Corsair one i160 review in Spanish (complete analysis)

Corsair has finally renewed its range of pre-assembled desktop gaming computers with up to 4 models, although the one that we bring the Corsair ONE i160. An impressive team not only in power, but also in aesthetics, with an ultra compact and minimalist design in a completely aluminum chassis, with iCUE compatible Corsair RGB lighting and completely silent with only one fan.

And wait to see inside, because we have no less than an 11GB Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti GDDR6 and an Intel Core i9-9900K CPU, both with 240mm liquid cooling along with 32Gb of RAM. Obtaining practically the best performance on the market for games on a computer that is not assembled by parts.

Before starting this in-depth analysis, we take this opportunity to thank Corsair for sending us that ONE i160 so that we can make this review.

Corsair ONE i160 technical characteristics

Unboxing

And let's start by looking at the Unboxing procedure for this marvel of design so that we can all situate ourselves. Corsair ONE i160 comes in a double thick cardboard box, one for transport, and the other is the product itself. The one that interests us is the latter, since the other is simply a neutral cardboard packaging.

Well, it consists of a relatively high box due to the peculiar dimensions of the computer, and all of it printed in matt black with a huge photo on each of its faces, thus showing the different profiles of the team. Also included are some specs, and most importantly, the model at hand, which is the i160. Recall that there is still another model, the i180 oriented to the production of content and as Workstation.

Now what we are going to see is how to unpack the Corsair from its packaging. Let's notice that on two sides it has a kind of hard plastic grips with two plates. We have to put pressure on them with our fingers to bring them together and then push inward to release them from the box. We will extract each of these two brackets and we will be able to remove the upper part of the box with total simplicity. After removing this box technology, we find the Corsair ONE i160 tower, very well supported with four polyethylene foam molds.

The elements that the bundle brings are the following:

• Corsair ONE i160 PC fully assembled Cable for connection to the power in British format Two antennas for the integrated Wi-Fi card on board User manual with instructions

It does not bring us any other external or internal cable to expand the hardware, since we will not be able to do it either. We do not know if a British type cable is available in all cases, at least in our package it was this way.

Exterior design

Now we are going to focus on seeing its exterior design, because if these new models have evolved in any way, including this Corsair ONE i160, it is precisely this. Now we have a square tower configuration, but with the four edges finished in a chamfer, that is, in a small face to kill the edges. In turn, the faces are not completely flat either, but have a very slight curve.

The measurements we have abroad are 380 mm high, 200 mm deep and 172.5 mm wide, all with the equipment on its feet. It weighs a total of 7.38 Kg and the occupied volume would be 12 liters. With all this, you can imagine that it is an extremely compact set, to have such a complex system inside, that we will see later in more detail.

The Corsair ONE i160 chassis is completely built in 2mm thick aluminum, and that's a lot when it comes to a metal case. The manufacturer has done a sensational job in updating its gaming equipment to the purest Mac style, except that in this case a completely matt black painted unit is i160, the i650 and i140 being exactly the same. While for example the pro i180 is a grayish color to distinguish it from the rest.

Paying attention now to its side faces, the truth is that we have an extremely minimalist appearance. On the side faces, we only find a central area completely open to the outside in the form of a triangular aluminum grid that will act as air suction to bathe the radiators installed in each part.

On the front side we only see the I / O panel at the bottom of the chassis and the “ONE” badge in the center. But the most important thing in this area is that it has Addressable RGB LED lighting on its two lateral edges, which we can manage through Corsair iCUE.

We also note that all the main faces are mounted in the form of independent parts, for example, front, side and rear areas. From the outside, we will not have the possibility of separating these pieces, so we will need to open it to do this. It will not be the most recommended, but perhaps some user wants to do a deep cleaning of Corsair ONE i160 after a while of use with it. As a result of this, we must say that none of the air suction openings has a dust filter, and it would have been very good to have installed some.

Finally we are going to see the upper and lower areas of Corsair ONE i160. It is precisely in the upper area where we can start to open the chassis to see and work inside. But, first of all, it consists of an area built in aluminum provided with notorious fins placed diagonally and with a large opening in the central area to allow the extraction of air to a 140mm Corsair ML series fan with a bearing by magnetic levitation. This fan can also be managed by iCUE and offers approximately 1470 RPM at its maximum speed.

To extract this upper area, we will have to press a button on the back that keeps it attached. At the same time, we will pull this upper head as far as we can to extract it completely. Be careful with the fan, since we must disconnect it before we can remove the area.

