A few years back they started making gaming PCs.
I was looking for something slick, discreet, but still fairly powerful.
I bought a Corsair One, and I've been super happy since then. It's exactly what I wanted and I haven't had any issues with it.
So if you were looking at their gaming PCs, you now know 1 random HN reader is super satisfied and recommends them.
Water cooling itself has nothing to control, but there’s just the pump to be run at full speed at all time, and fans to cool radiators like you normally do with air coolers.
They are my go-to for power supplies and memory, and of my three main keyboards and mice, two sets are Corsair (K95 RGB Platinum and Scimitar Pro) used on Linux systems with ckb-next; one is Razer (Blackwidow Chroma v1 and Ouroboros) with their in-house software on Windows for a gaming rig. I much prefer the Corsair stuff.
Teenager me had the knowledge and patience to build one and would have loved too, but didn't have the money at the time.
Adult me doesn't have the patience, nor the knowledge anymore, but has the money.
I'm also less interested in those huge, full of fancy glowing RGB lights, gaming rigs and more interested in something small, silent and discreet.
So, in so many words, I can't compare, but I'm fairly certain it would take me more time than is worth trying to come up and build a rig as slick as the Corsair One.
But, if your only experience in building your own PC was from years ago, you'd be in for a pleasant surprise. Nowadays there's very little to worry about. No jumpers, easy cable management, even the front panels are no longer the mess they used to be. You can even avoid dealing with ANY cables at all for your SSD, if you go with the M2 form factor.
You can build from start to finish in less than one hour. It takes longer to install the OS (if it's Windows), than it takes to assemble the machine.
Of course, then there's part selection. Which is now exceedingly easy, thanks to the likes of https://pcpartpicker.com/
Don't know what to pick? Well, there's plenty of builds by other users. Pick one, modify to taste. The site will let you know if there are incompatibilities. In my case it even warned me that a GPU I wanted was too big and might not fit.
You can even have 'parametric filters'. For instance, say you want 16GB of system memory and you don't care about brand. You can say "I want 16GB, in either 1x16GB or 2x8GB, rated 3 stars or above, pick the cheapest". And it will pick one, usually linking straight to the product page(those may be affiliate links, not sure but I'm ok with that).
> I'm also less interested in those huge, full of fancy glowing RGB lights, gaming rigs and more interested in something small, silent and discreet.
I got a PC that's only slightly larger than a PS4. No RGB lights or anything. That's entirely up to you, even more so if you are choosing your own parts.
Unless you get case which is too small, and you have problems getting you hands in there.
This isn't the 90's/00's where you had to match graphics interfaces, FSB timing, RAM sockets/timing, modular vs cabled PSUs, set jumpers, configure components' master/slave relationships, run molex's/splitters, maximize board fans, clump case/button/etc connectors, terminate sockets, etc, etc.
* does my motherboard m.2 slot support PCIe or SATA m.2 SSD-s?
* on AMD motherboards: will my CPU work out of the box or do I need a loaner CPU to perform a BIOS update?
* using the wrong fan header on the motherboard for your AIO water cooler
* not setting the proper XMP profile for your RAM
Those are the ones that I could think of immediately.
Definitely SATA, most likely m.2 as well. They're not either/or.
More likely, you'll run into exhausting your PCIe lanes and might knock your GPU into 8x/4x mode or your additional SSD's into the dedicated SATA lanes.
> on AMD motherboards: will my CPU work out of the box or do I need a loaner CPU to perform a BIOS update?
Unless you fall into a very specific set of Motherboards from during the Zen -> Zen+ transition, the answer is no.
> using the wrong fan header on the motherboard for your AIO water cooler
Any header will still work, and it's not catastrophic anyways. Just change it if you got it wrong. Realistically, any modern motherboard will have the CPU fan header marked clearly, as opposed to the chassis headers.
> not setting the proper XMP profile for your RAM
The point of XMP is that you don't have to choose the profile. You just choose "XMP custom" (or however your motherboard manufacturer labels it) in the UEFI settings. If you don't, you'll get standard JEDEC RAM timings, which is hardly going to stop you.
I mean, your off the top of your head examples are all pretty easily solvable and probably wouldn't even be encountered unless you were specifically looking for them anyways. And if you don't configure them, most will Just Work (tm) at default configurations.
The weird thing is how pre-builts seem to tier the products at. You can get Pre-builts with good CPU/GPU combos but absurdly low RAM/Storage quantities.
They like to tier at 16GB RAM/500GB SSDs and then go up from there for hundreds of dollars without a change of the CPU/GPU and that really confuses me.
It's a shame there is little to no physical retail for this stuff anymore as it used to be easier to find a fire sale on a pre-built that needs to move because of how brick and mortar works.
That said, it truly is easy to do it yourself and that has its own satisfaction.
You can build in this case pretty easily as long as you don't try to do fancy things, like custom loop. It's smaller than the Corsair One, and you get better upgrability. It's small and discreet. Silent depends on what parts you pick.
There are many other cases that are similar, but not quite as space-optimized. Popular ones include the Ghost S1, and the Ncase M1. All three support the same-caliber specs you would get with a Corsair One.
