In 2016, we saw the departure of a seasoned executive from GigaByte to Corsair. That transfer would not be odd if it was not for that person being the spiritual leader behind the BRIX line of mini-PC’s. Having Colin join Corsair, we believed that the time for an ultimate compact gaming PC would not be too far away, and the result is now public. Known as the Corsair One, this is the first complete computer system from a popular peripheral manufacturer. It is a take on the living room PC market, coming after the compact Bulldog PC concept (aka Steam machine). Corsair stated that the system was designed from the ground up to be the “ultimate lounge PC” – one that’s powerful enough to play games at 4K and run VR headsets, such as the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift, but small and quiet enough to discreetly sit in a living room.
Design
The Corsair One is a trash-can shape PC delivering high frame rates for gaming in 4K or running VR headsets. It looks really good, somewhere between a gaming PC and a business PC, with a small nudge to the gaming side. There are few good and bad things about this design. Starting with good, front panel brings HDMI 2.0, and USB type A. This will be a good thing for all VR headsets. On the downside, there are no audio or microphone connectors at the front, which means that a user will have to connect them at the back. In addition, Corsair – pioneer of RGB LEDs in the PC space decided not to include an RGB option – the only light coming out of the One is light blue.
Specs
Corsair deserves a lot of credit for this project. In this small chassis, the engineers placed two slim 240mm radiators, one for the GPU and one for the CPU. On the motherboard side, there’s a Z270 ITX motherboard, paired with a GeForce graphics card. There are no AMD options available. The processor of choice is locked or unlocked Intel Core i7 7700 (or 7700K), GTX 1070, 1080 or 1080 Ti, 16GB DDR4, from 240GB to 960GB SSD and up to 2TB HDD. Four versions are available, ranging from $1799 to $2599.
Should I buy it?
If money is no object and you are looking for a 4K-capable, VR-ready PC that can be discreetly sat in the living room, then the Corsair One is a fantastic device. In my opinion, I would rather build a spec alike configuration, which will cost you about $200 less and offers more future-proof options. Then again, if going compact is your thing, it might be worth considering, as Corsair claims this PC is whisper quiet.
