Corsair Vengeance i7200 review

The Corsair Vengeance i7200 is one of the best gaming PCs you can buy right now—but might not look it at first glance. Whereas many companies distinguish their desktops by pouring on the flash with ostentatious case designs, splashy paint jobs, and LED overload, Corsair has taken a more laid-back approach with a basic-black esthetic that makes efficient use of targeted splashes of color. As a result, this computer looks like it’s a lot more mature while also being something you won’t mind displaying to the world.

Despite its sedate exterior appearance, the Corsair Vengeance i7200 is nonetheless capable of delivering the kind of performance you want, and where you need it most, whether in entertainment or productivity applications. You don’t get any peripherals with your purchase, but the high-end components inside more than cushion that blow and ensure that you won’t have to worry about upgrading for years to come.

Topping off all this is aggressive pricing, which lets you customize a model for much less than you’d pay for comparable recent machines from other companies. Ours came in at considerably less than $3,000, which makes the Corsair Vengeance i7200 both a real winner and a real value. It gets even better with a Corsair coupon code too.

Corsair Vengeance i7200 review: Price and availability

Our review unit of the Corsair Vengeance i7200 was the lowest-end CS-9050007 model — which still isn’t especially low-end. This $2,799 machine comes equipped with a liquid-cooled 10-core Intel Core i9-10850K processor, an MSI motherboard using the Intel Z490 chipset, 32GB of Corsair’s own Vengeance RGB Pro DDR4-3200 RAM, a 750-watt Corsair RM750 power supply, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card, a 1TB NVMe solid-state drive for installing Windows and other applications, and a 2TB 7,200rpm hard drive for storing the rest of your files.

Upgrading to the $3,999 CS-9050004 model keeps many of the same components, but swaps in a bleeding-edge Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 graphics card and a 1,000-watt Corsair RM1000x power supply. The third and final step up is the $4,899 CS-9050001, which ups the RAM to 64GB and gives you two 2TB NVMe SSDs. You may also make additional adjustments to any of these configurations.

Corsair Vengeance i7200 review: Design

When turned off, the Corsair Vengeance i7200 looks like an old-school gaming desktop. The Corsair 4000D airflow case may be a mid-tower ATX model, but it still projects the appearance of a hulking black monolith (18.3 x 9.1 x 17.4 inches), with a tinted-window side panel providing a (dim) view of the interior.

But press the Power button, and the system dazzles with color from an elaborate RGB lighting setup. The three fans on the front panel (covered by a removable grill with the Vengeance logo at the top) each cycle colors independently. White flashes that look like random lightning hits augment the RGB effects.

Through the side panel, you’ll see the system's top-mounted radiator and three fans. The cooling rig’s water block and the tops of the DIMMs provide additional RGB lighting. This illumination reveals the inside of the case to be fastidiously tidy. The only visible cables and wires are those that connect the water block to the radiator, and the graphics card (through a channel) to the power supply.

There's one other slightly unusual part of the design: the bottom panel, which is elevated slightly more than an inch when the Vengeance i7200 is standing upright. This is an elegant solution to the age-old problem of desktop airflow, which is never as seamless as it should be when the bottom of the case is, for all intents and purposes, flush against your desk or the floor.

Corsair Vengeance i7200 review: Ports and upgradability

Like most gaming desktops, the Corsair Vengeance i7200 provides a decent selection of ports.

On the motherboard itself are six USB ports (two USB 2.0 for the keyboard and mouse, three USB 3.2 Gen. 2 Type-A, and one USB 3.2 Gen. 2 Type-C); HDMI and DisplayPort connectors; a 2.5G Ethernet jack; six HD Audio jacks; and a single PS/2 port. The graphics card also offers two HDMI ports and three DisplayPort connectors. 

A dedicated 802.11ax wireless networking card means you’ll never have to hook up the Vengeance i7200 to an Ethernet cable if you don’t want to, but you will have to connect the two included antennas to maximize your signal. This can be a pain, as there isn’t a ton of room for them, especially when the monitor cable is plugged in. Two vertically mounted expansion slots for additional SSDs are located to the right of the horizontal ones.

