all the time and we didn't see that problem. So I didn't think to check it, although I will be upset with myself if we do see clogging here. And I didn't check prior because it would be nice to have that baseline. So hindsight, I should have done it, but

whatever. Let's get this thing taken apart. Let's see. They usually use Torx bits. What the heck is this thing? They not want us going in these anymore? Are you serious? I'm hoping you guys can see those there. Those two in the middle. I've never seen screw heads like this before. This is ridiculous. I mean, it's not going to stop me from getting inside. Nice try. But

what is this crap? Are you guys seriously putting this here because you don't want people getting inside? There's no reason for this. Anyway, let's see what we can get open here. And this is just stupid. I think I can get that out with a flathead, but it's going to take some finessing here first. They're just making me disassemble it a different way at this point. Wow.

So this block is tiny and you can see it can be tiny because there's no pump inside. You can have really, really tiny CPU blocks. This looks actually really cool. What is not cool, however, is how I'm having to disassemble this. This smells noticeably better. There's a faint hue to it, but I don't think this is alarming. Yeah, it smells so much better than before. Yeah,

this is ridiculous. These are like those single use screws where you can only tighten them. You can't loosen them without whatever kind of special tool this is because it's sloped on one side and then it's really sharp on the other. But it's only sharp on the side that you can tighten. So yeah, they definitely didn't want us coming in here. Just a bit silly, but we

figured it out. And conveniently, I fixed it to the rescue. This was the tool I had to use to get that screw out, by the way. Ridiculous. This is what it took. Anyway, not expecting to find any surprises in here just based on the color of the fluid that we saw earlier. I need a much smaller screw head so I can get underneath this copper plate

to pry it off. There we go. And how does she look? Okay, there is, there actually is a bit of debris in here. This is mildly concerning. I suppose after a year of more or less continuous use, this shouldn't be all that surprising, but it still is disappointing to see it where it is. Of course, it's going to get caked up here because these little micro

fins are just so tiny. This is where all that thicker debris is going to be lodged and this will ultimately affect CPU temps. I mean, this very well could amount to a few degrees Celsius at peak temps, heck, even idle temps. And yeah, it's not great to see. To be clear, we saw significantly more debris in the 240Rs we disassembled in our fix or flop playlist.

That said, the color of this debris is very similar to the color of the debris that we found in those and the fluid did still have a slight orange tint. I know it's gonna be difficult for the camera to pick up, but in the studio lighting, you can see that it is a slightly orangey kind of amber color. And in the 240Rs, it got so bad

that the coolant looked almost like a brownish color and it smelled pretty bad. Usually, you can smell like a glycol solution. If you've worked with custom loops before, it's a very strong smell. This smelled like that, which is good, I would think. The 240Rs did not. You could tell something was in that coolant that shouldn't have been there. So, long-term, could this get worse? Sure could.

Are you going to run into the same issue with, say, Corsair AIOs after a year of use? I mean, you shouldn't. I can't say for certain if you will or not. But if I had seen this in the past, because I have disassembled AIOs before, the ones that have been used, I would have called this out. It shouldn't be there. I've seen this in custom loops

before, especially when you use thicker, opaque coolant. But it's still an issue. And it's enough of an issue that even if I wasn't sold on avoiding MSI products like the Plague just out of principle, I would still avoid MSI AIOs at the very least. Because this, I mean, think about this in another year, how much more there could be in these microfins that will, without a

doubt, noticeably affect CPU temperatures. That'll affect performance as a result, and it might even affect CPU lifespan, especially if the voltage is being pulled back or it's running hotter than it should be. I mean, all that can wear on the chip in the long run. So, be careful out there. If you insist on using MSI AIOs, just know this might be an issue. Again, I don't

know if it is pump location dependent. I don't know if where they're sourcing their coolant depends on where the pump is located. If it's an Asetek pump or a Coolit pump or whatever the P240 has in it, it's definitely not an Asetek pump just based on the location. It could determine what kind of coolant's being used. And it's possible this is the same plant that was

supplying the coolant for the 240 and 360Rs. Again, the physical characteristics are very similar. So, just be careful. I am going to completely replace the AIO in Lisa's rig. I don't want her using this anymore. Even if I refilled it, it's just out of principle at this point. We're not going to touch it. Needless to say, I think these single-use, proprietary, like only tighten screws, whatever

they're called, I've never seen them before, make a lot more sense now. This is such a scumbag move by MSI. I've never seen this on the bottom of an AIO ever. And I can't think of any other reason why they would put these in there other than to prevent the average person from breaking in and checking to see if the fins are clogged. Like, what the

heck is this? It's just, I don't know. I don't really care anymore. Lisa's rig is back on air cooling for the time being. I'm not against AIOs. I've used them many times in the past. I think they look really good and they do a great job cooling, typically. But they do have a few more failure points, namely the possibility of leaks and pump failures. And that's

just something that you don't really run into with a trusty tower cooler like this one here. A bit on the weaker side for the CPU, but I think it'll do just fine given what Lisa does with her rig. So, I hate to say it, but yeah, the state that we're in currently with MSI hasn't really changed. It's a shame. They've got some pretty affordable motherboards we'd

like to use and some budget builds. I mean, I've never been the biggest fan of MSI products, but I've used them quite a bit because I do think that they offer unique value in some cases. But I'm just not willing to use them at this point. She's still got an MSI motherboard in there. I've got to swap all this out eventually. It doesn't get much airtime

at all on the channel, which is why I don't mind it being in there for now. But you'll notice going forward, and since that last video of ours aired around this topic, that I've tried to avoid MSI products where I can. So, I'm not going to be using them. I'm going to try to avoid MSI products where I can, simply out of principle. I just don't

think it's right to promote a company, whether we're accepting money from them or simply just using parts from them and giving them airtime on this channel. It just doesn't sit right with me. It might seem cheesy to some of you. Oh, again, a lot of companies do that. This is nothing new, blah, blah, blah. But again, in the tech space, I think this could have been

handled a lot better, and it was handled a lot better by competitor brands who experienced similar things with us. AIOs specifically. So, it is what it is. This is my stance. You don't have to agree with it, but if you wonder going forward why we haven't been using MSI products, this is it in a nutshell. If that changes, I'll be sure to let you know if

they decide to change the way that they approach the recall or the RMA issue. They don't even call it officially a recall. They're just saying it's an advanced RMA process or just simply an RMA process, but these AIOs should be recalled, not the one we just disassembled specifically. Maybe that one too, who knows? Maybe others with P240s and P360s have run into more severe issues than

what you saw with ours. But the 240Rs and the 360Rs, those should be straight up recalled, 100%, no question. MSI needs to make it right. The problem is I don't think they will. If you want to leave a comment, do so in the comment section below, of course. If you like the video, give it a thumbs up. Consider subscribing if you have not already. If you

want to support us on Patreon, you can do so via the link below. And consider joining our public Discord server. That is totally free of charge. There's a lot of good help there. And if you want to be someone who can help others, there's also a chance for you to do that. It's a great community and it's been growing, and I'm really excited to see what

we can do with that here on the channel in the future. Consider... Was there something else I was going to plug? Nope, there's not. I guess there's not. Okay. Just consider sticking around for the next video, I guess. My name is Greg. Thanks for learning with me.