The Corsair One has been our perennial favorite compact gaming desktop since its debut in 2017. This year’s One i300 is the most impressive revision yet, boasting an Intel Core i9-12900K processor, bleeding-edge DDR5 memory, and GPUs up to the Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 Ti for unparalleled power in such a space-saving design. Like earlier Corsair One models, it’s entirely liquid-cooled, operates almost silently, and looks suave. All we can really complain about is its price, which starts at an eye-watering $3,999 and rockets to $4,999 as tested. That’s why the more affordable (albeit still costly) Corsair One a200, based on an AMD Ryzen 9 chip in our test model, retains our Editors’ Choice award for a high-end compact gaming tower. But if your need for speed is insatiable, the One i300 is the “one” to get.
Top-Shelf Everything
The One i300 aims for the upper crust with three configurations, all based on the Core i9-12900K CPU. The $4,999 flagship here packs a 12GB GeForce RTX 3080 Ti card, 64GB of DDR5-4800 RAM, a 2TB solid-state drive, and Windows 11 Pro. A $4,699 model drops to 32GB of RAM, and the $3,999 what-passes-for-entry-level version uses a non-Ti GeForce RTX 3080. The standard warranty is two years.
There’s plenty of competition in this elite tier; the One i300 faces the Maingear Turbo, the Origin PC Chronos, and the Falcon Northwest Tiki, all of which command similar prices but play the small-form-factor game differently. The Corsair is the most original among them, opting for an obelisk shape with fully liquid-cooled innards. That it accommodates full-fat desktop components in a frame measuring 15 by 6.9 by 7.9 inches (HWD), yielding a mere 12 liters of interior space, is remarkable.
The all-metal case exudes quality and has no bad angles. The bolt-like RGB lighting running down the front panel is configurable via the Corsair iCUE app. The power button sits up top.
Front-mounted ports include a headset jack, a pair of USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports, and one USB 3.2 Gen 2 Type-C port.
The tower isn’t prone to tipping, since much of its 17.4-pound weight is in its base, where the power supply resides. Larger desktops than this have resorted to laptop-style external power adapters, but not the One i300: It uses a specialized yet industry-standard SFX-format Corsair SF750 supplying 750 watts. The power supply’s high efficiency rating (80 Plus Platinum) translates to minimal heat output.
Next to the PSU are the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti card’s video outputs, including three DisplayPort and one HDMI.
Above them on the backplane, the motherboard port selection includes six USB Type-A (four 3.2 Gen 1 and two 3.2 Gen 2), two Thunderbolt 4 (USB-C), three audio jacks (microphone, line-in, and line-out), and 2.5Gbps Ethernet. Two stubby antennas (not shown in the photos) connect to the jacks for Wi-Fi 6E connectivity courtesy of a built-in Intel AX211 wireless card.
Yes, It’s Upgradable
The Corsair One’s simple yet highly effective liquid cooling differentiates it from other compact desktops. A 140mm top fan draws air through the perforated side panels, behind which are the liquid cooling radiators for the processor (on the left) and the graphics card (right). The air is then quietly expelled upward. The system can operate silently under low-stress workloads.
You can see how the cooling system works with some minor disassembly for upgrades. The One i300’s expansion is limited to two RAM slots (using desktop DIMMs, not laptop-style SO-DIMMs), one M.2 2280 slot for an SSD, and one 2.5-inch drive bay. Access requires removing the left panel, which means first pressing a button on the back of the tower to release the top fan grate.
You must disconnect the fan’s cable before the grate comes free.
After that, it’s a matter of removing two screws and gently lifting the left panel free. The MSI MEG Z690I Unify Mini-ITX motherboard is accessible within; you’ll need to work around the tubes coming off the CPU waterblock. (Corsair thoughtfully provides video guides on its support site for component upgrades.)
Upgrading the CPU or GPU would require more extensive disassembly, and in the case of the latter it’d be a challenge to find a GPU that would work. You’re best off buying this tower with the processor and graphics card you want from the get-go. Here’s a view of the GeForce RTX 3080 Ti behind the other panel; note the copper heatpipes and auxiliary fans.
Testing the One i300: It’s the One to Beat
For our benchmark comparisons, I put the Corsair One i300 up against the fastest gaming towers we’ve tested; you can see their basic specs in the table below. The Maingear Turbo, powered by a 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 5950X, is the only like-sized unit. The other, larger rigs include the Alienware Aurora R13, the massive HP Omen 45L, and the Velocity Micro Raptor Z55, all of which use either a GeForce RTX 3080 Ti or Nvidia’s monster GeForce RTX 3090.
Productivity and Content Creation Tests
The Corsair aced our first test, UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance. Its 2TB PCIe 4.0 SSD helped it achieve the highest score in the primary drive storage test.
Our next three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads, to rate a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene, while Primate Labs’ Geekbench 5.4 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. Finally, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).
Our final productivity test is Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Photoshop, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe’s famous image editor to rate a PC’s performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It’s an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.
The One i300 scored exceptionally well, vying with the other Core i9-12900K machines for top honors. It handily outpaced the Ryzen-powered Maingear in most instances.
Graphics and Gaming Tests
For Windows PCs, we run both synthetic and real-world gaming tests. The former includes two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, Night Raid (more modest, suitable for systems with integrated graphics) and Time Spy (more demanding, suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). Also looped into that group is the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which we use to gauge OpenGL performance.
Moving on, our real-world game testing comes from the in-game benchmarks of F1 2021, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege, representing simulation, open-world action-adventure, and competitive/esports shooter games respectively. On desktops, we run the benchmarks at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K resolution at the top image-quality preset, except for F1 where we skip 1440p in favor of trying 4K with and without Nvidia’s performance-boosting DLSS anti-aliasing.
The One i300 continued to post fabulous numbers, narrowly edging its rivals in most tests. Its GeForce RTX 3080 Ti performs on par with the RTX 3090, so it’s no loss that Corsair isn’t offering the system with the latter.
To be sure, the One i300 is total overkill for most types of gaming; our test unit’s Core i9 chip and 64GB of RAM are worthy of a high-end workstation. I’d like to see Corsair offer the desktop with a Core i5-12600K and a GeForce RTX 3070 Ti for a more affordable balance of price and performance.
One Sweet Ride
The One i300 is the poshest compact gaming PC you can buy. No other desktop packs as much performance into such a small space with so few compromises. Its artful design, liquid-cooled innards, and excellent connectivity continue to inspire envy. It’s undeniably in the “if you have to ask” price range, but no more so than other compact gaming PCs in this elite tier. As mentioned, Corsair’s AMD-based One a200 remains a favorite, as as it offers the same excellent design and great 4K gaming performance for a considerably lower (though still decidedly steep) price. But if maximum performance is the order of the day, the One i300 is unmatched.
