Corsair One i164 SFF PC Review

Item: Corsair One i164 SFF PC Review
Author: Mason Lyons

Written by Mason Lyons

January 27, 2020 | 12:00

Tags: #pc #prebuilt #system

Companies: #corsair

Performance Analysis

The first thing we're going to look at is the gaming and VR performance of the system. This is the area, on paper, where the Corsair should excel and it does in gaming. The Ryzen-infused Novatech Elite Spectre, which has the same number of cores and threads, loses out in the graphics department, which is to be expected as the RX 5700 XT in the Novatech system is no match for the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti in the Corsair. With a 32-57 percent performance lead in the gaming benchmarks and an 11-46 percent lead in the synthetic benchmarks, it really shows not only the lead that Nvidia currently has over AMD at the high-end but also how impressive it is to fit this much power in such a small form factor.

Moving over to content creation, this is where the Corsair One falls behind. In Handbrake we see that it takes 91 seconds compared to the 77 of the Novatech system and in PCMark and Cinebench we see the Novatech system edge out the Corsair One by 14 percent and 12 percent, respectively. This isn't anywhere near the advantage that the Corsair One had in the gaming benchmarks but does showcase the advantage of going towards an AMD-based system over Intel, which Corsair currently doesn't offer in this format. Being fair, the Novatech system is considerably cheaper.

For storage we like how Corsair has managed to fit 1TB of blistering-fast SSD performance in this system and doing it with an M.2 drive has allowed the One to still keep the excellent cooling. Although the drive gets beaten handily by the drive in the Novatech system for sequential reads it does keep up in random reads which are the reads more likely to be done by a normal user. If you absolutely need the large sequential reads then you're likely using the system as a workstation and you'd be better off going for a Ryzen-based computer.

Lastly, we head over to power consumption and thermals. The system consumed 415 watts at load while running Prime 26.6 and Furmark 1.20.5. Compared to the Novatech Elite Spectre, which has a Ryzen R7 3700X and a RX 5700XT, it provides a much better experience in gaming and falls behind in the content creation and storage benchmarks while only consuming 12 more watts at load and 45 less at idle. After 15 minutes of running Prime and Furmark, with an ambient of 15.8°C, the CPU reached 72°C and settled into an all-core clock speed of 4.0GHz. The GPU maxed out at 62°C and was keeping a core clock speed of 1,725-1,755MHz. These results are brilliant and show how well engineered the cooling solution is in the system.

Conclusion

The Corsair One continues to be a great, if expensive, option for those looking at high-performance small-form-factor systems. It's well-built, has cable management that would put most to shame, stays quiet and, most importantly, performs well. The build quality really is something that can't be glossed over. Unlike the original models, instead of the cables dangling all over the place, they run perfectly down the edges of the chassis and the tubing and cables never get caught when putting the side panels back on.

It's not perfect but it's very close. The one potential snag about this system is the price. At £3,299.99, at the time of writing, it's a lot to ask for, but that is the literal price of going down the ultra-premium small-form-factor route. If you need this form factor then it’s a fantastic piece of engineering, but be mindful of the premium.