Origin PC Chronos review: Fast things come in small, loud packages - conleyknowded

At a Glance

Skillful's Evaluation

Pros

• As small every bit a game console
• Wickedly fast

Cons

• CPU and GPU fans can turn obtrusively loud
• Expensive as hell

Our Verdict

With its unconcealed fast 8-core crisp and a beefy Titan X graphics batting order, the Pedigree PC Chronos is easy to like. Its sole real drawbacks are winnow haphazardness and price, merely looming large in the background are rumors roughly new product launches in the near prox. If those happen, this latest configuration will become disused in a very short time.

If you still think a gaming fishing rig is a PC that's so big, you have to throw a party to get under one's skin facilitate lifting information technology out of the loge, we've got news: Performance PCs don't have to be gigantic any longer.

Goose egg illustrates that fact more than Origin PC's redesigned Chronos micro-tower, which packs progressive hardware into a machine not much bigger than subterminal-propagation gaming consoles. Sure, you'll croak at the Price—$4,865 as organized—but the carrying out you get from such a compact machine is impressive.

Gordon Mah Ung

The Chronos isn't a good deal big than the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3.

Custom suit

Most dress shop vendors habit ready-to-wear designs or slenderly modified cases, but for this generation, Source designed the Chronos from scratch and had it reinforced to spec.

I've seen small micro-towers, but not galore that are as friendly to wrench on. You'Re just a couple of screws away from accessing the RAM and Mainframe cooler, and even removing the GPU. Overall accessibility is quite operative for a PC this small.

Gordon Mah Ung

Despite its size, working deep down the Chronos isn't arsenic stinky as with other designs. Storage is kept behind the GPU, which means it may get a little warm.

A lot of micro-towers are motivated to be used vertically, merely Origin gives you a choice. Need it horizontal? Just relocate the magnetized feet and put up IT flat tire. The prototype case we saw at CES allowed you to circumvolve the logo too, but our psychometric test unit's logo wouldn't agitate.

Gordon Mah Ung

They're just magnets, but the removable feet work relatively advisable and can be stirred depending on the orientation course of the case.

What's inside

Powering the Chronos are an 8-core Core i7-5960X and 16GB of 2666MHz DDR4 RAM in an Asrock motherboard. The RAM is in duple-communication channel mode, which is the only option in a board this small. That whitethorn scare some people, but my own testing indicates the performance hit is minimal in most tasks.

Gaming chores are left to Nvidia's top-dog Titan X artwork carte, which may level-headed like-minded an odd choice given the option of Nvidia's GTX 980 Ti. The 980 Ti is almost arsenic instant and much cheaper, but for some reason, PC vendors consume taken the VR furore as an opportunity to push the Titan X instead.

Origin has overclocked some the CPU and GPU in the Chronos. The 5960X is liquid-cooled, and it's been boosted to a range of 3.7GHz to 4.4GHz (its stock range is 3.0GHz to 3.5GHz). The EVGA GPU is cool with a stock ice chest, but motionless gets a knock of 195MHz to the GPU sum and RAM. This should all add capable a stiff operation gain, and for the almost part, that's honorable.

Gordon Mah Ung

When turned on, the Titan X gets a red LED discussion. Too bad that's AMD's color amirite?

For storage, the Chronos comes with a 512GB Samsung M.2 850 Evo NVMe SSD and 5TB Western Extremity Red hard hard drive. The PCIe-based NVME drive is no slump, with Crystal Disk Mark 4.0.3 measure sequential read speeds in the 2.5GBps range and sequent indite speeds in the 600MBps range.

You also get a slender one-armed bandit-fed Blu-ray burner combo drive, and a 600-James Watt PSU provides plenty of juice for all this hardware.

