Corsair One i600 Review: A Fiery, Compact Tower of Power

The Corsair One i600, like its predecessors, is a challenging PC to upgrade or repair. Due to its compact 21-liter case, all components are tightly packed into a slim chassis, making it challenging to access or replace the parts inside. Add in the i600’s dual AIO cooling system, and upgrades become even more difficult to manage. (A liquid-cooled graphics card, especially, requires a heat sink compatible with the new bare board.)

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Corsair made it a bit tricky to open the One chassis, as it requires a screwdriver. It’s just two screws to remove the side panel, but that only gets you as far as the case fans, which require a different gauge screwdriver to remove. Once you can actually access the guts of the Corsair One, you can upgrade your RAM kit or add an NVMe or SATA SSD. However, upgrading your motherboard or GPU is a bit more challenging, as the Corsair One chassis is tightly packed.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

If you were considering the AMD-based Corsair One A600, you could always upgrade the CPU alone in a few years, since AMD upgrades CPU sockets far less frequently than Intel. Unfortunately, with the i600, the CPU will presumably only be able to upgrade to not yet released, next-generation “Arrow Lake Refresh” CPUs, as Intel is expected to change processor sockets for its following “Nova Lake” generation, expected in late 2026 or early 2027. That puts a hard ceiling on CPU upgrades.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Then again, the Corsair One is hardly a hobbyist PC; you aren’t throwing down more than $4,000 for a work in progress. Considering its powerful starting components, the One i600 should be potent enough to last for a few generations before you need to worry about upgrades. At that point, it’ll probably be easier to just buy a new PC rather than try to source parts that can fit this particular chassis.