A Viewer Sent Me This Broken AIO...

A viewer sent me his broken AIO... and wow is this thing clogged! Early production Lian Li Galahad AIOs were notorious for clogging prematurely - resulting in toasty idle and load temps. Let's discuss the entire ordeal.

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[ZERONEVERSEVEN]

Thank you for always going to bat for consumers. We need this.

[Mario]

I had the exact same issue with the exact same cooler model. Lian Li quickly sent me a new one when I contacted them, so that's good. Nice to see that you are covering the issue!

[watercannonscollaboration]

I remember when GN Steve covered this it was also odd that it took Lian Li this long to fully announce this issue. Arctic’s AIOs were affected once but Arctic was pretty on top of things

Which is kind of funny as someone who’s always cheaper out with ID Cooling AIOs they’ve never had any issues whatsoever

[andrewsheldon]

I had the exact issue. My 5800x3d was hitting high 90's with my 240mm Galahad. They shipped me 3 replacements without having to return mine, because they kept shipping me black units - 2 black ones before finally getting me the white one, and told me to keep all 3 of them plus the broken one! Lian Li customer service is amazing!

[Alvin]

Can 100% confirm this story. Around late March/early April this year I started having random system crashes. At first I did my regular diagnosing, but eventually I started getting overheating warnings after the crashes, so I monitored the CPU temps, and temps were much higher than normal. Idle in the 60s, full load around 82-84, and with spiky load it would get up to 89°C (for some reason constant loads apparently improved the flow of liquid, so a stresstest wouldn't crash the system, but short spikes would).
So first thing I did was a full clean and remount with fresh thermal paste, but the result was pretty much unchanged. So on April 25th I contacted Lian Li support asking them how to proceed from here, if they have any advice (at that point I didn't know there was a widespread issue). The support contact immediately responded "I told the factory to send you a new unit, if you don't get it within 22 days message me again" without any other questions or asking for the defective unit to be sent back.

While that did seem like really good support, it also immediately made me realize: they know exactly what's going on and want to get this dealt with as quickly and silently as possible. Received my replacement unit on the 9th of May, so well within the 22 days, but since I have an ITX build swapping the AiO is a more complex process, so I decided to wait until the weekend to swap (the old cooler was barely hanging on, I could still use the system with a heavy power limit on the CPU). Then on May 12th Igorslab posted on his news page a huge discussion thread (that blew up and got the whole coverage started) about failing Galahad AiOs, and suddenly everything came together for me. I still went ahead and installed the new unit on the 13th, and it was performing perfectly like new, so even if the problem persisted I could still keep this unit running while I figure out what to do.

Next week on the 15th of May Lian Li released their public statement (the one Greg reads in the video at 14:03), and I was relieved to read that the issue had been addressed and my new unit wouldn't be affected, but I was also mad at Lian Li for not releasing any statement earlier after they've known about the problem for over a year. Could have saved me a lot of troubleshooting had I known this was a widespread issue.



So apparently Lian Li and MSI (and some other AiO brands like Enermax) are using the same supplier Company Apaltek. And they had a flaw in their manufacturing process where the individual parts of the radiator got soldered twice without being properly cleaned afterwards. This left some residue inside the radiator, that over time reacts with the liquid in the loop and corrodes the aluminium inside the radiator, causing it to flake out, and the flakes start collecting in the CPU block forming the goo shown in the video. Most likely all brands that sourced their radiators from Apaltek during that time were affected, some of them decided to deal with the issue openly, Lian Li tried to keep it quiet until it got out of control. Not really the kind of response a customer would expect, but apparently this is the new norm now, companies don't want to admit any fault of their own because that would cause a huge wave of RMA requests.

[spitfire]

I am currently using a 9.5 year old H55 Corsair AIO that has cooled 5 different CPUs at this point. I have pictures to prove it. One year is unacceptable.
The list: FX-8320, i5-2500K, i7-3770, i5-10400F, and currently a i5-11600K still going strong!

