Corsair One i600 overview | PC Gamer

I’ll admit, I used to be anticipating extra from the Corsair One. Extra warmth, extra noise, extra annoyance. In any case, the unique Corsair One, whereas admittedly smol, was a loud ol’ chimney of a PC. However the present design—a bit taller, a bit deeper—is way extra suited to the duty of protecting each high-end CPU and GPU mixtures in verify.

Whereas that does make the i600 a much less compact gaming PC than the primary iteration, it’s a far more practical gadget due to it. And it is nonetheless fairly small if you happen to examine it to most RTX 5080-based gaming PCs in the marketplace.

You’ll be able to, in fact, construct out a small kind issue mini-ITX machine in one thing just like the Fractal Design Terra and have your self a robust micro machine, however it’s not going to have the ability to get near matching the cooling and aural design of the Corsair One. This factor is pacey, and this factor does all of it with an understated grace you will wrestle to match with any compact DIY construct.

The important thing to that’s the twin 240 mm AIO water cooling loops the Corsair One employs to maintain its CPU and GPU elements chill. There is a radiator within the high of the chassis that cools the graphics card and one within the aspect, which folds open, to take care of the CPU. It is a neat design that enables it to run as much as an RTX 5090 on the graphics aspect and both a Core Extremely 9 285K or Ryzen 9 9900X3D on the CPU aspect.

For the needs of this overview, I have been restrained, nevertheless, and opted for the Corsair One i600, sporting the RTX 5080 with the Intel chip for extra all-round efficiency. Certain, the 3D V-Cache processors will slay in gaming phrases, however the creator aspect would not want the extent of additional cache the AMD chips deploy with.

Ah, who am I kidding, I’d completely reasonably have the Ryzen X3D chip in my rig, you solely have to take a look at the relative efficiency of this Core Extremely 9 machine towards the Corsair Vengeance A7500 with its Ryzen 7 9800X3D chip inside it to see what a profit that’s for us players.

However the level right here is concerning the kind issue, that’s what you are paying for with the Corsair One. The flexibility to get highly effective components, enjoying quietly, inside a compact chassis. And you’re paying for it, as a result of even with an honest low cost on proper now, the spec I have been testing will run you about $4,000.

Examine that with the Vengeance A7500 machine, or the equally priced Acer Predator Orion 7000, and you may see the value delta between normal PC scale and compact Corsair One laid naked.

Although, to be fully honest, the Corsair One does include 64 GB of DDR5-6400 and by the point you learn this that may in all probability value round $1,000 by itself…

Efficiency-wise, I am stunned at simply how little it’s important to sacrifice for this form-factor. Moving into, I used to be anticipating that each the CPU and GPU might need to be restricted to be able to perform fortunately and non-annoyingly in a compact chassis, however not a bit. It is somewhat behind within the Avatar bench, however that could be very a lot the outlier in normal gaming phrases. In any other case it is precisely the place you’d anticipate an RTX 5080/Core Extremely 9 combo to be in a daily ATX-scale gaming desktop.

You’ll be able to see the hand of 3D V-Cache within the Baldur’s Gate 3 benchmark, however the Intel chip does hold tempo in just about each different gaming title. And it does provide the beans on the subject of the creator rendering benchmarks, too.

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And it doesn’t matter what I throw on the Corsair One it does all the pieces with the identical quiet, understated fashion. In reality, in contrast with the opposite RTX 5080 machines we have examined it delivers the bottom peak and common GPU temps, and markedly low CPU temps, too. That is perhaps to be anticipated given you have obtained a graphics card being chilled by liquid reasonably than the air-coolers the opposite machines use, however they’re additionally not in such a restricted chassis.

Given among the authentic evaluations of the Corsair One i600 from the summer season decried its CPU cooling prowess as a giant difficulty, I used to be anticipating to be throttling on the Core Extremely 9 285K manner earlier than Cinebench accomplished its 10 min torture check. However peaking at 88 °C is beneath that throttling mark.

Had been I overclocking the CPU that might be totally different, however you are not going to be doing that in small kind issue machine. Or a minimum of you should not be.

You are additionally unlikely to be doing a lot upgrading, as a result of herein lies one of many greatest points with the Corsair One. If we railed towards the unique Alienware machines for his or her lack of an improve path the identical issues will be levelled on the Corsair One. That is most particularly going to be a difficulty for this Intel-based machine, as a result of Intel will all the time change the CPU socket, and Nova Lake will want a complete new motherboard.

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That is another excuse to go along with the a600 model and its AM5 motherboard as AMD goes to proceed supporting that dangerous boi for years to return. You’ll be able to change the Asus mini-ITX motherboard contained in the Corsair One if yow will discover a suitable board with minimal VRM heatsinks on it that will not cease the CPU cooling radiator swinging shut, however it’s by no means going to be an easy course of.

The identical with the GPU and ensuring you may match a suitable bracket on any new graphics card to make sure a safe match on high of the chip you are trying to cool. This stuff are typically fairly bespoke per graphics PCB, in order that’s more likely to be your hardest improve job going ahead.

It’s, as I already talked about, additionally a really costly machine. You must very a lot need this smaller kind issue to be assured spending the additional cash on the Corsair One. However you additionally have to be conscious that whereas it’s compact, it is not essentially small. Mainly, do not anticipate to be hiding this away in the identical method as you’ll a Steam Machine.

I very a lot respect the Corsair One aesthetic, although. There are totally different designs, the place you may go for cherry blossoms or a picket entrance panel, or simply the plain black design I’ve been testing right here. None are significantly garish, none are overly gamer, and whilst you can have some RGB aptitude across the sides—adjustable by way of a slick contact panel on the entrance of the case—it can be a completely stealthy construct if you happen to’re over the PC mild reveals.

And, although it’s a compact construct the place house is at a premium, the design is such {that a} handful of screws eliminated and you’ve got fairly clear entry to the insides of your machine. That makes easy upgrades (SSD and RAM) easy, and if you’re assured you may supply a suitable motherboard there’s simply sufficient house to function in there.

For those who perceive all its caveats—restricted upgradeability, not-so-smol, and pricey-as-all-hell—then the Corsair One is a good little machine for the well-heeled gamer chasing a compact, critical construct. I would nonetheless perhaps stick to the cheaper a600 Ryzen 7 9800X3D-powered model as a devoted PC gamer, however I would be very pleased with this RGB-stripped black obelisk sat beside my monitor any day.

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