What I would have preferred
to see is perhaps is an additional
USB 3.1 Type-C or Thunderbolt 3.0
connector in the front. This would
come in rather handy for newer
smartphones and any other high
speed devices. As it is, you have
one USB3.0 port (5Gbps) and the
rest are located at the rear of the
case. It’s not a major issue, but one
of those small things which perhaps
CORSAIR could improve upon going
forward, especially given that their
high end peripherals, specifically their
K95 Platinum RGB, uses up at least
two USB ports. So in total you have
four available from the rear I/O and a
single USB 3.0 port at the front.
Network connectivity is as
you’d expect with full support for
Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11ac wireless
standards and of course Bluetooth
4.2. Its standard affair these days
so you can connect the ONE any
number of ways to your local home
network. There’s not much to say
here. Some may be wondering
about teaming support that you get
with some of the latest ultra-high
end boards for increased network
24 The OverClocker Issue 42 | 2017
throughput (KILLER DoubleShot
for example). That isn’t available
on the CORSAIR ONE and it is not
something you should miss. These
features do not do anything for your
gaming performance and only add
another software application to your
system that needs to be managed
and updated regularly. A good, lean
system is how the CORSAIR One
comes out the box and that’s exactly
how it should stay.
OVERALL IMPRESSIONS
AND CONCLUSION
Prior to receiving the CORSAIR
ONE for testing, I believed that the
machine would be just as impressive
as I’d been led to believe it was, but I
had some reservations. It would be
one of those products where you
end up saying, “Not bad for a first
attempt”. However I’m pleasantly
surprised. The CORSAIR ONE could
have come from any one of the PC
manufacturers which had been
building PCs for years if not decades.
There’s a lot of thought that’s
obviously gone into the construction
of this machine and CORSAIR being
the company that prides itself on its
enthusiast heritage has built that into
the CORSAIR ONE.
They have put together a premium
boutique PC that is not only
upgradable, but mightily powerful out
the box. A large part of the CORSAIR
ONE is in the fact that it’s upgradable,
but to me this is the least important
aspect of the machine and in fact I
couldn’t be bothered one way or the
other about its upgrade capabilities.
The reason is simple and as stated
in the beginning. I know how to build
a PC and have been doing it for
decades, what I want from such a
PC is one that I never ever have to
open, and the appeal of the CORSAIR
ONE is precisely that there’s no valid
or practical reason to want to open
the computer. I understand wanting
to upgrade the storage and perhaps
the DRAM, but I’d suggest just buying
the correct configuration from the
beginning and avoid ever having to
open the machine at all. One could
install higher frequency memory,
more memory and all kinds of things,
but these “upgrades” are not going
to provide a meaningful benefit