[J-Vill]

Another reason why I love air cooling, not as fancy as AIO water cooled builds but won't ever clog

[shanemcknight]

Thanks Greg for going to bat for the consumer again. AIO's are not cheap, and these companies should be in touch with their client base and have their ear to the ground on issues like this so PR is not damaged and their reputation grows positive rather than negative. Great content!

[Wiseion]

My son have a 4-5 years old Corsair h100i and his temps are still fine.
Love your videos and thanks for taking the time to explore these issues

[bluecivic]

While it may have taken them awhile to make an official announcement later than expected; they at the very least have been very easy to get replacements out to anyone who had issues. Additionally they sent me a replacement without having to send the old/broken one back. No downtime if the unit was still usable.

[sooperspeedy]

These clogging issues have done a good job in helping decide that I'm never going to use an aio in my personal rig. I know there are good ones, but there's always gonna be the voice in the back of my head saying "what if"

[pumpknot]

Thanks Greg! I didn't even know this was a problem yet. I built a pc for my nephew in sept 2022. He has been tell me that his pc was running "funny" I figured it was because he maxed out his HD space. After chatting with him I saw his radiator was full of dust so I showed him how to clean it. However I never tested the temps, until now. Thank you for all the things you do for he PC community. Your truly awesome man! thanks again! 🤟

[mfrank]

I can confirm that their RMA process for the affected AIOs is at an accelerated pace. I filed for a RMA of my 360 Galahad on the Friday evening before Memorial Day, got an email on Memorial Day saying they were sending a replacement, the replacement was at my door step by the next Friday. 7 days total time for the new cooler to get to my door.

[boygarlic]

Confirmed they're still doing this to this day, just got mine yesterday to replace S/N 2021. Great vid! gave me peace of mind knowing its not just my rig

[Django]

That split flathead bit is for removing screws with a ball in the head. At my job we call them X-ray screws/bits (no idea what the official/technical designation of them is) and the tools are marked as "for trained operators only" or something like that. We use them to hold lead shielding over certain areas of an electron microscope to prevent X-ray leak from the column. It is a funky looking screw head and sometimes the ball falls out (almost looks like a small ball bearing), forcing you to use regular flathead driver to extract the darned thing, because the small prongs of the bit slip out so easily.

[sjohns]

Thank you for this video. I've been going crazy the past few days trying to figure out why my computer was hitting ridiculous temps when just using a web browser.

[donhorn]

Ran into same problem and contacted Lian Li last week. Said they are replacing. I am waiting shipping information. It has been 6 days as of this morning. Good and helpful video, thank you. Mine is from July 2021

[bG]

It'd be awesome to watch you clean and refill the AIO with fresh coolant, bleed it, and see if it functions well again. That would be super cool to watch!

[Shotgun_Sters]

I got a Lian Li Galahad 240 as well, that failed for the same reason. I contacted Lian Li, and sent them my proof of purchase. Lian Li was very cool about it, and sent me a new one free of charge. They actually screwed up, and sent me a white one, even though the one I purchased was black. I sent them another email basically saying that the one I originally had was black, and I really don't want a white one. I really didn't expect them to send me ANOTHER one, but they did! I haven't had a single issue with the replacement in over a year of daily use. They also told me that I could just keep the white one, and I didn't need to send it back. I ended up giving it to my friend. I am very happy with Lian Li, and the way they handled this was top-notch. So many companies could take a lesson from them. It's not the failures that make the company, it's the way they handle the failures! While I agree with you, Greg, on most of what you're saying, I will say that the people who don't notice when their AIO is failing are not the kind of people who are going to look out for statements from a manufacturer saying that their product is defective, and it's impossible for a manufacturer to reach their consumers directly, especially if the consumer isn't looking for that information. So it is what it is. I think they did a great job

[Mr.Cheese]

Content like this is amazing. Thank you and the viewers that are willing to participate.