Let’s handle the large factor first: The Corsair One i500 compact gaming desktop prices $3,599. That may cease numerous you in your tracks. Like a luxurious car, nevertheless, there are touches all through that sign why you’d need to spend the additional cash on this beautiful little PC.
I favor a really brutalist method to PC {hardware}: I don’t actually care what it seems like so long as it performs nicely and cost-effectively. However my private aesthetic has at all times been very natural, and the i500’s real wood-paneled case performs into that completely.
On paper, the Corsair One i500 is an aggressive little machine. Inside is a Core i9-14900K processor and an Nvidia RTX 4080 Tremendous, which is almost the very best of what you should purchase right this moment. All of that matches inside a compact little 22-liter chassis that’s completely suited towards a bookshelf: cool, quiet, compact, and understated, all traits usually related to a lower above.
You’ll be able to actually purchase your individual case and elements, and assemble them; it’ll actually prevent cash. With the One, Corsair makes a robust argument that paying (rather a lot) additional can convey each aesthetic and sensible advantages that aren’t instantly apparent.
Corsair One i500: The entire bundle argues for opening your pockets
My analysis of the Corsair One i500 is a hybrid of formal evaluate and a hands-on. We have already got our fingers full reviewing the handfuls of laptops that come into our labs, and we usually write for the portion of our viewers who buys and assembles their very own PCs. Pre-built PCs like this one nonetheless supply peace of thoughts for somebody with out the time or technical aptitude to place their PC collectively, and it’s value checking in to see what this phase of the market can obtain. As a result of we don’t cowl pre-built PCs frequently, although, you received’t discover as many comparisons with competing merchandise as in our laptop computer evaluations.
I nonetheless couldn’t resist testing it, although. Wouldn’t you?
For starters, the nice and cozy aesthetics of the enclosure and the practicality of the case design are a profitable mixture. Add in a moderately pleasant inside, with bottom cable routing and water-cooling, to what the Corsair One i500 provides on specs. There’s room for enlargement, too. Sure, all of it totals as much as $3,599, however I don’t assume that’s a unprecedented quantity when balanced in opposition to what this desktop provides.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Corsair One i500 specs
Corsair despatched me the cheaper of two configurations, which retails for $3,599. A costlier $4,699 choice features a Core i9-14900K, Nvidia RTX 4090, and a bigger 64GB loadout of DDR5 RAM. Each desktops ship with a two-year guarantee.
- Processor: Intel Core i9-14900K
- Graphics: Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Tremendous
- Reminiscence: 32GB (2x16GB) DDR5-6000
- Storage: 2TB NVMe SSD
- Ports: 2 USB-A (5Gbps), 1 USB-C (10Gbps), 4 USB-A (480Mbps) 3 USB-C 10Gbps, USB-C (20Gps, 2×2), 7.1 audio jack, headphone jack
- Wired connection: 2.5Gbps Ethernet
- Wi-fi: WiFi 6e; Bluetooth 5.3
- Working system: Home windows 11 House
- Dimensions (inches): 15.5in. x 7.4in. x 11.8in.
- Weight: 21.2 lb
- Colours: Steel Darkish, Wooden Shiny, Wooden Darkish
- Additionally within the field: energy twine, Wi-Fi antennas
- Value: $3,599.99
Corsair One i500 construct high quality: Class, with a bit of glitz
The Corsair One i500 is accessible in three colorways: a darkish metallic, or both bright- or dark-wood choices. Not like the Eighties minivan I grew up with, the wooden is wooden, licensed by the Forest Stewardship Council with a singular wooden grain. (I imagine my “dark” wooden was walnut.) To this point, wood accents have been usually reserved to area of interest instances, just like the Fractal Design North, although they’ve turn into extra in style as a stylistic backlash to RGB.
Don’t get me fallacious, the Corsair One i500 has its share of RGB, within the type of LED strips that run down every of the entrance corners. The RGB is managed by touch-sensitive strips above and under the front-mounted energy button, which might regulate the lighting. Extra fine-grained controls are constructed into the Corsair One Dashboard app, nevertheless, which provides a surprisingly primary UI.
That’s indicative of one of many issues that units the Corsair One i500 aside. Some folks choose overt controls, and there’s a sure phase of the tech viewers that revels within the means to regulate each little factor with a devoted knob or button. The i500 disagrees, and it really works.
The case is enticingly compact: simply 15.5 inches by 7.4 inches vast, and 11.8 inches deep, for a complete quantity of twenty-two liters. I choose inserting my desktop close to my toes, largely due to a scarcity of desk house. However the Corsair One i500 is a PC you’ll need to exhibit, particularly in case your aesthetic leans towards the pure. I’ve a walnut vintage roll-top desk that I purchased many years in the past as a result of I’ve at all times appreciated outdated wooden, nevertheless it’s only a bit too small to showcase the Corsair One i500 correctly, which is a disgrace.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Mark Hachman / IDG
Contained in the delivery container that Corsair despatched me was additionally the ability twine and Wi-Fi antennas, which screw in. I’d encourage Corsair to spend money on an extended energy twine; the included twine is about 4 toes, and it was a only a bit too quick for my desk setup.