Encoding Performance

Because you shouldn't buy an 8-core PC and then leave those cores unused, our primary test was encoding a 1080p MKV file using Handbrake 0.9.9. This fashionable free encoder loves CPU cores—the results speak for themselves when you compare the Chronos with the quad-core processors in our nothing-point background organisation and Speed Micro's Skylake-founded Z40. The Haswell-E systems eat the quadriceps-cores alive, but I'm a little let down past the scores from the Chronos when stacked up against the CyberPower 3 Xtreme. The Trinity Xtreme also uses a Haswell-E chip, but IT has 6 cores alternatively of 8.

The 8-core and 6-core blow away the quad-core chips, simply the small gap in performance between the Troika Xtreme and Chronos is disappointing.

3DMark Performance

Most people buying the Chronos leave have the intention of playing games, and so we tested this bittie tower's gambling performance using the synthetic but healed-respected 3DMark benchmark. As due, the GeForce GTX 980 and the GeForce GTX 970 get left in the detritus. The overclocked GeForce Heavyweight X outpaces the stock-clocked card in the CyberPower Trinity Xtreme, too.

Titan X is indeed quicker than GeForce GTX 980.

Tomb Raider Performance

We also gave a real game a go, and ranTomb Raider at 2560×1600 resolution with the Ultimate planned to check how the Chronos stacks up. Tomb Plunderer is in reality a bit many sensitive to CPU clock speeds, so the quicker chip in the Chronos outpaces the Trinity Xtreme by a healthy clip.

4K gaming performance

To determine how the mateless Titan X handles a more modern game, I ran Eye-earth: Shadow of Mordor at 4K Ultra HD resolution and solidifying to Ultra with the 4K texture pack. I besides threw in the results from a Falcon Northwest machine with three Titan X card game and a Maingear PC with iv Titan X cards exclusive, to give you an idea of how the micro-tower Chronos compares to beefier systems,

You can catch the classic dilemma with GPU scaling illustrated here, A you preceptor't triple (nor quadruple) performance in Middle-earthly concern. Tranquillise, you can clearly see that both the three-circuit board and Little Jo-card systems are quicker.

I as wel ran the machine at 4K resolution in Rise of the Tomb Raider, The Variance, and Rainbow 6 Siege victimization Precise High forRise and Ultra for the last mentioned two games. Rise of the Grave Looter and The Division had frame rates in the low to mid-40s, while Rainbow Sestet was in the 60s.

The upshot is the Chronos has sufficiency chutzpah for some games at 4K, only others will require turning downbound settings to hit the magical 60fps mark. That's not bad for a single-GPU machine as microscopic as an Xbox 360.

Micro-towers can do everything a full tower can do—except run multiple video cards.

IT's blasting

If there's one thing you should take away from the performance numbers you've seen, it's that the Chronos is a hurrying machine. It crushes quad-sum machines in the Processor-heavy tasks such as television encryption, and its overclocked GeForce GTX Titan X also outpaces otherwise single-Titan X machines we've seen.

The problem is that performance own't free. When you encumbrance up the Chronos with a compute- or graphically intense task, the fans quetch in—enthusiastically. The noise isn't server-fan shrill, but information technology's observably loud. You won't want it along along your desk without a headset along and the volume cranked.

Conclusion

There are large reasons than fan noise to give gamers pause about the Chronos: I f the rumors, leaked pictures, and parts on eBay are right, we'll Be seeing fresh hardware from Intel, Nvidia and AMD within months. IT power be wiser to postponemen and see what comes down the pipeline, especially since those new parts should make just fine in the Chronos' existing design.

Still, I the like what I see. The Chronos is fast and compact, and information technology features a good deal of clever touches like the magnetic feet and serviceable interior. Yeah, its toll is knotty to swallow at nearly $5,000—hellhole, the paint job adds nearly $500 to the damage tag, and with a $1,000 CPU and a $1,000 GPU, those extras all tall quickly. The pleasing news is that at least you get the performance you're paying for.

With a SteamVR Performance score of 11, the Chronos and its Titan X will be ready for VR gaming from Clarence Day one.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/414634/origin-pc-chronos-review-fast-things-come-in-small-loud-packages.html

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