Corsair One a200 Evaluation | PCMag

The Corsair One continues to be our favourite compact high-performance gaming desktop. The most recent mannequin, the One a200 ($3,799 as examined), harnesses AMD’s highly effective Ryzen 5000 desktop silicon and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card for really clean 4K body charges in immediately’s hardest PC video games. Although expensive, like all issues associated to gaming {hardware} nowadays, the Corsair delivers a top-notch construct, ultracompact dimensions, and blissfully quiet liquid-cooled operation. Certainly, it leaves few wishes unmet from a power-user and aesthetic perspective. The One a200 simply claims our Editors’ Selection crown for a gaming desktop on this class.

That is a New One

The One a200 is a expertise refresh of 2020’s Corsair One a100. The system options {hardware} that may usually be present in a a lot bigger tower, together with a 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X processor, the abovementioned GeForce RTX 3080, and 32GB of dual-channel DDR4 reminiscence. Its main storage is a 1TB Corsair Power MP600 solid-state drive that makes use of the PCI Categorical 4.0 protocol (frequent on current AMD Ryzen platforms, however solely simply come to Intel ones with eleventh Gen “Rocket Lake” chips and chipsets), whereas secondary storage comes from a 2TB laborious drive. Home windows 10 House is loaded freed from bloatware, and Corsair covers every little thing with a two-year guarantee.

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The One a200 is priced according to the competitors. I configured a comparable Maingear Turbo(Opens in a brand new window) for $3,467, although that did not embrace secondary storage. An Origin PC Chronos (Corsair additionally owns Origin) got here in at $3,542, additionally with out secondary storage.

Although the One a200 is not factory-customizable like these two, it is effectively balanced in our overview configuration. Corsair can be providing a $4,199 mannequin with a 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X, 64GB of reminiscence, Home windows 10 Professional, and 2TB of solid-state storage, which is past overkill for gaming however can be wonderful for double responsibility as a desktop workstation. (Then once more, so would my overview mannequin.)

Extremely-Fashionable But Traditional

The One a200 makes use of the identical design that the One sequence has had since its 2017 debut. It is perhaps too quickly to name it timeless, however it’s positive trying that method.

The fashionable exterior is manufactured from sculpted metallic panels that match collectively completely. Their thickness provides the a200 a tank-like really feel. For visible aptitude, two RGB zones on the entrance panel look nice with out overdoing it. This tower has no unhealthy angles.

The 15-by-6.9-by-7.9-inch case works out to 13.4 liters, or about one-third the quantity of a typical mid-tower ATX case. It isn’t top-heavy because of substantial weight within the base, a lot of which comes from its 750-watt Corsair SF750 energy provide. That first-rate unit is a particular SFX format designed to suit into small areas.

Blissful, Liquid-Cooled Quiet

The One a200’s cooling is primarily pushed by a 140mm fan behind the highest grate. It attracts air upward via tiny triangle perforations within the facet panels, behind that are the liquid-cooling radiators for the processor and graphics card. It is a good technique to maintain the system cool.

Expelling the nice and cozy air out the highest of the chassis retains it away from the person. The One a200 routinely shuts its followers down when temperatures are low sufficient for silent operation, however even beneath load, the highest fan is barely audible. The one draw back with this cooling system is that it complicates upgrades. Taking this tower aside is undoubtedly potential, although.

For connectivity, you’ll discover a headset jack, two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Sort-A ports, and one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Sort-C port on the entrance panel. The again facet has every little thing else, beginning on the base with one HDMI and three DisplayPort video outputs.

The motherboard, an ASRock B550 Phantom Gaming-ITX/ax mannequin, gives a concise collection of 4 USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, two USB 3.2 Gen 2 ports (one Sort-A and one Sort-C), Ethernet, and three audio jacks (microphone, line-in, and line-out). 

The antennas are for the included Intel AX200 wi-fi card, which helps Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5.

Punching Above Its Weight: Benchmarking the One a200

The Corsair’s highly effective elements enable it to compete with a lot bigger towers, so I pitted it in opposition to a number of for our benchmark comparisons. Their primary specs are within the desk beneath. As you’ll be able to see, the Alienware Aurora Ryzen Version R10 mid-tower is the one one on this lot to sport an AMD graphics card, particularly a Radeon RX 6800 XT.