I do like RGB, and what the i500 provides is simple, illuminating the corners with adjustable lighting. However you’ll need to resolve whether or not it seems good in opposition to the wooden. I don’t assume so, however those that purchase the metallic choice will in all probability really feel in a different way.
There’s one characteristic that the Corsair One i500 provides that I like, and performs into my love of the sensible alongside the i500’s aesthetic: one-touch rear lighting. In the event you’re like me, your PC is seated close to or at your desk, in a considerably dim room. (Individuals choose Home windows’ darkish mode for a cause!) That’s simply positive for the 1,439 minutes that make up virtually all of a day. However when you have to plug in a USB key, or a printer, or a keyboard cable, fishing round within the gloom for a minute or two to align a cable accurately will get outdated fast.
The i500 solves that downside. Faucet the rear of the chassis, and a small LED illuminates your complete I/O panel. That’s superb! Not do you must squint to verify an HDMI cable is aligned correctly. Don’t scoff; what number of occasions do you utilize the illuminated self-importance mirror in your automobile? In all probability virtually by no means — however you’ll actually hear about it from a buddy or associate if they’ll’t verify themselves out as you whiz by means of the night time to a social occasion.
I used to be delighted by the i500’s one-touch rear lighting. It’s indicative of the care and a focus Corsair paid to the main points.
Mark Hachman / IDG
The rear I/O contains 4 USB-A ports (5Gbps), one other three operating at 10Gbps, and a devoted 20Gbps USB-C port, too. There’s additionally an audio jack. Although there’s an HDMI port related to the built-in GPU by way of the Intel B760M chipset on the motherboard, there are three DisplayPort ports and an HDMI port immediately hooked up to the graphics card.
One criticism I’ve is that there isn’t something comparable for the entrance port, lighting-wise. Since there’s a pair of USB-A ports (and a USB-C port, plus a headphone jack) tucked beneath the entrance lip of the i500, it will be useful to make sure these USB ports lined up accurately. I by chance yanked my energy strip off my shelf once I pulled the i500 ahead to accurately align the USB-A port…which there are in all probability a bit too lots of, too. One or two extra USB-C ports can be handy for contemporary setups.
The i500’s aspect panels function filters, and magnetically snap on to the edges of the chassis. Eradicating them is easy. I didn’t just like the tiny black screws that affix the underlying metallic grille, although; preserve a magnetic screwdriver useful, and work on a light-colored floor. (Why not thumbscrews, Corsair?)
Opening the left-hand aspect of the case reveals the internals, with one other grill whose screws must be loosened. Once you’ve completed that, you’ll be able to open the grill “door” and entry the insides. The slideshow under will stroll you thru the method of opening the case and revealing the internals, as the opposite aspect of the motherboard.
About the one factor operating by means of the inside of the system are the 2 watercooling hoses, which could be gently moved apart if you have to change out a element.
In any other case, Corsair buries all of the cabling behind the motherboard (behind the best aspect) and really neatly organizes the wires. There’s numerous care that went into this design.
Mark Hachman / IDG
Each GPU choices embody a 240mm GPU radiator plus two devoted AF120 120 mm followers to chill it. The CPU additionally has its personal 120mm cooler, too, together with an identical 120mm AF120 fan. Corsair mounts one other 120mm fan on the underside of the left aspect, to tug cool air beneath the graphics card, which basically subdivides the case. One other 120mm fan pulls air from the highest.
I didn’t strive upgrading the chassis, however Corsair says that there’s an out there x4 PCI Specific enlargement slot (with an efficient size of seven inches or much less). Notice that it’s rather a lot simpler to swap out the M.2 slot and add reminiscence, since entry is granted by way of the higher “door”. (Two of the 4 reminiscence slots had been populated on my cheaper model of the Corsair One i500, with 32GB of reminiscence.) Corsair makes a second M.2 slot out there for upgrades, in addition to a 2.5-inch SSD bay. Changing the graphics card — which Corsair additionally permits for — requires extra disassembly.
The one factor I actually didn’t like about Corsair’s configuration was its method to software program. The Corsair One Dashboard app is sweet for adjusting the RGB (each colours and patterns, which embody the everyday strobing choices, shade shifts, and a starlight mode which makes elements of the RGB twinkle) however that’s about it. The app leaves room for fan monitoring, for instance, however the sensors apparently weren’t related. The Corsair One Diagnostics app leans extra towards stability testing. Additional tweaking choices are left to the BIOS/UEFI, which isn’t that uncommon and had the fine-grained tweaking choices I anticipated.