Let me know if you want help selecting parts/building in such a case.
Edit: What I really need is a 5.25" slot on one of these so I can stick in a 3.5" hard drive toaster for forensics work :(
It’s completely water cooled and the majority of the parts are reusable/pc compatible.
Building something of that small factor will cost you a lot in exotic and custom parts.
For what it is the markup isn’t actually terrible it’s pretty cheap considering it costs about as much or even less than some standard tower gaming PCs from big brands and it comes with better hardware.
You can build a mini-ITX for cheaper but nothing of that size that and an SFF build will cost you more.
SFF cases are around $250-300, which is $150-200 more than a similar-quality ATX case. SFF CPU coolers are around the same price. SFF PSUs and motherboards have a small markup over ATX.
For example, here's a build for $3600. The GPU is not watercooled, though, since you can't fit a second radiator into the NZXT H1. https://pcpartpicker.com/list/Cr8cJb. This build has specs equivalent to the Corsair One a100, which retails for $4000. The H1 build also has a better upgrability path. Also, the 2080 Ti's price is massively inflated right now because of Ampere's imminent launch -- this build should really be only $3000.
You could also look into the Ncase M1 if you want to watercool the GPU, but I won't create a build for that because you would have to research hardware compatibility.
So it's completely feasible to build an SFF computer for less than what Corsair charges.
That build cost quite a bit more than a Corsair One at similar specs.
It’s possible to build an SFF build for cheaper, it will be very hard to do so for the same spec as the One.
The Corsair One is the first pre-built I was actually considering buying because of its form factor, use of more or less standard PC parts and the warranty and serviceability of it.
You’ll need a DC-DC set up and a custom one to boot, and an external water loop.
Not to mention that even building an air cooled SFF build is hard, SFF components are rare in many countries and often require you to import it yourself which adds a big premium in the form of import fees, you also need an SFX PSU for that case and one of the smaller ones to boot as well as likely do your own custom sized cables to actually fit things in.
That depends on how much you value the learning-opportunity provided by building your own machine. I certainly do!
> It's better to buy a commercial business grade desktop with a support contract.
If you're a self-employed SWE who needs a reliable dependable backup machine that you can use the support-contract to get fixed within 24 hours, then yes, I strongly agree.
...but I still think building ones' own primary machine is worth it.
> They always have some kind of weird power issue or something
I've built 8 machines for myself (and a couple more for friends and family) since I started in 2004 and I've never had an issue with power-supplies because I thoroughly research my options. PSUs are a safety-critical component of your PC: if it misbehaves it could kill you (e.g. if the computer-case goes live or the grounding pin fails - fun!) - or at least destroy everything of value inside it - I guess because I refuse to cheap-out on PSUs I've never had a problem.
Actually - there was one incident: back in 2005 I was building my second machine (a box to run Windows Server 2003 on so I could do ASP.NET web-development without needing to install IIS and SQL Server on my XP machine) and the PSU I ordered online was delayed, so I went to my parents' town's small-biz local PC shop and asked if they had any PSUs and all they had was a second-hand jobbie they gave me in a plastic carrier-bag for £20 - that PSU failed after a few days - just in-time for my online-order PSU to arrive.
I would "build" your PC in PC Part Picker and see what it says.
Intel/AMD: You may have a low wattage/efficiency PSU (multiply box wattage by efficiency and compare to what PC Part Picker says you need), and those are relatively cheap to replace. Your friend may have overclocked the CPU without a full stability test, that's simply a visit to the BIOS to disable.
AMD: You may have poorly installed cooling. AMD can have more problems with overheating than Intel.
I finally bought a Dell Precision 5810 and it blew my mind how professional the entire case was. Every single little thing had a dust guard, or a clip, or a wire holder or its own little cooling fan. The graphics cards had support brackets. The hard drive bays had these fantastic multi-fit caddies, and the SATA cables were all the perfect length. Windows registered itself from the e-mark on the BIOS each time I reinstalled it, which was really handy, and each time I installed Windows from scratch everything automagically seemed to work and I didn't have to go digging around for drivers. The onboard RAID controller seemed to 'just work' and took like 3 seconds to setup.
I bought my Dell Precision 5810 second-hand, and it would have been cheaper than building the same computer with a custom case from individually sourced second hand parts.
At the moment there are 20+ DELL precision workstations on Gumtree in just my local suburb.
I am not sure that going to a site calling itself "Hacker" News and writing such a comment is not blatant trolling. Or maybe this is a sad side effect of developers using Macs.
I am useless at building things and I built a PC that has never given me problems. I even bought the wrong case!
The fix for some kind of weird power issue is to roughly calculate what kind of power you need and buy a decent power supply -- it will probably be better than the commercial grade desktop and give some headroom for future upgrades.
For what it's worth I've always preferred using stuff from Corsair. Their quality is top notch. Right now my PC's case, RAM, most fans, power supply, and water cooling are from them. I give my computers, servers, etc., pseudo code names for the LAN and my current PC is actually 'CORSAIR'.