Corsair One i500 review: a water cooled wooden wonder

Should you’ve dreamed of proudly owning a high-end mini gaming PC, however didn’t need the effort of constructing one your self, the Corsair One i500 successfully does this for you after which some. This tradition case isn’t simply nice trying, however it additionally encompasses a distinctive inner format and cooling system, with twin AIO liquid coolers strapped to the CPU and graphics card. It’s exceptionally nicely made, and gorgeous-looking, plus its efficiency annihilates most full-size gaming PCs.

This Corsair mini PC isn’t nearly high-end {hardware}, although. The One i500 options a ravishing wood-plated entrance panel with touch-controlled RGB lighting. It’s as elegant as a pc can come, and there isn’t rather more you would need from it, aside from a transparent facet panel to see your {hardware}. Is that this actually one of the best gaming PC you should buy on this type issue? I took it for a spin, utilizing it as my gaming PC for a number of days, to see the way it performs and dissect its internal workings.

Specs

With a footprint that will match inside a shoebox, the Corsair One i500 saves an enormous quantity of desk house in comparison with a full-size ATX system, however apparently it doesn’t use a mini-ITX motherboard like earlier Corsair One PCs. As a substitute, an MSI micro-ATX motherboard is used, which virtually stretches edge-to-edge contained in the case. This offers you a bit extra flexibility for upgrades than a mini-ITX board too, with 4 DIMM slots reasonably than two, for instance, in addition to a few further PCIe slots past the standard 16x graphics slot.

There are two specs from which to decide on, with our overview pattern sporting an Intel Core i9 14900K, Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Tremendous, a 2TB Samsung PCIe 4.0 SSD, and 32GB of Corsair 6000MHz DDR5 reminiscence, which prices $3,599.99.

Should you pay an additional $1,100 you’ll get a GeForce RTX 4090 and 64GB of reminiscence. It’s a disgrace, although, that there’s no choice to improve the SSD, on condition that the micro-ATX motherboard has loads of free M.2 slots, and that is meant to be a high-end gaming PC. For almost 5 grand, you’d count on a 4TB SSD as customary.

It’s nonetheless a monstrous specification, although, with the Core i9 14900K providing a complete of 24 cores (eight P-Cores for all-out efficiency, and 16 extra power-efficient E-Cores). and a peak clock pace of 6GHz. Nonetheless, the primary challenge we noticed is that the CPU not often, if ever, hits this pace, and its multi-threaded load increase clock pace throughout all P-cores was solely round 5.4GHz. That’s a few hundred megahertz decrease than we’ve seen this CPU mannequin hit underneath multi-threaded workloads in different rigs.

A giant issue is, in fact, the excessive temperature output of this CPU, in addition to the quantity of energy it consumes, however the state of affairs isn’t helped by the very fact the Corsair One i500 solely has a 120mm AIO cooler coping with this monstrous processor, with solely a single slim 120mm fan shifting hit away from its radiator. That’s merely not sufficient cooling horsepower to take care of Intel’s present flagship CPU.

Fortunately the GPU has double the cooling capability, with a 240mm radiator, and its peak GPU temperature in video games of 64°C was glorious, simply being on par with one of the best air-cooled playing cards on the market. The graphics card reminiscence grew to become fairly toasty at 76°C, however this wasn’t scorching sufficient to cut back its frequency.

In the meantime, upgrading the PC is comparatively simple, as two facet followers, together with the 120mm AIO liquid cooler, swing out on a bracket, giving you quick access to the reminiscence, SSD, CPU, and the MSI B760M Mortar WiFi micro-ATX motherboard. That’s simply as nicely, as a result of Intel’s next-generation Arrow Lake CPUs received’t be suitable with this motherboard.

Options

Regardless of the Corsair One i500 being very compact, it boasts the complete complement of ports on each the entrance and rear panels, with each these areas having a USB-C port, and the rear one providing 20Gbps USB 3.2 Gen 2×2 pace too.

There are two USB 3.0 ports on the entrance panel and a complete of seven Kind-A USB ports on the rear I/O panel, so nobody will probably be left wanting right here. There’s no Wi-Fi 7 assist, however that is fairly uncommon on any motherboard in the intervening time, and the Corsair One i500’s Wi-Fi 6E assist and a pair of.5Gbps Ethernet port are high-quality for networking choices.

