Corsair One's Lack of Upgradability

Good Afternoon All,

I wanted to address a something with Corsair One's that I think many people will come to the realization of and something that Corsair should look to changing their system design around. I bought the original Corsair one when it came out because it was a well put together machine in a clean box without flashy lights blazing from it. I still have it and love it. But the problem is I won't be buying another Corsair One because every time I want a upgrade my GPU, I would have to buy a whole new Corsair One. So I realized I have to go back to the DIY Option. I think many buyers will eventually realize this and move back to going DIY.

I say this in hopes that someone at Corsair reads this and understands that this will cause them to not have any return buyers and for the eventual market share of people who would buy a Corsair One to go down. I understand that selling a whole new system makes more money for Corsair but I think you won't have many return customers. People will start start realizing that they cannot upgrade their GPU whenever they want unless they buy a whole new Corsair One. I have friends that are trying to move from Consoles to PC and while I thought about recommending the Corsair One, I knew it would be bad idea once they found out that you cannot upgrade it and that they would just have to buy a whole new pc to upgrade it and that is not in their budget.

I decided to write this post because I had the same feeling for a while now and saw some others post similar feelings. So I figured, hey maybe I am not the only one that feels this way.

Below is a comment with similar feelings:

"If Corsair would ever provide "GPU upgrade kit" for i160, I would definitely buy one. Machine is itself is very solid. If Not, I guess I will probably switch back to DIY path, no point to buy full new machine, just to upgrade GPU."

Link to Comment

What is everyone's thoughts on this?

Any other previous buyers have similar thoughts as this?

I'll preface this with, I would love nothing more than an upgradeable version of this case. I bought this machine with the hopes of putting a Ryzen 5900x in it because I thought int was an off-the-shelf motherboard. It wasn't, its a custom board with a custom BIOS.

The amount of engineering that went into these machines was probably incredibly expensive. The amount of manual labor to put these machines together is probably quite high as well.

This is already a niche market for any system integrator. Most people would be fine with spending $1000 less on a box they stick under their desk. You have the power of a full desktop machine in a 12L case that can literally fit in a backpack (I've done it).

The cost of engineering an up-gradable version of this case would probably be prohibitively expensive for the amount they expect to sell. They would have to design around a wide range of hardware of different shapes and sizes. The cooling systems would have to take that into account as well. It would also all have to be somewhat easily serviced by an average user.

I agree also. But I do think that Corsair might be targeting new comers more than previous customers given that their systems have gotten quite expensive since the original ones. At the end of the day they only need to sell these systems once. If us, current owners of Corsair ONEs don't want to buy a new one, that's okay, Someone who doesn't have one and wants to try pc over console, will. What I do think Corsair could look into is the potential for this case to be an option for DIY people. It probably won't be able to accommodate aftermarket AIOs, but there are a number of decent air cooling options for the cpu that it can still work well.

I have a 2017 corsair one. I guess I got lucky because I bought the lowest price variant that came with a full size GTX 1070 blower style card so this made it very easy to upgrade the card. This system is upgradable but it likely means moving away from the stock liquid coolers and going with air cooling. I have done it myself. It is not too difficult, you would just need to be comfortable working with PCs. Everything fits fine without having to make permanent modifications. Here are a couple of pics.

But I do think that Corsair might be targeting new comers more than previous customers given that their systems have gotten quite expensive since the original ones. At the end of the day they only need to sell these systems once.

I don't think they can keep this up forever, the market for people that are willing to pay this amount for a new computer is already small. There are only so many new people in this market that you can sell to before you run out and need return customers.

If us, current owners of Corsair ONEs don't want to buy a new one, that's okay, Someone who doesn't have one and wants to try pc over console, will.

As someone who mainly games on consoles since most of my friends are on it, I can tell you the number one reason why my console friends don't have a pc, it's because it is too expensive. The majority of console people will not be spending 5x as much as a PS5 for a Corsair One. In fact I already mentioned the Corsair One to some of my friends when looking at pc's and they mentioned it was too expensive and when they found out you can't upgrade it later on in a few years, they thought I was crazy and why I would not just build one myself like they are doing.

I have done it myself. It is not too difficult, you would just need to be comfortable working with PCs. Everything fits fine without having to make permanent modifications. Here are a couple of pics.

Quite impressive, care sharing the fans models you bought?

I guess it's louder than before but do you really notice it?

Quite impressive, care sharing the fans models you bought?

I guess it's louder than before but do you really notice it?

Cheers! So the CPU cooler is an Alpenfohn Black Ridge. I swapped the fan with a 90mm Noctua NF-A9x14 HS-PWM. The 120mm fan is a Corsair ML120.

When it's idling, it is actually quieter than with the liquid pump. Especially because the GPU has the 0 rpm mode when idling. I set the bios to turn off the 120mm fan when CPU is below 40C which is where it normally idles. During gaming it does become noisy but that can be adjusted with fan curves. I wanted plenty of air flow and I use a headset mostly so no problem for me.