Corsair One i600 review

I will admit, I was expecting more from the Corsair One. More heat, more noise, more annoyance. After all, the original Corsair One, while admittedly smol, was a noisy ol' chimney of a PC. But the current design—a bit taller, a bit deeper—is far more suited to the task of keeping both high-end CPU and GPU combinations in check.

While that does make the i600 a less compact gaming PC than the first iteration, it is a far more effective device because of it. And it's still pretty small if you compare it to most RTX 5080-based gaming PCs on the market.

You can, of course, build out a small form factor mini-ITX machine in something like the Fractal Design Terra and have yourself a powerful micro machine, but it's not going to be able to get close to matching the cooling and aural design of the Corsair One. This thing is pacey, and this thing does it all with an understated grace you'll struggle to match with any compact DIY build.

The key to that is the dual 240 mm AIO water cooling loops the Corsair One employs to keep its CPU and GPU components chill. There's a radiator in the top of the chassis that cools the graphics card and one in the side, which folds open, to look after the CPU. It's a neat design that allows it to run up to an RTX 5090 on the graphics side and either a Core Ultra 9 285K or Ryzen 9 9900X3D on the CPU side.

For the purposes of this review, I've been restrained, however, and opted for the Corsair One i600, sporting the RTX 5080 with the Intel chip for more all-round performance. Sure, the 3D V-Cache processors will slay in gaming terms, but the creator side doesn't need the level of extra cache the AMD chips deploy with.

Ah, who am I kidding, I would absolutely rather have the Ryzen X3D chip in my rig, you only have to look at the relative performance of this Core Ultra 9 machine against the Corsair Vengeance A7500 with its Ryzen 7 9800X3D chip inside it to see what a benefit that is for us gamers.

But the point here is about the form factor, that is what you're paying for with the Corsair One. The ability to get powerful parts, playing quietly, inside a compact chassis. And you are paying for it, because even with a decent discount on right now, the spec I've been testing will run you about $4,000.

Compare that with the Vengeance A7500 machine, or the similarly priced Acer Predator Orion 7000, and you can see the price delta between standard PC scale and compact Corsair One laid bare.

Though, to be entirely fair, the Corsair One does come with 64 GB of DDR5-6400 and by the time you read this that will probably cost around $1,000 on its own...

Performance-wise, I'm surprised at just how little you have to sacrifice for this form-factor. Going in, I was expecting that both the CPU and GPU might have to be restricted in order to function happily and non-annoyingly in a compact chassis, but not a bit. It's a little behind in the Avatar bench, but that is very much the outlier in standard gaming terms. Otherwise it's exactly where you would expect an RTX 5080/Core Ultra 9 combo to be in a regular ATX-scale gaming desktop.

You can see the hand of 3D V-Cache in the Baldur's Gate 3 benchmark, but the Intel chip does keep pace in pretty much every other gaming title. And it does give you the beans when it comes to the creator rendering benchmarks, too.

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And no matter what I throw at the Corsair One it does everything with the same quiet, understated style. In fact, compared with the other RTX 5080 machines we've tested it delivers the lowest peak and average GPU temps, and markedly low CPU temps, too. That's maybe to be expected given you've got a graphics card being chilled by liquid rather than the air-coolers the other machines use, but they're also not in such a restricted chassis.

Given some of the original reviews of the Corsair One i600 from the summer decried its CPU cooling prowess as a big issue, I was expecting to be throttling on the Core Ultra 9 285K way before Cinebench completed its 10 min torture test. But peaking at 88 °C is below that throttling mark.

Were I overclocking the CPU that would be different, but you're not going to be doing that in small form factor machine. Or at least you shouldn't be.

You're also unlikely to be doing much upgrading, because herein lies one of the biggest issues with the Corsair One. If we railed against the original Alienware machines for their lack of an upgrade path the same concerns can be levelled at the Corsair One. That's most especially going to be an issue for this Intel-based machine, because Intel will always change the CPU socket, and Nova Lake will need a whole new motherboard.

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That's another reason to go with the a600 version and its AM5 motherboard as AMD is going to continue supporting that bad boi for years to come. You can replace the Asus mini-ITX motherboard inside the Corsair One if you can find a compatible board with minimal VRM heatsinks on it that won't stop the CPU cooling radiator swinging shut, but it's in no way going to be a straightforward process.

The same with the GPU and making sure you can fit a compatible bracket on any new graphics card to ensure a secure fit on top of the chip you're looking to cool. These things are generally pretty bespoke per graphics PCB, so that's likely to be your hardest upgrade task going forward.

It is, as I already mentioned, also a very expensive machine. You have to very much want this smaller form factor to be confident spending the extra money on the Corsair One. But you also need to be aware that while it is compact, it's not necessarily small. Basically, don't expect to be hiding this away in the same manner as you will a Steam Machine.

I very much appreciate the Corsair One aesthetic, though. There are different designs, where you can opt for cherry blossoms or a wooden front panel, or just the plain black design I have been testing here. None are particularly garish, none are overly gamer, and while you can have some RGB flair around the sides—adjustable via a slick touch panel on the front of the case—it can also be an entirely stealthy build if you're over the PC light shows.

And, though it is a compact build where space is at a premium, the design is such that a handful of screws removed and you have pretty clear access to the insides of your machine. That makes simple upgrades (SSD and RAM) straightforward, and if you are confident you can source a compatible motherboard there's just enough space to operate in there.

If you understand all its caveats—limited upgradeability, not-so-smol, and pricey-as-all-hell—then the Corsair One is a great little machine for the well-heeled gamer chasing a compact, serious build. I'd still maybe stick with the cheaper a600 Ryzen 7 9800X3D-powered version as a dedicated PC gamer, but I'd be very happy with this RGB-stripped black obelisk sat beside my monitor any day.

Best gaming PC 2025

1. Best overall:
HP Omen 35L

2. Best budget:
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i

3. Best high-end:
Corsair Vengeance A7500

4. Best compact:
Velocity Micro Raptor ES40

5. Alienware:
Alienware Area-51

6. Best mini PC:
Minisforum AtomMan G7 PT

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