In the meantime, the central backbone on the entrance panel is a slide management for the RGB lighting within the entrance and base, for instance, permitting you to regulate the brightness and shade, whereas the freely obtainable Corsair One dashboard software program offers you finer management, together with lighting results. Sadly, the software program didn’t enable us to change the fan speeds, whereas the Corsair One i500’s motherboard EFI (BIOS) solely appeared to regulate certainly one of them, so many of the followers are automated and may’t be tweaked.

I used to be actually happy to see Corsair going past the standard one-year fundamental guarantee for this PC system, although. Ought to something go fallacious with the PC, then you have got a two-year elements and labor guarantee, with Corsair both fixing or changing the entire unit, and also you get a lifetime of technical assist too.

Design

The Corsair One i500 case is elegant, well-made, and durable – the construct high quality on show right here is simply excellent. The darkish wooden paneling on our overview pattern additionally seems to be unbelievable, and a lighter wooden is out there when you desire as nicely. Cable tidying will be troublesome in small PCs, however Corsair has accomplished a superb job contained in the small confines of this technique, particularly on the rear panel the place the wires are all neatly tucked away and secured with Velcro ties.

Two magnetic mud filters are hooked up to facet panels to maintain any muck out of the inside. The underlying vent sample within the facet panel can also be fairly engaging, however the mud filters conceal numerous decrease RGB lighting, which is barely in a position to shine down onto your desk. We don’t doubt having massive vents is helpful for airflow, however they don’t really feel fairly consistent with the luscious supplies used elsewhere within the system.

The airflow system additionally implies that mud finally ends up getting trapped on the outside of the case too, requiring common cleansing to maintain up appearances, particularly over the 2 120mm facet consumption followers. You’ll must keep away from putting something on the roof too, as that is the principle scorching air exhaust space.

The RGB lighting is also just a little extra seen on the entrance panel. Two RGB lighting strips sit on both facet of the picket fascia, however the facet panels conceal it at most angles until you’re dealing with the PC head-on. Given how a lot the lighting will be personalized, we’d actually prefer to see extra of it given the distinctive RGB controller Corsair has gone to the difficulty of constructing.

If there’s one criticism concerning the design, it’s that the Corsair One i500’s fan noise is pretty loud in video games, with the 2 roof followers that cool the GPU’s liquid-cooling radiator producing many of the noise; greater than you’d count on from a mean air-cooled RTX 4080 Tremendous card.

Once more, the dearth of any fan management right here does imply you’re caught with this noise, which is a disgrace as we’d desire to chop fan speeds barely, on condition that the GPU ran far cooler than common in our assessments. The noise isn’t deafening, however we’d undoubtedly describe it as intrusive, particularly in case you have the PC in your desk a few toes away from you.

Benchmarks

Whereas half the purpose of the Corsair One i500 is to show heads and create a compact customized tower of energy, the opposite half could be very a lot about efficiency in video games and content material creation, the place benchmarks reveal all. Cyberpunk 2077 is a good exercise for the most recent video games {hardware}, and the Corsair One i500 averaged 75fps on this recreation at 2,560 x 1,440 with the Extremely ray tracing preset enabled.

That’s already a good consequence, however it went all the way in which as much as 106fps with some assist from Nvidia DLSS 3 and body technology enabled. This intelligent tech makes use of AI to create further frames in between those rendered by your graphics card, to be able to easy out the body charge, and it really works remarkably nicely.

We couldn’t fairly get this spec of the Corsair One i500 to return a easily playable body charge at 4K with the identical settings and DLSS body technology, however its common of 51fps right here continues to be fairly good – you’ll solely must drop the settings just a little, or allow DLSS Tremendous Decision, to get this recreation working easily at 4K.

In the meantime, Components 1 2023 was just a little simpler for this spec of the Corsair One i500, with a mean body charge of 63fps at 4K and 111fps at 2,560 x 1,440, rising to 94fps and 145fps respectively as soon as DLSS was enabled. That is edging into excessive refresh charge monitor territory, which is wonderful for these excessive graphics settings.

