A powerful, compact, wood-finished prebuilt that comes with AIO liquid cooling on both the CPU and the GPU
Updated: Aug 21, 2024 5:23 pm
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Table of Contents
Table of Contents
The Corsair One i500 is the 2024 release in the ‘One’ line of prebuilt PCs that are designed to be compact on your desk whilst still remaining very powerful for both gaming and workstation use.
This latest model has a striking wood-finished design plus a particularly ingenious internal construction, and is the first model to also feature a dedicated AIO water block and radiator for the graphics card. Does it run well enough to justify the very high asking price though? Let’s find out.
Specifications
CPU: Intel Core i9-14900K
Graphics card: NVIDIA GeForce RTX 4080 Super (16GB) / RTX 4090 (24GB)
Motherboard: MSI MAG B760M Mortar WIFI (Micro-ATX, Intel B760M)
Memory: 32GB/64GB CORSAIR DDR5-6000 (4 DIMM slots)
Storage: 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe
PSU: CORSAIR 1000W 80 PLUS GOLD
Front I/O ports: 2x 5Gbps USB Type-A, 1x 10Gbps USB Type-C, Mic/Headphone Combo Jack
Rear I/O ports: On motherboard: 4x 5Gbps USB Type-A, 3x 10Gbps USB Type-A, 1x 20Gbps USB Type-CHD Audio, 1x Display Port1x HDMI / on GPU: 3x DisplayPort,1x HDMI
Networking: 2.5G Ethernet, Wi-Fi 6E, Bluetooth 5.3
OS: Windows 11 Pro 64-bit
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What We Think
There’s a massive amount to like about this PC including its looks, build quality, surprisingly great performance in both gaming and creative scenarios, and both the power and thermal performance of the graphics card. Unfortunately the unwise decision to equip this PC with a hot-running CPU and only give this a single 120mm radiator fan on the AIO means the processor runs very hot. If you can stomach the high asking price or find one of these rigs at a reduced price, we’d advise trying to attach an additional 120mm fan on top of the CPU radiator if possible (there is room).
Pros
Great performance despite compact size
Great cooling on the GPU thanks to AIO cooler
Looks great
Great build quality
Can upgrade most components despite the compact size
Cons
14900K CPU runs particularly hot due to 120mm radiator limitation
Very expensive at full price
You must to Corsair to upgrade the graphics card
Pricing
The RTX 4080 Super variant of the Corsair ONE i500 has a current MSRP of $3,599.99/£3,499.99 and the RTX 4090 variant comes in at $4,699.99/£4,699.99. There’s no hiding the fact that these are very expensive prices. Obviously with any prebuilt you should expect to pay more than if you built a PC yourself with the same components, more so if it’s a unique compact design like with the ONE i500: this is the trade-off, nevertheless paying up to $1,000/£1,000 more than you normally would is a difficult pill to swallow. We have however seen discounts of $300–$400 in the US at least, which makes it a bit more palatable.
Unboxing and setup
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The Corsair ONE i500 was sent to us inside a larger postage box, within which was the packaging box proper: a Corsair ONE branded cardboard box with a fabric carry handle on the top that lifts off to reveal the PC tower, sandwiched in place in the base section with rigid foam padding on the top and bottom. Beneath the foam the PC is surrounded by a cloth carry bag that you can use to help lift it out of its mooring in the base of the box. The cabling and documentation are in the base section of the box beneath the PC. We had no issue with the quality of the packaging and the unboxing process was pretty straightforward.
Turning on the PC was a bit confusing at first as there is a delay between pressing the ‘on button’ on the front of the case with the Corsair logo and said logo actually illuminating. It’s a good idea to check through the side grills if you’re not sure whether the PC is on or not to check for internal illumination and fan movement.
Our unit came with Windows 11 pre-installed along with basic drivers, though we always update these anyway after setting up the operating system and we recommend you do the same.
Our final check is to jump into the BIOS to make sure the advertised RAM speeds have been set. We have RAM capable of running at 6000MT/s in this system and, as expected, it was XMP’d to meet those speeds.
