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Our Verdict

With a Ryzen 9 5900X and an RTX 3080, both liquid-cooled for quiet operation in a compact case, Corsair’s One a200 is easy to recommend–if you can afford it and find it in stock. Just know that your upgrade options are more limited than larger gaming rigs.

For

• + Top-end performance
• + Space-saving, quiet shell
• + Liquid-cooled GPU and CPU

Against

• – Expensive
• – Limited upgrade options

For a whole host of reasons, AMD’s

Ryzen 9 5900X

and Nvidia’s

RTX 3080

have been two of the hardest-to-find PC components since late last year. But Corsair has combined them both in a handy, compact, liquid-cooled bundle it calls the Corsair One a200.

The company’s vertically-oriented One desktop

debuted in 2018

and has since been regularly updated to accommodate current high-end components. This time around, the options include either AMD or Intel’s latest processors (the latter called the One i200), and Nvidia’s penultimate consumer GPU, the RTX 3080. 

Not much has changed in terms of the system’s design, other than the addition of a USB Type-C port up front (where an HDMI port was on previous models). But with liquid cooling handling thermals for both the CPU and graphics in a still-impressively compact package, there’s really little reason to change what was already one of the

best gaming PCs

for those who want something small.

The only real concern is pricing. At $3,799 as tested (including 32GB of RAM, a 1TB SSD and a 2TB HDD), you’re definitely paying a premium for the compact design and slick, quiet cooling. But with the scarcity of these core components and the RTX 3080 regularly

selling for well over $2,000 on its own on eBay

, it’s tough to discern what constitutes ‘value’ in the gaming desktop world at the moment. You may be able to find a system with similar components for less, but it won’t likely be this small or slick.

Just like the

One i160

model we looked at in 2019, the Corsair One a200 is a quite compact (14.96 x 7.87 x 6.93 inches) tower of matte-black metal with RGB LED lines running down its front. To get some sense of how small this system is compared to more traditional gaming rigs, we called

Alienware’s Aurora R11

“fairly compact” when we reviewed it, and it’s 18.9 x 17 x 8.8 inches, taking up more than twice the desk space of Corsair’s One a200.  

The 750-watt SFX power supply in the a200 is mounted at the bottom, pulling in air that’s expelled at the top with the help of a fan. And the heat from the CPU and GPU will mostly be expelled out either side, as both are liquid cooled, with radiators mounted against the side panels. 

The primary external difference with the updated a200 over previous models is the replacement of an HDMI port that used to live up front next to the headphone/mic combo jack and pair of USB-A ports. It’s been replaced with a USB-C port. That makes for three front-facing USB ports, a surprising amount of front-panel connectivity for a system so compact. But there are only six more USB ports around back (more on that shortly).

Overall, while the design of the One a200 is pretty familiar at this point, it still looks and feels great, with all the external panels made out of metal. Just note that the matte finish does easily pick up finger smudges.

The video connections from the RTX 3080 graphics card live next to the Corsair SF750 power supply, and come in the form of three DisplayPort 1.4a ports and a single HDMI 2.1 connector.

As for internal upgradability, you can get at most of the parts if you’re comfortable dismantling expensive PC hardware. But you can’t add any RAM or storage without swapping out what’s already there (or at least without removing the whole motherboard, more on that soon). That said, the 32GB of Corsair Vengeance LPX DDR4-3200 RAM, 1TB PCIe 4.0 Force MP600 SSD and 2TB Seagate 2.5-inch hard drive that’s already here are a potent cadre of components. If you need more RAM and storage (as well as more CPU cores), there’s a $4,199 configuration we’ll detail later.

To get inside the Corsair One a200, you don’t need any tools, but you’ll want to be a bit careful. Press a button at the rear top of the case (you have to press it quite hard) and the top, which also houses a fan, will pop up. But before you go yanking it away in haste, note that it’s attached via a fan cable that you can disconnect after first fishing the plug out from a hole inside the case.

To access the rest of the system you’ll have to remove two screws from each side. But again, don’t be careless, as radiators are attached to both side panels via short tubes, so the sides are a bit like upside-down gull-wing doors. You can’t really remove them without disconnecting the cooling plates from the CPU and GPU.

You can open the right panel as well, though there’s not much to do here as the space is taken up by the GPU, a large radiator and a pair of fans mounted on the heatsink to move the RTX 3080’s heat through the radiator and out the vents on the side.

As with previous models, you should be able to replace the RTX 3080 with an air-cooled graphics card at some point, provided it has axial rather than blower-style cooling, and that it fits within the physical constraints of the chassis. But given that the RTX 3080 is the

best graphics card

you can buy, you may be ready for a whole new system by the time you start thinking about swapping out the graphics card here.

Aside from wishing there were more USB ports on the motherboard, I have no real complaints about the hardware here. If I were spending this much, I’d prefer a 2TB SSD, but at least the 1TB model Corsair has included is a PCIe 4.0 drive for the best speed possible. Technically the ASRock motherboard here has a second PCIe 3.0 M.2 slot, where you could  install a second SSD. But it’s housed on the back of the motherboard, which would mean fairly major disassembly in cramped quarters, and remember that you’d have to disconnect the pump/cooling plate from the CPU before even attempting to do that.

