MSI MAG321CQR screen blackouts periodically

RainOfPain125 · July 1, 2021

Hello. I bought two 1440p 144hz 31.5inch monitors to test both and see which is better, then return the other worse one.

This one, the MAG321CQR, is having quite the bumpy start. The HDMI and DP cables provided (I assume) aren't to spec with the advertised 1440p 144hz power of the monitor, which is extremely scummy business practice. The HDMI cable is extremely glitchy, the screen only displays for half a second, before going through a long blackout and repeats. The DP cable literally just gives "no signal" on screen.

My own HDMI cables, two of which, do work, except they have periodic screen blackouts. This doesn't seem to be some sort of OS or computer-level issue, it seems to be the monitor straight up doesn't recognize the signal it is receiving. Assuming my personal HDMI cables are up to spec, what could be going wrong?

Other problems include an advertised "FreeSync" option which does not show up in the menu. Other options that seem appealing but are grayed out is the "fastest" option in response time config.

Extra note: The built in menu has an "FPS" display option which totally removes all green values and it scared me into thinking my monitor was super broken, when it was not. Thanks MSI for a really wacky color option. Heres an example of just terrible color presets. The baseline is normal "user" and the second is the "designer" option. I'd imagine, as a graphic designer myself, that the designer option would sacrifice other things in order to achieve the most color range / gamut, but no, it just ruins all the darks, it makes everything so much darker.

Extra extra note: I haven't tried the other monitor yet, because I want to iron the kinks out of this one and try it for a few days to get a baseline.

TL;DR

Screen cuts to black and comes back after ~3 seconds every once in a while on almost every single video cord except one
FreeSync as an option is nowhere to be found, not even grayed out
The "anti motion blur" option makes the entire screen less bright, but also, makes it look like a blue light filter is enabled which is kind of bad and silly.
EXTREME ghosting. IT IS SO APPARENT IN EVERYTHING I'VE DONE. Could this be a model defect, or do all of these monitors have the same problem?