And we end with the lower area, also built in aluminum and completely closed to the outside. In it, we have a glued rubber strip that acts as a support with the ground. At this point, we might think that a fan in the lower area could have improved interior ventilation, but think carefully. The system requires convection to suck air from the sides to cool the radiators, and exits through the upper area. If we put a fan down, we would create a vertical air flow, and surely much less air would enter through the sides, so we would be generating an impeded flow which is much less effective for what we need.

In this final screenshot, we see the equipment working and with the lighting activated. As standard, the lighting will be configured as fixed white, but then we will see that it will be easy to modify using iCUE. The result is spectacular, a very elegant chassis that of Corsair ONE i160, at the same time that it is discreet and with measured and fully customizable lighting. In fact, we have four separate LEDs on each side.

Connection ports

After seeing a little touch its outer area, we have left behind all the connection ports of this Corsair ONE i160, and the truth is that we have enough variety both front and rear.

Let's start with the front area:

• Power Button (Top) HDMI 2.02x USB 3.1 Gen1 Type-A 3.5mm Jack Port Headphone & Microphone Combo

What can we miss here? For example, a USB Type-C to have more accessible than the rear. What's more, I think they could have moved the HDMI port to the back and put that Type-C here, even if it was Gen1.

Now let's go to see the back area:

• Fan Release Button (Top) PS / 22x USB 2.0USB 3.1 Gen2USB 3.1 Gen2 Type-C2x USB 3.1 Gen1RJ-45 EthernetS / Audio PDIF Port5x 3.5mm Jack Sound Card CMOS Reset Button2x Connectors Wi-Fi antennas3x Display Port 1.4 graphics card 3-pin AC power PSU off switch Kensington slot for universal padlocks

Well, we can't complain about the connectivity of this rear panel. We have practically everything you need for current and even old devices like the PS / 2. Here we do have USB Type-C and a button to reset the BIOS in case we overclock it.

Let's notice that the card does not have HDMI in the back area, so if our monitor only has HDMI, the cable will be visible in the front area, something aesthetically incorrect.

Interior and assembly

Corsair ONE i160 offers us a very interesting mounting system for the simple fact of being able to introduce such powerful hardware in such a small space.

After disassembling the upper area just as we have explained during the analysis of its design, the interior chassis is visible, which consists of a rectangular frame with a metal plate just in the central area that will serve to install the GPU and the motherboard using traditional screws.

In turn, the four screws that hold the side panels are accessible, so to remove them, we must unscrew them carefully and holding these plates so that they do not suffer any blow. In this way we obtain the previous capture, in which we see its ingenious fan configuration using two 240 mm closed-loop radiators, exactly the same as a liquid AIO of the brand without fans, but with water inlet and outlet in the lateral areas. In my opinion, it is the most successful method that has been done in such a small space, and then we will see that it performs in a spectacular way.

These radiators have a fastening system using side plates that keep them attached to the aluminum sheets. In the upper area, the RGB LED lighting strips that Corsair has installed in the front area connected to a controller and in turn to the USB of the board for iCUE to detect them are also noted.

The main hardware is located on this central plate, on one side the ITX motherboard and on the opposite side the graphics card, which comes in its full PCB configuration, albeit with a custom designed heatsink. This design consists of a large liquid-cooled copper plate just above the GPU, and a fan located in the VRM and GDDR6 memory zone. To connect both elements, Corsair has placed a long custom Riser. And in turn, it has been necessary to extend the video ports through a Hub to the corresponding places, since they naturally face the lower area.

Hardware configuration

After seeing in a basic way how the main hardware is installed, we will see in detail its technical characteristics. They are devices that everyone already knows, although it is worth dedicating a few paragraphs to this incredible configuration of Corsair ONE i160.

We will start with the CPU, and here the manufacturer has not made life too difficult, using a whole Intel Core i9-9900K, which is the most powerful processor under socket LGA 1151 currently in the blue giant. It has an 8-core count and 16 processing threads thanks to HyperThreading, under a manufacturing process of 14nm ++ Coffee Lake Refresh. It works at a base frequency of 3.6 GHz and 5.0 GHz in Turbo Boost mode, although it supports considerable overclocking thanks to having its multiplier unlocked. It has 16 MB of L3 cache memory, a 95W TDP and supports up to 128 GB of DDR4-2666 RAM. Lastly, we have integrated IGP Intel UHD Graphics 630 capable of streaming content in 4K @ 60 FPS.

