Corsair One Pro Review

Performance Analysis

We'll start with the thermals, and there was always going to be a question mark in using passive radiators in a tightly packed chassis to deal with Intel's flagship quad-core. The heat simply builds up, so the fact it's liquid-cooled is beside the point - whatever cooling arrangement you have, you need enough airflow to get rid of the heat. A delta T of 68°C with an ambient temperature of 21°C and a CoreTemp-rported temperature of 89°C under full load in Prime95 show that things are pretty much at their limit here, so the choice of using a K-edition CPU is perhaps not the best option with the One Pro - there's not really any headroom for overclocking.

There's maybe scope for raising the fan speed, but we test all PCs with their out-of-the-box setups, and as it comes a non-K-edition CPU would be a better bet here. That said, Corsair has clearly gone for the fastest CPU available - the Core i7-7700 is considerably slower, and in the overall scheme of things not that much cheaper either. Corsair has clearly fine-tuned the system to cater for this, and while things were toasty, they were far from worryingly hot, even under maximum load in Prime95.


The GPU temperature was a little more noteworthy. At 69°C with a delta T of 48°C, this is akin to some of the best-cooled GTX 1080s out there. For example, Asus' monstrous GTX 1080 Strix OC managed a delta T of 47°C. In any event, after a 15 minute burn-in session in Unigine Valley, the GPU was still a long way from throttling.

The results were fairly predictable to anyone familiar with our testing given the popular components at the helm in the form of an Intel Core i7-7700K and Nvidia GTX 1080. Starting the proceedings at 2,560 x 1,440 in Deus Ex: Mankind Divided, the One Pro wasn't much quicker than a GTX 1070 in our overclocked GPU test system on the minimum frame rate, but was much faster on the average frame rate. It was a little slower than an overclocked GTX 1080 at 4K but again was noticeably quicker than our own results for a GTX 1070.

Fallout 4 is an easier customer, and the One Pro managed a minimum frame rate of 56fps and average of 73fps at 2,560 x 1,440 and a still playable 26fps/34fps on the minimum and average at 4K - just behind a factory overclocked GTX 1080, while the various Futuremark 3DMark tests pitch the Corsair One Pro at a little way south of our overclocked test system with a GTX 1080 and not far off the DinoPC C3 Mod Gaming PC, which has a GTX 1080 and overclocked Core i7-7700K.

Results were similarly predictable in the rendering and content creation tests with the numbers essentially matching our own for a stock speed Core i7-7700K, with any variations likely due to RAM speed or more up-to-date BIOSes, as was the case in the rendering and photo editing tests where our own numbers were faster. The storage results clearly show that Corsair was nuts not to put an M.2 PCI-E SSD in the One Pro. Even for bragging rights alone it's worth it, but we expect all systems retailing over £1,500 to include one these days, and this would save a little more space inside the chassis too.

One other reason to be wary of overclocking with the One Pro is power consumption. You've only got 400W to play with, but with stock speed figures coming in at 304W under full load, there's not a whole lot more headroom. That said, this is a worst case scenario with both the GPU and CPU under full load - something that's unlikely to happen in games.

Conclusion

We'll start with a recap of the negatives here. Firstly, dust will be an issue down the line with no filters for the side intakes that feed the passive radiators through negative air pressure powered by the roof fan. This needs fixing in any future revisions, but thankfully it's not too tricky to remove the side panels to clear out any dust. This is disappointing given Corsair's efforts in dust-prevention in its PC cases, though - consider this a slap on the wrist, Mr. Corsair.

Second is the use of a 2.5in SATA SSD. We can only assume that supply of Corsair's own MP500 was short or that it was wary of pushing price points too high, but if we were going to buy a One Pro, it would either have to come with a PCI-E M.2 SSD, or it would be the first upgrade we'd make. That wouldn't be easy given how embedded the mini-ITX motherboard is in the chassis, though.

Finally - noise. It's no secret that some all-in-on liquid coolers do have pump whine, and combined with the blower cooler for the GPU that complements the liquid-cooling, the One Pro does exhibit a little of this at low loads. The actual noise levels are very low, but we're talking about the noise quality here. The PC is still extremely quiet and the noise becomes less noticeable when the roof fan spins up as well. In addition, if you place the One Pro further than a few metres away, this noise simply doesn't register - it's only when placed on a desk near you and at low loads that it's noticeable.

None of the above we'd consider deal breakers as they're all mostly fixable in one way or another either by distancing yourself from the PC for the noise or using a vacuum to deal with the dust. Which brings us on to the positives. While you won't see much overclocking headroom, Corsair has still opted for a great set of hardware, minus the SSD of course. The Core i7-7700K is the best CPU for the job despite our earlier objections, and a GTX 1080 makes this case's power-to-volume ratio a force to be reckoned with.

The design of the chassis, apart from the lack of dust filters, is sublime. Build quality is exceptional, it looks fantastic, and it's laid out in a way that has clearly had considerable thought put into it. We really wouldn't change much, and even if we were offered a more powerful, quieter system in a slightly larger Lian Li or SilverStone case, we'd still go for the One Pro, as it has an edgy feel that really appeals to our enthusiast instincts. We hope that Corsair takes onboard our comments here, because apart from a couple of niggles, this is the best mini-ITX PC we've ever reviewed.