Corsair One i500
I’m a bit late to the party on this One (ha!) particular announcement, but as I’ve been catching up on news this past week, I just had to put a spotlight on Corsair’s two newest entries in its popular and ridiculously sleek line of compact PCs.
Available now through Corsair’s website, the i500 is the latest iteration of the company’s powerhouse mini computers, which arguably look more like space ration capsules than video game machines. Here’s the two main configurations:
- Liquid Cooled Intel Core i9-14900K and NVIDIA RTX 4090, 2TB M.2 SSD, 64GB DDR5, Win11 Pro
- Liquid Cooled Intel Core i9-14900k and NVIDIA RTX 4080 Super, 2TB M.2 SSD, 32GB DDR5, Win11 Home
The press release also mentions an ‘Origin Edition’ that can be stacked with up to 192GB of DDR5 memory and 24TB of storage, but as of this writing, I’m not seeing this particular variant anywhere online.
Besides these obviously beefy specs, the most interesting thing about this Corsair One refresh might be the Atari 2600-esque wood paneling. You have your elite choice of either Wood Bright or Wood Dark for the front illuminated piece, and either real wood slab will take you straight back to the 1980s, surely. Genesis albums and Teddy Ruxpin not included, unfortunately.
Reviews for the i500 have already been rolling in, with Tom’s Hardware praising the now easier upgradability and solid gaming performance, while criticizing the PC’s convoluted GPU upgrade process and pricey components. I actually reviewed the i300 back in 2022, a predecessor to the i500, and I walked away impressed. The amount of horsepower Corsair shoves into these tiny towers is really something. They are a bit of a pain to upgrade, but it sounds like the i500 has perhaps remedied this a bit.
If I can manage to get my hands on a review sample, I’ll be sure to run the latest games through its sardined internals. Stay tuned for that, possibly, and in the meantime, save all your paper route money, because these new i500 PCs ain’t cheap.