Lastly, Complete Warfare: Warhammer 3 additionally noticed some monstrous body charges, with a minimal of 121fps at 2,560 x 1,440 of 121fps and a mean of 151fps. Its 4K efficiency was unsurprisingly decrease, however it nonetheless managed a decent common of 80fps on this recreation. Principally, this mini PC actually can play video games at very excessive graphics settings with first rate body charges.

In the meantime, our artificial benchmarks revealed efficiency that’s typical of a GeForce RTX 4080 Tremendous, sitting slightly below an RTX 4090 within the 3DMark Time Spy Excessive take a look at, with an general rating of 14,136 and a graphics rating of 14,349. The usual Time Spy take a look at revealed the same consequence, with the graphics rating of 28,676 proper on the high of what we’d count on from this graphics card.

The CPU is basically quick too, even when it struggles to hit its peak clock speeds. Switching to the 3DMark CPU profile take a look at resulted within the most threads rating of 16,114 pipping the Ryzen 9 7950X to the end line, and greater than doubling the rating you’d sometimes see from a Ryzen 7800X3D too. In the meantime, Cinebench R23 is a freely obtainable benchmark and right here the single-threaded rating of two,289 is quicker than any consequence AMD can at present muster, whereas the multi-threaded rating of 37,392 was a match for what you’ll sometimes see a Ryzen 9 7950X scoring too.

Remarkably, this high-powered spec doesn’t draw an infinite quantity of energy from the mains both. We famous a peak of 531W being drawn from the wall throughout gaming classes, which is fairly environment friendly for the quantity of gaming energy on supply, particularly with this notoriously power-hungry CPU.

Worth

There’s no denying the Corsair One i500 is extraordinarily costly, however you do get a excessive spec in each choices. The worth of the Core i9 14900K CPU and RTX 4080 Tremendous GPU alone are already $620 and $999 respectively, earlier than you’ve even accounted for the remainder of the gear, after which it is advisable issue within the ingenious design work that’s gone into the attractive customized chassis and cooling system.

Sure, a equally specified, full-size desktop PC will probably be cheaper in numerous circumstances, however it received’t be as small and classy, and that’s all part of the One i500’s bundle. It’s costly, however the worth is (nearly) honest for what you get.

Verdict

The Corsair One i500 is one elegant, achingly horny PC. The picket panels look unbelievable, the desktop footprint is small, and Corsair has put a critical quantity of labor into the design of its customized chassis. Hats off to the engineering group for managing to squeeze a liquid-cooled Core i9 14900K and RTX 4080 Tremendous into this compact house.

This mini PC does have some shortcomings, although, specifically the restricted cooling for its hot-running Core i9-14900K processor, and a GPU liquid cooling system that, whereas efficient, dishes out extra decibels than most air-cooled RTX 4080 Tremendous playing cards I’ve examined.

Corsair will little doubt argue that this liquid cooling system was mandatory to have the ability to home such a graphics card in such a small house, however the potential to tune the fan speeds would actually assist right here. Fortunately, the hot-running processor nonetheless performs as anticipated in all our assessments, and it’s by no means going to be working at peak load throughout all cores if you’re gaming both. The noisy GPU cooling system is extra of a problem, although, because it sounds intrusive in video games, and we will solely think about the RTX 4090 mannequin will compound that challenge given it has the identical cooler.

You received’t discover that noise a lot if the machine is underneath your desk, however the Corsair One i500 isn’t a system you wish to conceal away – you’re going to need its beauty on show in your desk. If in case you have the cash, and also you need the best-looking, strongest mini PC you should buy, then the Corsair One i500 is it, however we suggest gaming with a headset to drown out the fan noise.

Options

Origin Chronos

Origin, which is owned by Corsair, additionally makes a spread of tower-shaped mini PCs with a small desktop footprint, and with equally excessive specs. The Origin Chronos V3 can equally be kitted out with a Core i9 14900K and a GeForce RTX 4080 Tremendous, however there’s additionally the choice to spec up a less expensive model primarily based on a Core i5 14600K with an RTX 4060 Ti. The Chronos V3 doesn’t have the sensible beauty of the Corsair One i500’s picket chassis, however it’s equally compact and less expensive.