This IGP integrated in the 9900K is of little use to us since on the front Corsair ONE i160 it has the almighty Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, if the Ti version. One of the most powerful graphics cards today and second only to the Titan RTX. This monster with heatsink customized by the brand and liquid cooling, has a Turing architecture capable of taking Ray Tracing and DLSS to the highest level under any type of resolution, thanks to a 1545 MHz graphics processor that has 4352 CUDA Cores, and a speed of 10 Gigaray / s. In the VRAM section, we have 11 GB GDDR6 at 14 Gbps working on a 352-bit bus at a speed of no less than 616 GB / s. It is true that Corsair ONE i160 costs almost 4, 000 euros, but it is the highest gaming configuration you can mount.

And notice, something that can be contradictory is the fact of using an MSI manufactured motherboard in Mini-ITX configuration with Z370 chipset. And it is a plate that the manufacturer itself has used on other occasions, under the specification MS-7B43. If we do a little research, we will realize that this is a variant of the MSI Gaming Pro Carbon AC with its Intel Z370 chipset. It is precisely here where the contradiction is, since the ideal would have been the Z390 to complete the circle.

Well, this board in ITX size provides us with both wired and Wi-Fi network connectivity. In the first, we have a fairly normal Intel I219-V Gigabit LAN chip, since it offers a 1000 Mbps connection. Wi-Fi connectivity will be managed through an Intel Wireless-AC 8265 that provides dual band in 2.4 Ghz and 5 Ghz up to 867 Mbps, installed on a CNVi slot and with Bluetooth 5.0. Finally, a Realtek ALC1220 7.1 channel sound card has been used. As you can see , it is not exactly a high-end plate that we have, since there are currently them with much better features, and it contrasts a bit with the previous components.

Logically, the RAM is the manufacturer's own, two Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4 2666 MHz modules, each 16 GB and installed in Dual Channel. This makes a total of 32GB. Being an ITX motherboard with a Z370 chipset, we have this 32 GB limitation, which is why a new generation motherboard would have been a better choice. The storage configuration is also easy to explain, consisting of a Samsung PM961 512GB M.2 NVMe PCIe x4 SSD and a 2TB 2.5 ”Seagate Barracuda HDD. Nor is this a breathtaking setting. And it is striking that Corsair has not used one of its SSDs.

And finally, as a source of power, the brand has pulled homegrown with a very successful Corsair SF600 80 Plus Gold. A 600W source with high-quality components such as its Japanese electrolytic capacitors, and Zero RPM Mode that keeps the fan turned off while consumption is below 40%.

After studying these components, we cannot avoid seeing a certain imbalance between the TOP CPU and GPU features, under a motherboard that is somewhat outdated with a chipset from a few years ago. Similarly, the storage system is not much better than that of a high-end laptop.

ICUE software and lighting

We must make a small stop to give a review to Corsair iCUE, since in this program we will be able to manage the two refrigeration systems of the equipment in the speed of its pump, and also the lighting of the front.

The PC comes with an equipped controller that detects the name of the computer and its customization features. In total we will have three sections, the first of them is to be able to configure the lighting of the front. In total we have 8 addressable LEDs that we can customize through lighting layers with animations already predefined or created by ourselves.

The next section covers the RPM control of the upper fan and the two cooling systems. Finally, in the third, we can see a series of performance or temperature graphs of these elements, as well as the coolant.

In Corsair ONE i160 a small Corsair diagnostic tool has been installed with which we can see PC specifications, and the state of our hardware. Nothing extremely important, but very useful as a basic monitoring tool.

Tests and performance tests

It's time to subject our Corsair ONE i160 to our stress tests and benchmarks both in its M.2 unit, and to see what performance we are going to get in games, which is what this equipment is built for.

Testing bench:

• Device: Corsair ONE i160 Monitor: ViewSonic VX3211-4k-MHD

SSD performance

We start with a test to assess the read and write capabilities of the team's Samsung M.2 storage drive. To do this, we have used the CristalDiskMark 6.0.2 software.

Here we have an expected performance for this series from Samsung, which offers us excellent sequential read speeds of over 3000 MB / s, but lags somewhat when it comes to writing. Something we don't understand is why Corsair hasn't used an M.2 SSD from its own harvest.

Benchmarks and synthetic tests

We now turn to see the performance in the Cinebench R15 CPU benchmark. In terms of graphical performance benchmark, we have subjected this team to the 3DMark Fire Strike Ultra and Time Spy tests, and the PCMark 8 Home Conventional program.