Design, Build Quality & Warranty
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Aesthetics are obviously a bit part of why you might buy this prebuilt. Taking a leaf out of Fractal’s book, the front of the case is a real-wood panel with its own distinctive grain: there are currently two color variants. A vertical strip runs down the middle of this panel, with a light-up Corsair logo in the middle on the circular power switch that can be illuminated with your chosen RGB. The side of the vertical strip immediately below the logo is touch sensitive and allows you to switch between the RGB; it’s a bit finnicky until you get the hang of where and how exactly you need to apply pressure, though we are a fan of tactile controls like this. Side strips also light up with RGB. RGB options are unfortunately a bit limited however, and you can only pick from the following colors: white, red, orange, yellow, green, blue, purple, and violet.
Whether you’re a fan of the distinctive look of this PC ultimately depends on your subjective tastes and the sort of setup you plan to have it in; if you’re looking for something to sit in a non-gamery looking room then it could be ideal. Emma in our office, who isn’t a fan of the look of most PCs, said she actually thought it looked nice and wouldn’t mind it being put in a prominent place in her home: if that’s not a ringing endorsement then I don’t know what is.
More functional lighting comes from the white light which turns on automatically when you’re rummaging around the back of the case: this is a nice detail that we’re a big fan of and it’s very helpful when you’re trying to plug things in round the rear I/O in the dark.
You can take off the fabric side panels without a screwdriver for ease of cleaning. Beneath the left mesh is a more robust plastic grill with Y-shaped holes that does require a screwdriver to take off (affixed with two screws at the top) and beneath this is the exhaust section of three 120mm fans. Removing additional screws allows you to swing out horizontally the top two fans on a hinge, unveiling the CPU (with its liquid cooling block attached), RAM, and M.2 slot area, and the bottom fan swings downwards, revealing the power supply and the bottom section of the graphics card, with its AIO cooling block attached.
The CPU is the standard Intel Core i9-14900K: a very powerful processor for gaming and productivity but a questionable choice for such a compact rig, given its known issues with overheating, particularly given the AIO only has a single 120mm fan in its radiator when you’d typically expect three (more on this later). The graphics card options are not standard at all however: it’s a highly stripped down Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 or Zotac RTX 4080 SuperTrinity, that’s had a lot of its heatsinks and other components removed, but comes with its own (fairly uncommon) dedicated AIO. All told there are five 120mm fans in this case: two in the top (including the GPU radiator), and the three on the side just mentioned, which includes the CPU radiator.
The motherboard is the MSI MAG B760M Mortar WIFI, which is a Micro-ATX size board that comes with four DIMM slots and two PCI-E x16. This contrasts with the even smaller mini-ITX motherboards you’d get in older Corsair ONE prebuilts that only have two DIMM and one PCI-E x16, and it’s nice to see this extra expandability.
The RAM used is Corsair Vengeance DDR5 6000MT/s, which is good quality RAM of a high speed, that can either come with two 16GB sticks (in the case of the RTX 4080 Super version) or two 32GB sticks (with the RTX 4090 version). Thanks to the four DIMM slots in the motherboard, you can add an additional two sticks to either of these if you like. The storage with either variant is a 2TB PCIe Gen 4 NVMe M.2 SSD, which you can upgrade at a later date. You also get space for a 2.5” SATA SSD, although this does not come with the computer. The whole PC is powered by a Corsair SF1000L power supply, a small form-factor model with 1000W of power and a Gold 80 Plus standard efficiency rating; Corsair make great PSUs and this is probably the option we’d pick if we were making a build of this size.
This compact design is very impressive, and although it makes upgrading the PC a bit difficult, for every area other than the graphics cards it’s still possible for you to do it yourself. Upgrading the GPU however does require you to send off the PC to Corsair themselves, given its custom stripped-down design, which is a bit of a faff but also not something that’s likely to happen very often considering the high-end cards it comes with.
