COOLING
So this is probably one of the most
important aspects of the CORSAIR
ONE. In fact, what allows the system
to be this compact has a lot to do
with the cooling choices CORSAIR
has made.
There’s only a single 140mm fan
and this fan is responsible for not
only drawing air into the system, but
exhausting it as well. What happens
is that cool air is drawn in from the
bottom and the sides of the machine,
passes through the radiators within
the machine and is then exhausted
via this 140mm fan at the top of the
chassis. This cooling method works
on a simple, but effective mechanism
of creating negative air pressure and
negates the need for multiple fans
within the system.
At first I doubted how effective
this cooling method would be but it
turns out that it is not only effective,
but makes for a quiet system as
well. Just as long as you’re not
blocking any of the air intakes on the
system, the CORSAIR ONE will keep
temperatures in check and you’ll
experience no performance or clock
throttling at all.
The GPU in particular is effectively
cooled by this method as load
temperatures rarely exceed the 58’C
mark, which is truly impressive.
The CPU, on the other hand,
will see temperatures as high as
84’C, but that has a lot do with
the atrocious thermal interface
material that INTEL has been using
on their CPUs for some time. In the
same environment and employing
the same cooling, it is likely that
a delidded CPU would operate at
a much lower temperature. That
said, these are not temperatures
that should concern you at all as
they are more than normal and the
CPU is designed to operate at such
temperatures reliably.
The enthusiast in me would
have loved to see CORSAIR
employ a delidded CPU for this,
further leveraging their cooling
expertise, but this isn’t that kind
of machine. Moreover there are
other considerations regarding
warranties and the like which much
be considered and weighed. Using
such a CPU might result in overall
lower temperatures it ultimately
does nothing for the user experience,
but may affect the pricing of the
machine quite negatively.
CONNECTIVITY
As you might expect from a premium
PC, the CORSAIR ONE features the
usual connectivity options, such as
USB 3.0 and USB 3.1 support, but
it does one better by having a front
HDMI 2.0 connector. This is obviously
for VR headsets and avoid you
having to reach behind the machine.
Useful for those with VR headsets
and into that sort of thing, but not
really useful outside of that.
Issue 42 | 2017 The OverClocker 23