To anyone considering buying a Corsair prebuilt PC, like the i8200, do yourself the mother of all favors and buy your PC from anyone but Corsair. They use proprietary BIOS in all their prebuilt PCs, meaning you will not be able to download critical BIOS updates directly from the motherboard manufacturer, the way it should be.

Why should this be a deal-breaker? Simple. It's been two full weeks since Intel has released the 0x129 microcode for their 13th & 14th gen cpus....and still NO BIOS updates have been provided by Corsair. Every motherboard manufacturer, including ASUS, the maker of my mobo, have released updated BIOS containing this crucial and potentially cpu-saving update. Even Dell, with their notoriously subpar customer service and unintelligible tech agents, have provided their customers with updated BIOS for their proprietary motherboards. Corsair, on the other hand....NADA. You could probably get better, more attentive customer & tech support from someone selling a stolen PC out of the trunk of their car.

Give your money to a vendor that actually cares about its customers, unlike Corsair.

I recently bought and received my VENGEANCE i7600 Gaming PC and the process has been very disappointing. It arrived promptly, a day early even, which was a great start. Then a couple red flags popped up immediately:

The setup instructions mentioned removing the packing foam from inside the tower. It said I should "remove the thumb screws" from the side panel. The problem? There aren't any. This case has push-fit plastic balls on a glass panel on the both the front and the back. Easy enough to remove, but the instructions did NOT mention how the panels removed safely and I very easily could've broken something given that you need to remove the front panel first. Corsair apparently just has one generic manual for all their PCs and expect you to not care. For $2.5k I would hope they could at least include the correct piece of paper.

At this point I'd like to say that I'm a tech professional, I have a degree in computer engineering, and have built my own builds from scratch in the past. But At this point in my life I cannot be bothered with the time/research/etc. involved in making and maintaining a build and so I opt for pre-built. I imagine many people are more experienced than I am and can go "Oh well this point is obvious" but frankly I think the target audience of pre-built computers will have LESS experience than myself and companies should take a bit of time and care into the product.

The Wi-Fi Adapter. This PC comes with an external Wi-Fi antenna you plug into the back. I was planning on plugging into my modem and didn't think much of it at first. I have cats who like to chew on things (like wires and plastic fins) so I left it. After some trial and error connecting BT devices I figured it must be required and many of you are probably saying--BT uses Wi-Fi. Except that the BT still struggles. My XBox controller has to be re-configured every time I play. I just hardwire in, but this seems like a modern must for expensive computers.

Disclaimer: everything has gone well. It's faster than my last PC, its gorgeous, and I can render TWICE as many Minecraft chunks so I'm really not upset at the hardware. I'm more disappointed with Corsairs lack of attention to details. The paper it came with was maybe 6 lines of instructions, a few of which were wrong. Get an accurate setup guide. Come on, man.

I hope that this reaches somebody who can either improve Corsairs technical writing or a perspective buyer to not be as frustrated as I was opening this up.

I ordered an i8100 on August 1st, directly from Corsair's website, based on Just!N Tech's review here:"Corsair Vengeance i8100 Review! - The FASTEST Prebuilt Gaming PC in 2023?"

I searched Reddit also for reviews, before purchasing, but couldn't find any. So I thought I'd write one up for anyone looking.

The cost with California sales tax came to $4,961.24 USD. I received the computer 8 days from order date. Pretty fast. It shipped well and was delivered just fine. Contained in the box was the computer, the antennas for the ASUS Prime Z790-P MB's WiFi. And the power cable. No other parts were in the box (that's coming up). Overall first impression. Nice machine. No bloatware and runs right outta da box. In fact, my 3DMark score was a smidge higher than what Just!N tech reported. But wait...

My unit came with a PNY GeForce 4090. The unit that Just!N Tech reviewed shipped with a Zotac GeForce 4090. This recent YouTube Unboxing Vid of this same machine by KaoMinerva shipped with a Palit "GameRock" GeForce 4090 (yeah, never heard of that brand before). So there doesn't appear to be any consistency on the 4090's they ship in this unit. Perhaps whatever they can find on the cheap?

Luckily, the unit did ship with the ASUS Prime MB that Just!n Tech had in their build. I liked this board for the Intel i9-13900KS that's in this machine and they didn't switch that out.

The Corsair iCue 5000T RBG case this unit comes in is actually pretty decent. It sells for $369 alone and comes with a ton of RGB lighting, if you're into that. It's also huge and heavy. But here's the 1st problem. This case ships with Corsair's iCue Commander Core XT hub to control fans and RGB. While it was installed properly, the Commander system is now outdated. The new Corsair iCue Link Hub with it's daisy chained system of fans and CPU coolers, replaces the rats nest of wires that the old Commander hub system requires. The fact that this machine doesn't ship with these newer iCue Link Fans, CPU cooler and hub, is hard to fathom at this cost. Yes, they're fairly new, but Gamers Nexus talked about these fans back in June of 2023. CORSAIR, YOU MAKE THESE. This case should NOT be shipping with this old tech.

My 2nd big problem with the case happened when I went to install my own 8TB WD HDD in the 3.5 drive bay. There's a metal plate for fan mounting that blocks the bays. See it here in Just!N Tech's review video. To access the HDD drive cage, the Fan plate has to be removed. But wait! The plate is bolted to the case UNDER the plastic cable bar that is used to route all the cabling. So THAT needs to be removed first, with all the cables strapped to it. And some of the cabling was zipped tied to the metal fan plate mount as well. Very mediocre cable management.

After getting through the plate/cable guide to access the HDD bays, problem #3 appeared. Unlike my previous Alienware system, no SATA connections were present to plug in the drive. Yes, the ASUS Prime MB ships with a SATA cable. Yes, the Corsair RM1000x PSU that shipped in this machine comes with all PSU connectors. None were included. Not in the box, not already attached to the PSU. Contacting Corsair support, they sent me a link to Amazon to purchase the official Corsair PSU cable for $9. From Amazon. Really? Yes, after more discussions, about how ridiculous it is they didn't ship all the components, they sent me extra Corsair PSU SATA cables free of charge.

Then 9 days after receiving the machine, problem #4 appeared. the front bottom fan stopped spinning. While the LED's continued to function and were changeable in iCue, the fan wouldn't budge, and iCue couldn't get it to move. The ASUS bios also showed no activity on that fan. Corsair support offered to send a replacement fan. For me to replace. On my own. Yes, I could have. No, I wasn't willing to replace the fan myself on a Pre-Built System that cost $4900+ after it failed well under 30 days.

Since this is already so long, let me just add, their support through email and phone isn't fantastic. While they addressed issues quickly, it took a lot of work on my part to get the answers and solutions. Just getting the return RMA was an issue.

21 days after receiving the i8100, I shipped it back to Corsair at a non-refundable cost of $187 USD. So basically I spent $187 to review and fail the Corsair Vengeance i8100.

TLDR: No. Do not buy.