In these results we see two quite striking situations, although thought about, they are quite logical. Looking at the Cinebench results, we have a lower performance than expected from the i9-9900K since in our review, and in subsequent tests we have obtained more than 2100 points. This may be due in part to having a different chipset than the Z390 and a somewhat older board, since in terms of temperatures we have not had any problems.

The second situation is also quite logical, and that is that the scores of the RTX 2080 Ti are higher than those obtained on the day of its presentation and review. This is because the drivers have improved substantially compared to what they were almost a year ago.

Gaming performance

The next test is to evaluate the performance in games, to see how far we can go with this Corsair ONE i160. For this we have carried out tests at Full HD, 2K and 4K resolutions with the standard configuration available in the games, which will be the following:

• Final Fantasy XV, standard, TAA, DirectX 12DOOM, Ultra, TAA, Open GL 4.5 Deus EX Mankind Divided, Alto, Anisotropico x4, DirectX 11Far Cry 5, Alto, TAA, DirectX 12Metro Exodus, Alto, Anisotropico x16, DirectX 12 (Con RTX) Shadow of the Tomb Rider, High, TAA + Anisotropic x4, DirectX 12

Here we have the results, with a configuration in almost all games in high quality, we have FPS that comfortably exceed 60 up to 4K resolution. Whoever says that 120 Hz 4K monitors make little sense, at the same time folks, because we get closer to these incredible records. As with synthetic tests, we also see improvements in the performance of this RTX 2080 Ti with these new drivers, highlighting those improvements over time.

Consumption and temperatures

Finally we are going to see the temperatures that we have obtained with this equipment subjecting it to a full hour of stress with Furmark and Prime 95, both in CPU and GPU.

Corsair ONE i160 temperature	Idle	Full
CPU	50 ° C	73 ° C
GPU	37 ° C	57 ° C

Corsair ONE i160 consumption	Idle	Full
Complete team	68W	405W

Despite being such an extremely compact PC, we see really good temperatures, especially when we subject its main components to a long time of stress. And is that 73 degrees for an i9-9900K after an hour at full is not bad, and the temperatures of the GPU are spectacular thanks to the liquid cooling system.

Final words and conclusion about Corsair ONE i160

We come to the end of this long review where we shed the Corsair ONE i160, one of the most compact and powerful PCs currently offered by the market for already-mounted desktops. I like to always start with the design, one that in this case overflows good taste and elegance, with a super compact chassis completely built in aluminum and RGB lighting on its front.

And its two main components make it clear what it's designed for, Core i9-9900K as a CPU and an amazing RTX 2080 Ti as a GPU that comfortably beats 60 FPS in 4K resolutions at high quality. Certainly few desktops offer these records. The storage capacity we can leave it in correct, with 512 GB SD + 2 TB HDD, but we expected something more. Something that we have also loved is the use of liquid cooling for GPUs and CPUs.

We recommend our guide to the best monitors on the market

Something that we do consider improvable is its motherboard, we understand that it is not easy to design this type of equipment as compact and with components quite personalized by the brands, but a Z370 chipset for an i-9900K we see it a little fair, and we have been able to notice in some tests. Similarly, network connectivity also offers very fair speeds, with components of the previous generation.

As for its price, this Corsair ONE i160 is available for about 3900 euros on the Corsair official website, so we will have to tie the males and have a fairly high budget. The manufacturer offers three more models, i140 with RTX 2080 at 3, 200 euros, i165 at 4, 000 euros and finally the Workstation Pro i180 at 5, 400 euros. Truly astronomical prices for enthusiastic-level performance equipment for only a few.

ADVANTAGE	DISADVANTAGES
+ EXQUISITE DESIGN	- BENEFITS OF THE VERY FAIR BASE BOARD TODAY
+ TOP PERFORMANCE IN GAMES	- ENOUGH NORMAL STORAGE
+ I9-9900K AND RTX 2080 TI
+ DOUBLE LIQUID COOLING SYSTEM FOR CPU AND GPU
+ INTEGRATED WITH CORSAIR ICUE
+ EXCELLENT TEMPERATURES AND COMPLETELY SILENT

The professional review team awards him the platinum medal

Corsair ONE i160

DESIGN - 100%

CONSTRUCTION - 98%

REFRIGERATION - 91%

PERFORMANCE - 97%

97%

The most compact and powerful gaming PC on the market with Intel Core i9-9900K and Nvidia RTX 2080 Ti