BIOS updates require the person to obtain a firmware replace, put it on a USB stick, after which apply it That appears moderately primitive in comparison with the competitors. I’d have appreciated at-hand overclocking choices, or the power to scale up and down between silent operating and most efficiency. These choices merely don’t appear to be there.
Corsair One i500 efficiency
Corsair doesn’t explicitly say that air shall be pulled in from the bodily backside of the chassis, however it seems that it undoubtedly might. I examined the Corsair One i500 on my ground, however on a tough floor that didn’t block airflow. Beneath regular operation, I couldn’t hear the i500 in any respect; it’s solely beneath load that I heard the followers crank up. The noise was reasonable although not overwhelming, and with out coil whine. A quiet PC is one you’ll be able to recreation and work on.
Whereas this isn’t a proper evaluate, I couldn’t assist however run a number of benchmarks to check gaming efficiency. In the event you aren’t acquainted with the nuances differentiating a 4080 Tremendous from a “vanilla” 4080, the Tremendous has a number of extra CUDA cores (10,240 vs 9,728) and runs at a barely greater clock pace (2,295MHz vs 2,205 MHz). There’s a slight efficiency enchancment, in fact, of some p.c.
I just lately examined the Acer Predator Orion 3000, a $1,699 desktop with an older Core i7-13700F chip and a GeForce RTX 4070 chip inside. I’d anticipate the 4080 Tremendous to considerably outperform the Acer’s 4070 GPU, although the Thirteenth- and 14th-gen Core chips aren’t that far aside by way of efficiency.
I additionally added a few gaming notebooks from our database, together with the $3,700 Gigabyte Aorus 17X (Core i9-14900HX/RTX 4090) and the Dell Alienware x16 R2, a $3,199 gaming pocket book with an Intel Core Extremely 9 185H and an RTX 4080 inside.
Mark Hachman / IDG
It is a gaming desktop, however you would possibly use it through the day for “work,” proper? We ran the PCMark 10 benchmark for comparative efficiency. With a rating of over 10,000, this desktop made quick work of the benchmark, which incorporates CAD components to push the GPU a bit. Once more, the truth that the i500 ran this benchmark largely silently is an efficient signal.
We’re in the course of re-evaluating how we assess gaming efficiency, however we’ve got two video games that we’ve caught with: Shadow of the Tomb Raider, and Metro: Exodus. We’ve tended to prioritize 1080p efficiency on each, although gaming is slowly climbing into the 1440p vary, and the 4080 Tremendous contained in the Corsair One will have the ability to play at that decision (in addition to 4K) with out breaking a sweat.
Mark Hachman / IDG
In the event you do keep on with 1080p gaming as your precedence, this desktop will simply embody the older Tomb Raider recreation, although it struggles a bit with the Metro launch.
It’s value noting that with Metro (we use the “Extreme settings), the “99th-percentile” rating dropped right down to 77 frames per second, which is playable, although rather less than some would like.
Mark Hachman / IDG
To this we added two extra video games: Cyberpunk: 2077 and Assassins Creed: Valhalla.
Cyberpunk: 2077, along with (finally) changing into a deep, wealthy gaming expertise, additionally offers a wealth of benchmarking choices to look at the efficiency of a laptop computer or desktop. We’ve used our legacy settings for this check, which have been examined on simply a few desktops and laptops. Right here, I’m making a direct comparability between the Corsair desktop and the Asus Predator Orion 3000.
Mark Hachman / IDG
We’re contemplating tweaking these settings, turning on primary ray tracing and enabling body technology. With these choices enabled (at Excessive settings), Cyberpunk is definitely playable at over 300 fps. At 1080p and Excessive settings, AC:V is completely playable, too, at 226 fps. Chances are high that you just’ll need to dial up the graphics settings a bit to point out the sport off a bit extra with out hurting efficiency.
Do you have to purchase the Corsair One i500?
Once more, when you can’t get previous the $3,599 worth level, I can perceive. I grew up in a minivan, although my mother and father now personal a luxurious sedan. Each have cup holders, 4 wheels and an engine, however there are little bits of polish and thought that assist you to perceive when you would possibly go for the pricier choice.
There’s rather a lot that Corsair provides right here that goes past simply the specs. I actually do love the design, which feels distinctive. There’s a cause why Fractal instances obtain consideration, as they really feel emotionally hotter and extra natural than a conventional case. Corsair’s upgradability is considerably nominal, nevertheless it is there. You’d virtually hope that Corsair would create a model of the i500 with AMD’s AM4 or AM5 socket, to really permit this PC to sit down on somebody’s shelf for years.
True, the RGB feels out of sync with the aesthetic and the software program is common at finest. Nonetheless, there aren’t too many different knocks in opposition to it. And although my colleagues inform me that sure, a rear-mounted LED has been completed earlier than, I’m not going to nitpick. Corsair engineers made some good, considerate selections in creating the Corsair One i500, making a well-rounded, cohesive compact PC with simply only a few quibbles to make.
