Corsair One i160 Review: The Compact Performance PC, Refined

islandwalker

Managing Editor
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Mar 6, 2018
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@2BE_OR_NOT2BE and @DELARO You should re-calculate your prices. As noted in the review, I parted out a similar build with a $160 case and it's either nearly $3,000 for these components with an air-cooled RTX 2080 Ti, or $3,500 with a liquid-cooled card (a better comparison to this system. Corsair isn't charging $1,000 for the form factor, or even half that. These parts are expensive.

I do wish Corsair made a lesser version with a 2060 or 2070 and a Core i5, though.
 

mischon123

Prominent
Nov 29, 2017
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I think the Corsair Carbide 240 Air would be a better choice for a Corsair build than this cramped mess. Its lower and slightly wider.
 
How are those gaming performance numbers measured? The 4K results in particular seem quite low compared to those listed in the 2080 Ti review, and most other performance numbers I've seen for this card.


While I agree that it might be a good thing to add for convenience, it's unlikely to be a requirement for VR devices anytime soon. So far, VirtualLink only appears on Nvidia's 20-series cards, and is only common on the high-end ones. Almost no RTX 2060s bother to include the port, so it seems unlikely to appear on their more mid-range to lower-end offerings either. It will be years before a reasonable portion of gaming systems have VirtualLink. VR headset manufacturers are not going to limit their audience to those with support for that connection when so few people have it, so it's reasonable to assume that they will continue to support connecting their devices via multiple cables, as they do now. The cable coming from the headset may switch to USB-C, but a little box converting that to separate USB, video and power cables will likely continue to be included.

Of course, this system doesn't appear to have HDMI in back either, so one might need wires running around to the front if the headset doesn't support DisplayPort. And the limited number of USB ports might be more of a concern with existing headsets. The Oculus Rift uses 3 to 4 USB ports for the headset and tracking cameras, though that will likely change with their next-generation devices. At least the system has PS/2 though, in case someone has a 90s-era mouse that they want to connect to their enthusiast-level gaming system. : D


On the other hand, it's becoming harder to shrink components and improve efficiency of chips, so unless there's some major breakthrough in chip design, eventually we're going to reach the point where if you want more performance, you might need to go larger. Although I suppose if the parts are not getting significantly faster from one year to the next, upgrading an already high-end system might be less of a concern. And if the system isn't built around being user-serviceable, you can get away with more compact designs like this. That first photo is a bit misleading though, since initially I thought the system might have fancy gull-wing doors with hydraulics for easy access to the internals. Instead, it's quite the opposite, and accessing anything inside is significantly more complicated than with a typical case.

Price-wise, eh... It's rather high for a gaming system, but then again I would consider the 2080 Ti and 9900K to be overpriced themselves, so it stands to reason that anyone willing to put them in a gaming system might not care so much about paying a bit extra for it. I can see where the others are coming from about the pricing though, as it should be possible to put together a build offering the same level of performance for significantly less, so long as we ditch the small form factor. Sure, we're also not using a water-cooled graphics card, but you shouldn't need a water-cooled card in a regular ATX case. So yeah, you're paying a lot for the form factor. It's cool that they managed to pack that level of hardware into such a small case, but ultimately, how much benefit does a small case provide for a desktop PC?
 
Feb 3, 2019
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I have the original that I purchased discounted late last year. I love it. The machine is quiet and about the cost I would have paid to get the components in a small tower. This sits on my desk behind the monitors and is almost silent. If these get a little lower in price late this year I may impulse upgrade.
 
APPLE has an amazing design for their similar looking Mac Pro (the black "garbage can") thing. It has a massive heatsink at its core which the two GPU's and CPU attach to and a single fan moves the air up through like a chimney. It's damn quiet too.