MSI MAG CoreLiquid A15 360 review

A lot of companies have been expanding their portfolios in recent years and well-known motherboard manufacturer MSI has added power supplies, cases and even coolers to its inventory and it’s one of the latter we’re looking at today. It’s far from its first range of liquid coolers too, with a couple of generations of refinements built into the MAG CoreLiquid A15 360 that manifest themselves in reduced cable clutter, powerful cooling and easy installation.

Opening the box, you’re met with the delightful sight of the three 120 mm CycloBlade 9 RGB fans pre-installed on the radiator saving you the fiddly process of doing this yourself. Of course, this does mean if you don’t plan on placing the radiator in the roof of your case exhausting through the top panel, you might have to swap them over, but I'd imagine this only applies to a select few setups.

Another fantastic feature for time-saving and neatness are the hidden daisy-chained cables that connect the fans. The RGB lighting and fan speed cables are linked together out of sight with just single connectors for each protruding from the end of the radiator to hook up to your motherboard. This cuts up to four cables and a mass of spaghetti and means all three fans require just a single fan header and RGB header.

The fans spin up to 2,050 RPM, which isn’t the fastest we’ve seen, but MSI claims its hybrid blade design with exterior ring helps to boost static pressure, which is important for dealing with radiators.

While the 360 mm radiator stretches to 394 mm in length, it’s a standard design that all cases claiming to be able to house this size of radiator should be able to fit. Arctic’s radiators on its liquid coolers are much thicker, which can benefit cooling, but they can also have issues with compatibility.

The MAG Coreliquid A15 360’s radiator is just 27 mm thick so with fans you’ll need just 52 mm of space between your motherboard and roof of your case. It also has 20 fins per inch, which is relatively high and should allow it to dissipate more heat thanks to increased surface area.

The pump section is large, but when testing it on several space-limited Mini-ITX motherboards, it still had plenty of clearance, even with the busy PCB of the Asus ROG Strix X870-I Gaming Wi-Fi.

This is arguably the best-looking lighting element of the MAG CoreLiquid A15 360 with a bright and vibrant array of RGB lights shining through opaque groves in its top. It’s maybe not as snazzy and eye-catching as LCD displays the competition is often equipped with but it still looks great.

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The pump has a copper base plate with a 0.1 mm micro-channel design and impellor that spins at 3,400 RPM. It has its own 4-pin fan connector and lighting connector, but the fan cables do have a daisy-chain connector for the lighting should you wish to combine everything into a single 3-pin ARGB connector. They also have an MSI JAF_1 or EZ Conn-Cable connector. Modern MSI motherboards usually have this connector somewhere and it combines a fan header and 3-pin ARGB connector into one port, further cutting down on cables, so definitely worth looking into if you have an MSI motherboard.

Installation was about as easy as it could be with a liquid cooler, thanks in part to the pre-installed radiator fans, but also because many components are universal, such as the Uni Bracket that secures the pump to the motherboard catering for both AMD and Intel sockets. In addition, MSI includes an adjustable offset plate for Intel LGA1851 CPUs that shifts the center of the cooling plate to sit on the hot spot on those processors, which is off-center. MSI claims this can shave four or five degrees off the load temperature.

Threaded pins are used to secure either to AMD’s CPU sockets or into a backplate for Intel CPUs, which pass through the Uni Bracket and are then secured by sprung thumbscrews on top. Thermal paste is not pre-applied and comes in a tube that seems to have enough for several applications.

As usual it’s worth doing a trial fit before you apply the paste to check the orientation that works best in your case. The rotating tube fittings on the pump make this fairly hassle-free too. Sadly, there aren’t any additional screws in the box to add extra fans for a push-pull setup, so you’d have to source these separately.

The fans were reasonably loud at 48 dBA at full speed, which was a similar level to the Arctic Liquid Freezer III 360 A-RGB, but it's far from the loudest liquid cooler we’ve heard and came in a little quieter than the Noctua NH-D15 G2, which measured 52 dBA. The 3DMark Steel Nomad stress test saw the joint lowest result of 78 °C, equaling the slightly louder Be Quiet! Light Loop 360 mm and beating the Arctic Liquid Freezer III 360 A-RGB.

It managed 79 °C in our tough x264 encoding test, where the Be Quiet! cooler was a few degrees better, but the MAG CoreLiquid A15 360 did at least beat the Noctua NH-D15 G2 and Arctic Liquid Freezer III 360 A-RGB by a few degrees and offered far superior cooling to the mid-priced air coolers we’ve tested recently.

In our Metro Exodus Enhanced Edition stress test its result of 63 °C was excellent and a match for the Be Quiet! Light Loop 360 mm while offering noticeably lower temperatures than the Noctua NH-D15 G2 too. Stretching out the full load stress testing to 10 minutes in Cinebench saw the Be Quiet! Light Loop 360 mm offer a 6 °C lower temperature with the Arctic Liquid Freezer III 360 A-RGB posting a slightly better result too, while the best result we saw of the Noctua NH-D15 G2 was only 3 °C warmer despite it being an air cooler.

The Be Quiet! Light Loop 360 mm had the last laugh, though, as it was able to drag out CPU back to its resting temperature a little faster. Also, at full speed its pump was quieter, with the MAG CoreLiquid A15 360 benefitting from a slightly reduced pump speed as it produced a noticeable low drone at full speed. Thankfully, it does have its own 4-pin connector so dropping it to around 80% would see it perform almost silently and with minimal impact to cooling.

Thankfully for MSI, the MAG CoreLiquid A15 360 pricing is very keen and while the Be Quiet! Light Loop 360 mm offered occasionally lower temperatures, not only was it a little louder overall at full speed, but costs around $40 more. It arguably has slightly better-looking RGB lighting but also lacks MSI’s combined cables and offset mounting plate for Intel LGA1851 CPUs.

With a bit of fine tuning for its pump, the MAG CoreLiquid A15 360 is both very capable and can be very quiet, and we love the pre-installed fans and single fan and lighting cables thanks to the fans being pre-connected, too. It’s easy to install and its pump fitted on even the most cramped Mini-ITX motherboards we tested too. Combined with a $110 price tag, the MAG CoreLiquid A15 360 is great value and capable of handling the toastiest processors out there.

However, Arctic’s Liquid Freezer III 360 A-RGB costs the same, performs similarly, is available in white and also offers VRM cooling thanks to its built-in fan and in some areas actually costs significantly less than the MSI MAG CoreLiquid A15 360, so it's definitely worth considering as an alternative.