Front-panel ports (located on the top front of the desktop) are a bit skimpy, but cover the basics. Besides the Power button, there are two USB 3.2 Gen. 1 ports (one Type-A, one Type-C), a headset jack and a Reset button.

Whereas some companies include various peripherals or other “fun” stuff with their gaming desktops, our Vengeance i7200 came completely clean — no keyboard, mouse, mouse pad or anything else. This shouldn’t be a deal-breaker, as most PC gamers are going to have a set (or three) of their preferred peripherals around already. But if you don’t, know beforehand that you’ll need to provide your own gear.

Corsair Vengeance i7200 review: Gaming performance

With such top-flight components, including the RTX 3080 video card, the Corsair Vengeance i7200 is primed for 4K gaming. It turned out excellent results in all of our 4K gaming tests, even when it didn’t quite surpass the threshold of 60 frames per second (fps) that we use to register fully smooth performance.

Even in those cases, though, the system often got darn close. It averaged 55 frames per second in Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, 56 fps in Grand Theft Auto V and 59 fps in Shadow of the Tomb Raider — similar to what we saw from the most recent iteration of the Alienware Aurora R11. The Corsair didn’t fare quite as well in our most demanding gaming test: Red Dead Redemption 2. For this game, we lower the graphical settings to keep lesser PCs from crumpling like a sheet of aluminum foil. But even there, the Vengeance i7200's 45 fps average wasn’t too shabby (anything above 30 fps isn’t going to look bad).

The only game where the Vengeance i7200 couldn’t get upwards of 100 fps at 1080p was Assassin’s Creed Valhalla—but its 98 fps result isn’t that far off.

Though some gaming PCs can be unbearably loud under heavy load, the Vengeance i7200 does not get distracting at all, even when pushing maximum pixels at 4K. This isn’t to say you can’t hear it, but it registers more as dull white noise than as eardrum-bursting fan blasts.

Corsair Vengeance i7200 review: Overall performance

Non-gaming performance was likewise no issue for the Corsair Vengeance i7200. That makes sense, with a processor like the Intel Core i9-10850K: 10 cores, 20 threads, and a base 3.6GHz clock speed that can boost up to as much as 5.2GHz. Combine that with all that RAM, and you can do almost anything with this system. Its multicore Geekbench 5.3 score of 11,047 was terrific — functionally identical to the Aurora R11. 

The Vengeance i7200 finished our Handbrake video encoding test just a little faster than the Aurora R11(5:13 versus 5:21). Corsair's machine also scored just slightly better on the HDXPRT 4 test, which measures performance in music, photo, and video editing: 124 versus 119 .

One area where the Alienware excelled was our 25GB file copy test. We clocked the Aurora R11's speed at 1,191.5MBps, as opposed to the Corsair’s 824.4MBps. The difference won’t be significant in everyday use, however.

In short, you shouldn’t have trouble getting anything done on the Vengeance i7200. If you work as seriously as you game, and rely on highly threaded applications, the creator-oriented Corsair One Pro i200 uses a 14-core, 28-thread Intel Core i9-10940X processor and has twice the RAM. The One Pro i200 had a moderate advantage in the latest Geekbench test (12,691 for multicore performance), but that PC's game performance dipped, thanks to its last-generation Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti video card. For everyday gaming, the Vengeance i7200 is the better choice.

Corsair Vengeance i7200 review: Software

Like most gaming PCs, the Vengeance i7200 is light on software — Corsair wants as many of your system resources as possible going toward games. The chief exception is the iCUE application, through which you can configure the lighting and fan settings, selecting from a variety of predesigned profiles or cobbling together your own.

Corsair Vengeance i7200 review: Verdict

With a starting price of $2,799, the Corsair Vengeance i7200 isn’t necessarily affordable for most people. And unless you play (or want to play) a lot of games at 4K, you may not get your money’s worth. Gaming hardware in general, and video cards in particular, have come a long way over the last several years, so you could build your own gaming PC for a lower price and still have a great time with almost every major title.

But by the hyperinflated standards of the gaming PC market, even the entry-level configuration of the Corsair Vengeance i7200 is a steal, and you may find its fit and finish, both inside and out, well worth paying for. Considering that this PC is a top performer in every area, it deserves your attention if you want more game for less money.

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