these two computers have the exact same specifications which means their
performance is exactly the same right wrong when we tested the Corsair one
A200 we noticed some fishy results so we
built a near exact replica except for the case motherboard radiator and memory
and don't you worry we'll explain why the memory is different later then we
ran the same benchmarks and I'm pretty sure the results will surprise you
No actually that's a lie I am completely sure the results will surprise you but
won't surprise you is this message from our sponsor glassware are you worried
that someone else is using your Wi-Fi glasswire can alert you anytime a new
device joins so use offer code Linus to get 25 off glassware at the link in the
video description
our Corsair 1a200 boasts impressive
specs it's got an AMD 5900x 12 core CPU
a full fat RTX 3080 GPU one terabyte of
NVMe storage with two terabytes of hard drive-based storage and 32 gigs of 3200
megahertz RAM all in this Nifty little case with separate 170 and 240
millimeter all-in-one liquid coolers for each the CPU and the GPU wait 170
millimeter well should be better than 120 at least so then
what the heck is up with this performance I mean to be clear 60 FPS in
Shadow of the Tomb Raider at 4K with RTX enabled is a lot of performance but the
Corsair 1a200 also costs a lot of money
so I expect it to leave absolutely nothing on the table and something
smells a little funny here
you smell that
it smells like heat it's going up my nose
ah there's your problem despite this
machine being liquid cooled it's CPU
idles at around 50 degrees and check
this out just about the second you put it under any kind of load with a print
screen and this paint and we're going to paste this you're gonna see it's
actually jumped a full 10 degrees
just since I took the screenshot
what even is that and get this rcpu
never saw the Max rated boost speed of 4.8 gigahertz throughout our testing I
mean it is important to note that AMD's fine print specifies that that is a
single core boost speed but still seeing 4.8 gigahertz on the box and only
actually seeing 4.5 in games and 4.0 in
cinebench can be very confusing to the average user especially when I'm pretty
sure that this chip can do better and we're not the only ones experiencing
issues we've found a few posts on Corsair's Forum discussing poor thermals
on the 5900x and 5950x equipped models
it's not surprising considering how small form factor builds do tend to run
harder but it's certainly not ideal the
thing is though many modern computers are actually designed to run at or near
their thermal limits without it significantly impacting their
performance so the only way for us to know just how much this is hindering us
is to build up another machine to compare and thanks to movie Magic
foreign
this one is already done she's a chunky boy but
spec for spec this sucker is identical
to our Corsair 1a200 except for a couple things as I mentioned before we used a
different motherboard to match our case size and our 3200 megahertz memory
actually had to be manually adjusted to be slower to match the loose timings on
the RAM included with the one and since we don't have a 170 millimeter red we
went with a 240 since 120 is definitely not enough during a 10 minute stress
test running cinebench R23 the Corsair one reached a sweltering peak of 90
degrees Celsius running at just over 4 gigahertz meanwhile our clone here with
a similar Corsair mind you 240
millimeter radiator ended up in the mid 70s at just over 4.1 gigahertz that's a
difference of just over 15 degrees
but the thing is that clock speed Delta
doesn't fully explain the performance that I feel like is missing here what
else is going on in both of our systems the RTX 3080 gpus easily reached their
maximum boost clock of 1950 megahertz and maintained nearly identical average
clock speeds throughout our testing but while our air cooled car barely
pushed past 60 degrees running shadow of the Tomb Raider maxed out the liquid
cooled Corsair one peaked at over 70 in
the same test now 70 degrees under load is fine for a GPU and it's clear from
the narrow two and a half percent difference in results that 80 degrees on
the CPU is also fine that is if you
don't mind trading two and a half percent of your performance for a super
gorgeous and compact design like this one but hold on a second
not all games behave the same take a look at CS go yeah yeah sure both
machines manage around 600 frames per second so you're going to be having a
pretty good time but that is a six
percent difference in raw performance so
it's clear that the more CPU bottlenecked our application is the more
the Corsair ones borderline cooling system is likely to affect it
and this Rabbit Hole goes even deeper
yeah man I thought this was just going to be a simple system review
that makes sad Linus even sadder Linus
lttstore.com we actually built our clone system here
with a fatal flaw watch as we transform
it into a system that performs even better
dude
holy hot monkey bananas going back to CS
go here there's something I didn't mention last time average FPS not really
a great indication of the gaming experience because you don't notice
animation smoothness when it's good you notice it when it sucks that's why a CPU
that's thermal throttling at all is such a problem as it speed fluctuates you'll
experience extremely short but sometimes drastic dips in performance and we can
measure those so looking at the worst one percent of
our frame times our clone here beat the Corsair one by almost 15 right out of
the gate and our upgraded clone takes that lead to almost 20 percent just for
adding a bigger radiator I mean the Corsair one is still over 300 FPS so all
right no problem in this game but these
effects can be measured and more importantly felt in other situations as
well let's take a look at cinebench our clone
with the Dual radiator performed nearly identically to our course R1 but all of
a sudden we throw a triple Radiator in and it manages a three percent advantage
over both of them this is probably because our 12 core
5900x is right at the limit of what a
dual 120 millimeter AIO can handle so bringing that coolant temperature down
lets the CPU opportunistically boost up higher and more often
of course this raises the question why
is it so hard for a 170 millimeter radiator to cool a CPU That's rated at
just 105 Watts TDP when a slightly
larger Radiator on the other side of the same computer is cooling a GPU That's
rated at 320 Watts that's over double
well there's a couple of reasons for this first is that the die of the GPU
like this one is much larger and more
surface area means more thermal transfer second GPU coolers are pre-installed at
the factory where they can be placed directly that's a pun on the GPU itself
rather than having a heat spreader in between our die lapping Adventure video
by the way is a great look at just how many degrees you can literally shave off
with a steady hand and some risky work now some of you have probably noticed
I've been very focused on thermal differences between our systems here it
is possible that the power delivery on the ASRock b550 Phantom gaming ITX AC is
holding us back but given that our
performance continues to improve by going to a bigger radiator it looks like
thermals are the culprit and in any case it changes nothing about this machine
costing 400 dollars more than Corsair's own similarly equipped Vengeance a 7200
while underperforming compared to what
the hardware is capable of I mean we poked at some ideas to fix the
one A200 we updated the BIOS we tried
undervolting with one osmus's tool which resulted in hard crashes we tried tuning
the fan curve although that gave us some really funky behavior that doesn't seem
to be isolated to our unit and I mean
I don't know we could reapply a high quality thermal paste or Put liquid
metal on it or something but the thing is this is a pre-built For Better or For
Worse most people are not going to do any of that stuff and it should just
work out of the box and besides some people might not even
care about the trade-off they're making maybe for you form means more than
function and the courser rate 200 might be worthwhile from your perspective I
mean it still is a downright sexy machine that uses standardized Parts
which allows you to upgrade it down the line if you're so inclined it's just
that I do think that Corsair should revise the case in cooling design if
they're going to keep packing it with the latest and greatest Hardware going
forward just like I'm going to keep packing this video with sponsors thanks
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so did you guys buy an A200 I mean even
though it's expensive it might just be the easiest way to get your hands on a 5900x and a 3080 so we understand
entirely if you did just hey make sure you keep it well ventilated and let us
know in the comments if you're running into similar issues if you guys like this video make sure to check out my
easiest PC build in years the machine looks a lot like the Corsair
one but it's not it's like super easy to
build