With AMD’s 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X and Nvidia’s RTX 3080 running the gaming show inside Corsair’s One a200 — and both of them liquid-cooled — we expected Corsair’s compact power tower to spit out impressive frame rates.

We pitted the a200 against

MSI’s Aegis RS 11th

, which also has an RX 3080 but an 8-core Intel Rocket Lake Core i7-11700K, and a couple other recent gaming rigs we’ve tested.

Alienware’s Aurora Ryzen Edition R10

sports a stepped down Ryzen 7 5800X and a

Radeon RX 6800XT

. And

HP’s Omen 30L

, which we looked at near the end of 2020, was outfitted with a last-generation Intel Core i9-10900K and an RTX 3080 to call its own.

While the Corsair One a200 didn’t walk away from the impressive competition, it was almost always in the lead in our gaming tests. And that’s all the more impressive given most of the systems it competes with are much larger.

On the Shadow of the Tomb Raider benchmark (highest settings), the game ran at 147 fps at 1080p on the One a200, and 57 fps at 4K. The former ties it with the Aegis for first place here, and the latter beats both the Aegis and the Omen 30L, just slightly, giving Corsair’s system an uncontested win.

In Grand Theft Auto V (very high settings), the Corsair system basically repeated its previous performance, tying the MSI machine at 1080p and pulling one frame ahead of both the Omen and the MSI at 4K.

On the Far Cry New Dawn benchmark, the MSI Aegis pulled ahead at 1080p by 11 fps, but the One a200 still managed to tie the MSI and HP systems at 4K. 

After trailing a bit in Far Cry at 1080p, the One a200 pulled ahead in Red Dead Redemption 2 (medium settings) at the same resolution, with its score of 117 fps beating everything else. And at 4K, the Corsair system’s 51 fps was again one frame ahead of both the MSI and Alienware systems.

Last up in Borderlands 3 (badass settings), the Corsair system stayed true to its impressive form. Its score of 137 fps at 1080 was a frame ahead of the MSI (and ahead of everything else). And at 4K, its score of 59 fps was only tied by the HP Omen. 

On Geekbench 5, an overall performance benchmark, the Corsair system was just behind the leading systems in the single-core tests, with its score of 1,652. But on the multi-core test, it’s 11,968 was well ahead of everything else.

The Corsair PCIe Gen 4 SSD in the a200 blew past competing systems, transferring our 25GB of files at a rate of 1.27 GBps, with only the HP Omen’s WD SSD also managing to get close to the 1GBps mark.

If you’re after the AMD-powered Corsair a200 specifically, you have two configuration options. There’s the model we tested (Corsair One a200 CS-90200212), with a 12-core Ryzen 9 5900X, 32GB of RAM, a 1TB PCIe Gen 4 SSD, 2TB hard drive, and an RTX 3080 for $3,799. Or you can pay $400 more ($4,199) to step up to the 16-core Ryzen 5950X and double the RAM and SSD to 64GB and 2TB respectively (Corsair One Pro a200 CS-9040010). The latter configuration is overkill for gaming, but the extra storage, RAM and four more CPU cores are well worth the extra money if you can actually make use of them.

For those who aren’t wedded to AMD, there’s also the Intel-based Corsair One i200, which now includes 11th Gen “Rocket Lake” CPU options, with up to a Core i9-11900K and an RTX 3080, albeit running on a last-gen Z490 platform. It starts a little lower at $3,599. But that model is currently out of stock with any current-generation Intel and Nvidia components, leaving exact pricing up in the air as of publicatioon.

We tried to do some comparison pricing, and were able to find a similarly equipped HP Omen 30L, as HP often sells gaming rigs on the more-affordable side of the spectrum. But when we wrote this, all Omen 30L systems with current-generation graphics cards were sold out on HP’s site. We were able to

find an Omen 30L on Amazon

with an RTX 3080 and an Intel Core i9-10850K, along with similar RAM and storage as our Corsair a200, for $3,459. That’s about $340 less than the a200, but the Omen 30L is also much larger than the a200 and has a now last-generation CPU with fewer cores, plus a slower SSD.

With one of

the best CPUs

and graphics cards, both liquid cooled and quiet, in an attractive, compact package, Corsair’s One a200 offers a whole lot to like. The $3,799 asking price is certainly daunting, but in these times when that graphics card alone is selling on eBay regularly for more than $2,000, the Ryzen 9 5900X often sells for close to $800, and even most desktops with current-gen graphics cards are mostly sold out, it’s tough to which high-end gaming rig is more or less of a bargain than something else.

If you spend some time looking you can probably find a system with similar specs as the Corsair One a200 for a bit less. But unless and until the ongoing mining craze subsides, that system probably won’t cost substantially less than Corsair’s pricing. And with its impressively compact shell, quiet operation, and top-end performance in both gaming and productivity, the a200 is easy to recommend for those who can afford it. Just know that upgrading will be a bit more difficult and limiting than with a larger desktop, and if you need lots of USB ports, you may want to invest in a hub.