PC_Advisor_Issue_264_July_2017

Reviews
£1,799 inc VAT
GAMING PC
Corsair One
Buy from
• tinyurl.com/nxpnqm8
Specifications
Case Form Factor Mid-
Tower; Windows 10 Home
Edition; Intel Core i7-7700
Quad-Core Processor,
Liquid Cooled CPU; GPU
Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080,
Liquid Cooled GPU; 16GB
2400MHz DDR4 DRAM;
Storage 960GB SSD; Z270
Mini-ITX motherboard;
Gigabit Ethernet; 802.11ac;
400W SFX 80 Plus Gold
power supply; 1x USB 3.1
Type-C; 3x USB 3.1 Type-A;
2x USB 2.0 Type A; PS/2
Port; 1x HDMI 2.0; 2x
DisplayPort; S/PDIF;
380x200x176mm; 7.2kg;
two-year warranty
Build:
Features:
Value:
Performance:
As Corsair’s first-ever PC, the One is
impressive as hell. This tiny machine
(which starts at £1,799) is fast,
beautifully built, and perhaps more
importantly – quiet, too. That’s no
small feat for a PC that measures
just 380x200x176mm.
According to Corsair, a
professional lab measured the
One’s acoustics at idle: 20dB.
That’s equivalent to someone
whispering three feet from
you. Quiet at idle is one thing.
Quiet when the CPU and GPU
are at full throttle is quite
another. The One excels on
that front, too. It’s far from
silent (we’ve certainly heard
quieter – albeit much larger –
machines under load), but we
mostly agree with Corsair’s
assessment that it would be
‘unnoticeable’ under normal
gaming conditions.
That quiet is the result
of the One’s design and the
liquid cooling of both the CPU
and GPU. Most small-formfactor
rigs out today using
the familiar micro-tower
mould liquid cool the CPU but
leave the GPU to air cooling.
Despite having a larger
footprint than the One, those
boxes just don’t have the room to
liquid-cool both components.
Corsair custom-designed the
One’s aluminium chassis to hold
two low-profile 240mm radiators,
one mounted to each interior side
of the case. One cools the GeForce
GTX 1080 (or 1070 in the lower-end
model), while the other keeps the
CPU cool. To keep the One’s profile
small Corsair has foregone fans on
those radiators. Instead, a single
low-rpm, 140mm magnetic levitation
fan mounted up top sucks air from
the system. With the radiators
mounted flush with the sides, cooler
outside air is sucked through the
intakes then through the radiator.
Call it a semi-passive liquid-cooling
system.
Of course, one fan isn’t enough
to keep the entire system chilled. A
second fan mounted on the desktop
GTX 1080 cools the card’s RAM and
voltage regulation modules. Overall
it’s quite clever, but not without a
cost (which we’ll get to later).
For ports, you get one USB
Type-C 10Gb/s, three USB Type-A
5Gb/s, and two plain USB Type-A
480Mb/s, along with two DisplayPort
1.4, gigabyte ethernet, and a legacy
PS/2 port. VR fans will appreciate
the front-mounted HDMI 2.0 port.
Wireless is 802.11ac. Finally, there’s
a stack of the standard analogue
audio connectors and a SPDIF port.
More important than the ports
are the components inside. Corsair
is offering three tiers at launch,
with the £1,799 base-level One
featuring a Core i7 7700, GTX
1070, 240GB SATA SSD, and 1TB
hard drive. Step up to the £2,199
One Pro and you get an unlocked
Core i7-7700K, a GTX 1080 and a
480GB SSD plus 2TB hard drive.
All three versions use a Z270
MiniITX motherboard stuffed with
16GB of Corsair DDR4/2400 RAM,
a 400W SFX 80 Plus Gold PSU and
Windows 10 Home. The operating
system is what makes this Corsair’s
‘first PC’ rather than just a box
Corsair custom-designed the One’s aluminium
chassis to hold two low-profile 240mm radiators,
one mounted to each interior side of the case
40 www.pcadvisor.co.uk/reviews July 2017