In the meantime, the HP Omen 30L packs a GeForce RTX 3080 just like the One a200, whereas the smaller Dell XPS Desktop steps right down to a GeForce RTX 3070.

Final up is the smallest tower however the one which needs to be essentially the most highly effective, the Origin PC Chronos, which mixes a 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X CPU with a GeForce RTX 3090. Let’s have a look at what occurs. (See extra about how we take a look at desktops.)

Storage, Media, and CPU Assessments

Neither the Corsair One a200 nor the MSI Aegis RS accomplished what’s usually our first general-productivity benchmark take a look at, UL’s PCMark 10 general efficiency evaluation. That is not unprecedented for high-end desktops with brand-new {hardware}. That mentioned, it is no actual loss, as its highly effective elements would have pummeled the take a look at’s simulated net searching, video streaming, and workplace productiveness workloads. The One a200 joined the others in breezing via our PCMark 8 storage subtest, scoring greater than 5,000 factors, as most trendy SSD-based programs do. (That take a look at would not present a determined benefit for PCI Categorical 4.0 drives.)

Subsequent up is a pair of CPU-crunching exams: Cinebench R15 stresses all out there processor cores and threads whereas rendering a fancy picture, whereas in our Handbrake take a look at, we put a stopwatch on programs as they transcode a 12-minute clip of 4K video right down to 1080p.

Predictably, the Chronos and its 16-core engine outperformed the One a200, however nothing else touched it. As famous, the Corsair is on the market with AMD’s 16-core Ryzen 9 5950X within the unlikely occasion you crave extra multi-threaded musclepower.

The ultimate take a look at on this part is photograph enhancing. We use an early 2018 launch of Adobe Photoshop Artistic Cloud to use 10 advanced filters and results to an ordinary JPEG picture, timing every operation and including up the full. This take a look at isn’t as rigidly CPU-focused as Cinebench or Handbrake, bringing the efficiency of the storage subsystem, reminiscence, and GPU into play.

The superb efficiency of the Corsair’s Ryzen CPU is clear, however the Core i7 “Rocket Lake” chip within the MSI is not far off. Any of those towers can be smoking quick for superior Photoshop duties.

Graphics and Gaming Assessments

Our first two benchmarks on this part use gaming simulations to measure a PC’s graphics efficiency. In UL’s 3DMark, we run the DirectX 11 exams Sky Diver (light-weight, able to working on built-in graphics) and Hearth Strike (extra demanding, for high-end gaming PCs). Unigine Corp.’s Superposition is the opposite; it makes use of a special rendering engine to provide a fancy 3D scene.

The One a200’s scores had been as sky-high as they need to be in each exams. The AMD Radeon-equipped Aurora did higher in 3DMark Hearth Strike, however the Superposition 1080p outcomes present the 2 are on par in the case of pure GPU grunt.

We additionally attempt actual video games, working the built-in benchmarks of Far Cry 5 and Rise of the Tomb Raider at numerous resolutions. Far Cry 5 makes use of DirectX 11, whereas we flip Rise of the Tomb Raider to DirectX 12.

Excluding the XPS Desktop, the One a200 did not stand out right here just because all these PCs are exceptionally quick. Its triple-digit 4K body charges are excellent and point out that it’ll have efficiency to spare for a while. The Chronos wasn’t a lot faster regardless of its exorbitantly costlier GeForce RTX 3090, a card that is truly designed for skilled use quite than pure gaming.

One other Winner From Corsair

The One a200 continues Corsair’s successful method for a space-saving, peak-performance gaming tower. Its AMD Ryzen 5000 sequence processor and Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 GPU produced wonderful ends in our benchmarks, maintaining tempo with a lot bigger desktops. Impressively, it does this whereas remaining almost silent and, in fact, trying nice because the One lineup has all the time accomplished. 

To make certain, there are extra inexpensive methods to get into gaming, however apart from the expense, the Corsair checks off nearly each different merchandise on our want checklist and earns Editors’ Selection recognition on this elite class.