Corsair ONE PRO Review – High-powered gaming in just 12 Liters

Overview

Did Corsair hit it out of the park on their first foray into prebuilt systems, or do they still have some work to do?

Despite its surprise launch a few weeks ago, the Corsair ONE feels like it was inevitable. Corsair's steady expansion from RAM modules to power supplies, cases, SSDs, CPU coolers, co-branded video cards, and most recently barebones systems pointed to an eventual complete Corsair system. However, what we did not expect was the form it would take.

Did Corsair hit it out of the park on their first foray into prebuilt systems, or do they still have some work to do?

It's a bit difficult to get an idea of the scale of the Corsair ONE. Even the joke of "Is it bigger than a breadbox?" doesn't quite work here with the impressively breadbox-size and shape.

Essentially, when you don't take the fins on the top and the bottom into account, the Corsair ONE is as tall as a full-size graphics card — such as the GeForce GTX 1080 — and that's no coincidence. 

Taking a look at the full specifcations, we see all the components for a capable gaming PC. In addition to the afforementioned GTX 1080, you'll find Intel's flagship Core i7-7700K, a Mini ITX Z270 motherboard produced by MSI, a 960GB SSD, and 16GB of DDR4 memory.

While there's nothing particularly interesting about the Corsair ONE by just looking at a component list, the fascinating part is in the implementation of these components into a chassis this small.

Both the CPU and GPU are cooled by custom, single thickness 240mm radiators with a closed loop design. If you look closely at the exploded diagram, you'll notice that there are no fans attached to these radiators. Instead, air intakes from a perforated side panel and then is exhausted through the single 140mm Corsair Magnetic Levitation fan on top of chassis.

The use of only a single fan means that the Corsair ONE remains quiet, even while under stress from gaming. In our admittedly noisy office with an ambient sound level of 36 dB, the Corsair One was only 38dB loud with the sound pressure meter 1ft away from the top of the chassis while gaming. In the average home, I suspect you wouldn't be able to hear the ONE over whatever game audio you had playing through speakers or headphones.

From the beginning of my time with the Corsair ONE, it was evident that they paid a lot of attention to the small details when designing this machine. The box itself for the ONE is even a great little detail. Instead of working like a normal cardboard box where you'd have to attempt to lift the dense 15lb machine out of the box, it works more like modern TV packagin where you release the locks on the side and raise the top portion off.

Overall I am impressed with the build quality of the Corsair ONE. The aluminum chassis is well designed with thoughtful design details. Instead of annoying RBG lighting, the ONE features subtle lighting features that can be turned off in the Corsair Link software.  While I don't really like case lighting, these "traces" on the outside of the machine actually look pretty good in my opinion.

We didn't crack open the Corsair ONE as it's not supposed to be a user-serviceable device, and we didn't want to potentially damage the system, so we cannot comment on the neatness of the internal build process.

We did notice one issue however with the assembly of the ONE, in the way of a tab from the motherboard I/O shield actually blocking the USB 3.1 Type-A connector. We managed to fix this with a pair of pliers, but it's definitely an unfortunate missed detail for a machine this expensive. Also note that the labels on the back panel are upside down as the motherboard is mounted differently than in a standard ATX case.