with the details and all things involved
in acquiring such a PC. Despite
CORSAIR having a reputation for all
kinds of quality components, it would
take a lot to convince someone to
spend over $2,000 on a computer
from a vendor which for all intents
and purposes has no previous
experience with complete machines.
Asking customers to fork out
$200 for a premium grade keyboard
is one thing, but at $2,000+
CORSAIR is asking for a lot of money
and that’s why the ONE had to be as
near perfect as possible.
So how does the CORSAIR ONE
fair? Is it everything I had hoped it
would be and more, or does it fall
short of being the breakout system
that CORSAIR needs to establish
itself as a serious PC manufacturer?
Well the answer to that is rather
detailed. To answer that in a more
meaningful way, let’s break down the
system into several aspects.
COMPONENT SELECTION
AND PERFORMANCE
The particular model that I received
for evaluation at the time was only
available through the web store and,
while similar to the other models, it
had the distinction of shipping with
a 960GB CORSAIR FORCE LS SSD.
Other than that, it was identical to
the other models, as it houses the
Core i7 7700K CPU, 16GB of DDR4
2400MHz memory and of course
the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080. All
this built around a mini-ITX MSI Z270
motherboard. Absent is any form
of secondary mass storage, but
960GB of space should be more than
enough for most users, even with the
games spanning tens of gigabytes.
Other options include secondary
mass storage, but I’m of the mind
that if one is to spend this kind of
money on what is essentially a
boutique PC, I’d rather not have
any mechanical hard drives in the
system. Obviously this depends on
what you’ll be employing the PC
for, but as a pure high end gaming
machine there’s little reason I find
to have a more traditional drive for
secondary storage.
Indeed, the combination of the
Core i7 7700K, 2400MHZ memory
and a GTX 1080 is not going to
bowl anyone over in terms of
raw performance of synthetic
performance figures. It is imperative
that one realizes that the use of an
even more powerful CPU, or higher
speed memory was not going to
offer a better gaming experience. In
terms of productivity work, perhaps
there may be a difference one
could appreciate, but in the context
of gaming where the GPU is the
chief determining component of
performance, the choice of hardware
is more than adequate.
During my time with the CORSAIR
ONE, a new option was introduced
which would substitute the GTX
1080 with the more powerful GTX
1080 Ti GPU - a worthwhile option
for those who want to play games
exclusively at 4K, as the GTX 1080
isn’t quite capable of smooth gaming
at such a resolution. Other than that,
the machine remains identical to this
model.
In the benchmarks, you can clearly
see that while the CORSAIR ONE
is said to be a 4K ready machine,
this only really applies for the GTX
1080 TI model. From the 1080
and 1070 models, one is definitely
better off sticking to WQHD and
FHD resolutions. The sweet spot is
WQHD, where minimum frame rates
are above the 40FPS mark. The
gameplay is butter smooth even
when using the highest possible
graphic fidelity options. At this
resolution, the GPU has more than
enough grant and low anti-aliasing
modes are perfectly acceptable as
well (SMAA to 2xMSAA). Synthetic
Issue 42 | 2017 The OverClocker 21