Specifications
Origin PC
Chronos
The Origin Chronos was an early bet on
which system would be the fastest here, as
we’ve seen what other vendors can do in
Silverstone’s fabulous FT03 case.
Despite it having the same volume as
the AVADirect and iBuypower machines,
the FT03 occupies a smaller footprint than
all others here, including the CyberPower
LAN Party Evo, yet it accommodates an
incredible amount of hardware.
Yeah, we know, it’s tall. But for folks
who want to stuff their machine under a
desk, or even keep it atop a desk, system
height is rarely a problem. We can’t re-
ally see the FT03’s height being an issue
unless you have to store your rig in a foot
locker or a cubby.
Inside the FT03 is a Core i7-2600K
overclocked to 4.7GHz, a pair of GeForce
GTX 590 cards, and an Asus P8P67-M Pro
board. To keep costs low, Origin runs a pair
of 64GB Crucial C300 drives (what no M4
available?) and keeps the system RAM to
8GB of DDR3/1600.
The Origin PC’s performance is quite
competitive. It walked past the others in
our ProShow test, but it just couldn’t wrest
the crown from the wicked-fast AVADirect
machine in Sony Vegas and MainConcept
Reference.
So it’s fast and it’s beautiful, there’s
gotta be a catch, right? Unfortunately, yes.
Like the AVADirect, the Origin’s fans are
tweaked to increase as the system heats
up. With Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 590 cards
producing the heat of a phaser on overload
(even with the case drilled out to add ven-
tilation), the Origin PC’s case fans spool up
to unbearable levels. And due to the pitch
of the fans, you get a din that’s annoying as
hell during gaming. It’s as bad, if not worse,
BENCHMARKS
VEGAS PRO 9 (SEC)
LIGHTROOM 2.6 (SEC)
PROSHOW 4 (SEC)
REFERENCE 1.6 (SEC)
STALKER: CoP (FPS)
FAR CRY 2 (FPS)
Our current desktop test bed consists of a quad-core 2.66GHz Core i7-920 overclocked to 3.5GHz, 6GB of Corsair DDR3/1333 overclocked
to 1,750MHz, on a Gigabyte X58 motherboard. We are running an ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card, a 160GB Intel X25-M SSD, and 64-bit
Windows 7 Ultimate.
0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100%
3,049
356
1,112
2,113
42.0
114.4
2.256
261
778
1,537
124.6 (197%)
203.8
ZERO
POINT
SPECIFICATIONS
PROCESSOR
Intel 3.4GHz Core i7-2600K
(overclocked to 4.7GHz)
MOBO
Asus P8P67-M Pro (Intel P67
chipset)
RAM
8GB DDR3/1600
VIDEOCARD
Two GeForce GTX 590 cards
in SLI
SOUNDCARD
Onboard
STORAGE
Two 64GB Crucial C300 SSDs
in RAID 0, 1TB Western Digital
7,200rpm HDD
OPTICAL
Optiarc Blu-ray burner
CASE/PSU
Silverstone FT03 / Silverstone
1,200 watt
The open access of the FT03
case makes wrenching inside
the system a joy compared to
the other rigs here.
Think of the Origin PC Chronos as the
Manute Bol of PCs. It’s tall, but really
doesn’t take up that much room.
7
VERDICT
than the AVADirect’s dual Radeon HD
6990s under gaming loads. To be fair, if
the Origin’s acoustics could have been
better managed, it likely stood a chance
of winning this affair—the same goes for
the AVADirect. But as it is, they are both
too loud.
And that’s just a shame. Because,
like the AVADirect, Origin’s is a majorly
fast system that costs even less than the
Falcon Northwest FragBox. But it’s just
too damn noisy for us to recommend it.
Origin PC Chronos
$3,800, www.originpc.com
9.25”
19.25”
11”
JUL 2011MAXIMUMPC
38
maximumpc.com
small form factors