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Review: Corsair One Pro

by Tarinder Sandhu on 23 March 2017, 13:01

Tags: Corsair, Intel (NASDAQ:INTC), NVIDIA (NASDAQ:NVDA)

Quick Link: HEXUS.net/qadfbv

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Conclusion

As a turnkey solution for the deep-walleted consumer who doesn't want to go down the DIY route, the Corsair One represents an elegant choice.

Someone far more famous than me once said the whole is better than the sum of its parts. As a component manufacturer who produces a wide variety of premium kit for enthusiasts, Corsair has taken on that thinking by releasing the small-form-factor One PC.

Rising from the ashes of the first-run Bulldog gaming computer, the One's design is better in practically all areas. Attractive looks and a high-quality finish are married to enthusiast-class components, and such successful integration has in large part been made possible by the industry's move to more energy efficient computing.

In its finest form, the Corsair One ships with an overclocked Core i7-7700K chip and GeForce GTX 1080 card, both of which are liquid cooled. There's a smattering of other high-end kit elsewhere, and power is frugal enough to be easily driven by an SFX 400W PSU.

As a turnkey solution for the deep-walleted consumer who doesn't want to go down the DIY route, the Corsair One represents an elegant choice. It's powerful, quiet, and just works straight out of the box.

The inevitable counter-argument is that you could build a better-performing PC for the same money, which is true enough, and we have seen UK system builder Scan shoehorn a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti in a similar-specification PC. That, however, is somewhat missing the point and the obvious cost of going sleek and small.

We'd really like to see the One outfitted with a fast M.2 SSD instead of a SATA drive, but that's about it for out list of grumbles. The move to smaller-form-factor computing has been gaining momentum of late. The Corsair One is the epitome of making that move with style as well as performance.

The Good
  
The Bad
Tidy aesthetics
Well-suited to high-quality QHD gaming
Low power draw for a gaming rig
Smaller than you'd think
  
SATA-connected storage
CPU runs warm



Corsair One Pro

HEXUS.where2buy

The One Pro small-form-factor gaming PC is available to purchase from Corsair and Scan Computers.*

HEXUS.right2reply

At HEXUS, we invite the companies whose products we test to comment on our articles. If any company representatives for the products reviewed choose to respond, we'll publish their commentary here verbatim.



*UK-based HEXUS community members are eligible for free delivery and priority customer service through the SCAN.care@HEXUS forum.


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Posted by Bagpuss - Thu 23 Mar 2017 13:10
Nice, like it alot but only including 2400Mhz DDR4 is a bit mean of them.

In some titles (Fallout 4, Witcher 3 for example) RAM running at 3000Mhz or 3200Mhz can give quite a substantial boost to frame rates, another 10fps or so over the slower stuff, that's a free GPU overclock without adding to temperatures in such a small case.
Posted by EvilCycle - Thu 23 Mar 2017 13:29
One of the first pre built small form factor gaming rigs I've seen that I actually like, the fact that the GPU is water cooled is also a big plus. Personally I like having self-built huge behemoths due to pricing and cooling, but if I was in the market for this type of rig then this might just be the one! Very impressed in all honesty.
Posted by Tunnah - Thu 23 Mar 2017 13:29
It's a good first try, however this seems more suited for the plug n play crowd - that means TV hook up, and that means 4K, which, while this card can do (and thanks to GeForce Experience, is easy to find the right settings for), it will struggle in only a few years.

I'd like to see the next model with a 1080Ti, something like that the home user would get 5 years out of, easy.
Posted by EndlessWaves - Thu 23 Mar 2017 13:45
“A very pertinent case in point is our standard gaming test system, comprising an overclocked Core i7 chip, 32GB of RAM, dual SSDs and, of course, a premium graphics card. If built with due care and attention, a PC featuring a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti consumes less than 300W at the wall when gaming at 4K. And it's quiet into the bargain, too.”

Oh indeed, if we look back to the hexus reviews of 2007 we see those terrible 8800GTX systems consuming…

293W:
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/8687-his-amd-ati-radeon-hd-2900-xt/?page=10


Idle power consumption has improved, performance in lower power envelopes had improved and cooling has improved. Gaming power consumption remains very high, extraordinarily so when the average computer these days uses about 10W.

Unfortunately it's in nVidia's interest to keep power consumption high. If they dropped the top of the range chip down to 50W they'd be competing in the same power envelope as Intel's integrated graphics. Great for us, great for the environment, but risky for nVidia as a company.

I'm not quite so clear on what the incentive is for developers to keep requiring so much power. Presumably prettier games sell better?
Posted by Tunnah - Thu 23 Mar 2017 13:53
EndlessWaves
“A very pertinent case in point is our standard gaming test system, comprising an overclocked Core i7 chip, 32GB of RAM, dual SSDs and, of course, a premium graphics card. If built with due care and attention, a PC featuring a GeForce GTX 1080 Ti consumes less than 300W at the wall when gaming at 4K. And it's quiet into the bargain, too.”

Oh indeed, if we look back to the hexus reviews of 2007 we see those terrible 8800GTX systems consuming…

293W:
http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/graphics/8687-his-amd-ati-radeon-hd-2900-xt/?page=10


Idle power consumption has improved, performance in lower power envelopes had improved and cooling has improved. Gaming power consumption remains very high, extraordinarily so when the average computer these days uses about 10W.

Unfortunately it's in nVidia's interest to keep power consumption high. If they dropped the top of the range chip down to 50W they'd be competing in the same power envelope as Intel's integrated graphics. Great for us, great for the environment, but risky for nVidia as a company.

I'm not quite so clear on what the incentive is for developers to keep requiring so much power. Presumably prettier games sell better?

It feels like you are completely missing the point. They're not avoiding dropping power usage to stop competition, they're using as much power as possible to squeeze out the maximum performance.

Sure power usage is kinda the same for the graphics cards, but look how much more performance we're getting! GPU has always been about performance, if you want a low power solution, they are out there, but that's not the point of them, it's to make things purdy and do it well.

EDIT: Also, I think you're massively overstating the overall power used, saving 50w is gonna do exactly jack squat diddly for us or the environment

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