This is how I got MSI to honour their warranty in spite of their stance that any failure at all is due to user error, since their products don't fail

I have the opposite experience with warranty.

I had a defective ATX psu cable and MSI support sent me a whole cables kit overnight. And recently a bought a Corsair case, the iCue controller had 2 defective ports and Corsair also sent me a replacement overnight.

My only "trick" with support is telling them upfront that I will leave a 5 stars review on amazon uppon successful resolution of the problem.

Wow, nice. Did they show up? Did they settle?

Settled at the eleventh hour