Besides the awkward delay after pressing the on switch as mentioned, in virtually every other area the build quality of this rig was very high: every component felt nicely secured, the capable management was tight, and the hinging mechanisms on the fans worked well. Our unit did come with a faulty kettle plug, which isn’t ideal, but fortunately we have plenty to spare; we assume we were unlucky and the majority of consumers won’t have this issue so we’re not going to mark it down as a negative. The warranty on this machine is 2 years and includes 24/7 tech support service; we would have liked this to extend to 3 years ideally but you are at least allowed to maintain/upgrade the PC without voiding it.
Software
Rather than the typical iCue software we’re used to from other Corsair products, the ONE i500 instead uses a more stripped back ‘Corsair One Dashboard’ that you can use to control the RGB and monitor CPU and GPU temps. You can also use Corsair Diagnostic to run stress tests and see more detailed temperature info, plus CPUY and GPU load. Frankly it would have been better if all this info was available on the same software, rather than having to use both, but both bits of software are at least easy to use.
Unfortunately, although fan RPMs are visible on the Dashboard software, you can’t change their speeds or setup different fan curves/performance profiles. Given the hot temps of the CPU we can understand the need to set in a minimum safety net on the radiator fans, but the option to maximize fans speeds despite the increase noise would have been nice.
Performance
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Generally you’d expect a compact machine like this with a chopped down version of the GPU to underperform larger PCs that have to compromise less on cooling, however in most gaming scenarios and synthetic benchmarks the ONE i500 performed roughly on par with what we’ve seen in larger rigs with the same core specs.
As we’ll discuss below, the main performance hit came from the thermal throttling on the CPU, which definitely affects processor performance in those scenarios that put greatest stress on the processor. This could be a bit of a concern in some workstation applications that rely on this, though in most gaming scenarios you’ll still get top-notch performance. This doesn’t mean there aren’t concerns as to the impact this will have on the health of the CPU over time however.
Corsair i500 synthetic benchmarks
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Corsair i500 gaming benchmarks
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Fan noise
When idling or being used for web browsing/word processing/other general productivity tasks, the One i500 was fairly quiet. Under load in both gaming and during synthetic benchmarks, fan volume did increase noticeably over time; it never got too loud but equally was far from the quietest we’ve heard: overall the PC is pretty middle of the road in this aspect.
Internal temperature testing
For our thermal test we recorded temps during our in-game testing. GPU temps on the Corsair ONE i500, both average and max temperatures, were particularly good: around 10-15°C cooler than you’d typically expect in the titles we tested, so the GPU-mounted AIO is clearly doing its job nicely.
As you can see above though the max CPU temps on the Corsair ONE i500 frequently run high, which is doubtless due to the limits of only having a 120mm radiator on the processor AIO setup, plus the known thermal problems associated with the Intel 14th gen processors. With CPUs, a degree of thermal throttling occurs when max temps hit the low-to-mid 90s, with thermal damage and degradation to the component occurring in the high 90s and upwards, so we can see that in titles like CS2, Doom Eternal (with RTX switched on), and definitely in Cyberpunk 2077 this could be a problem.
In terms of how to resolve this issue, applying liquid metal thermal paste to the CPU might be one idea, though given the bottle-necking is likely to do with the radiator, this probably won’t make much difference. You could underclock the CPU, though this would obviously impact performance, or alternatively try undervolting it (lower voltage means lower temps), though this would be pretty risky given the known instability of the Intel CPUs since the introduction of the Performance and Efficiency core architecture – not something to attempt if you don’t know what you’re doing. The best solution we can give would be to install the latest Intel 14900K instability patch, which could bring down temps by a couple of degrees in exchange for a drop in mult-core performance, though the single-core heavy gaming performance should remain relatively unchanged. This isn’t going to make an enormous difference of course, so some degree of CPU performance degradation over time is likely fairly inevitable with this PC.
In addition, PC Centric has detailed how to add an additional fan to the back of the 120mm radiator for the CPU (there is room to do this!), which could get you up to 4°C of additional cooling – not a huge difference but every little helps at these high temperatures. Then again, if you’re buying a prebuilt PC in the first place this is likely not something you’d be wanting to do.
