Origin Chronos Review: The Ultimate LAN Box?
by Dustin Sklavos on July 27, 2012 3:01 AM ESTApplication and Futuremark Performance
At a very substantial 4.6GHz (roughly as fast as Ivy Bridge can really get without serious cooling and certainly a touch beyond what our own Ian Cutress suggests is common), the Intel Core i5-3570K in our review unit threatens to offer the fastest single-threaded and lightly-threaded performance of all the systems we've tested. On the flipside, it's using a lot of voltage to get there (1.4V); I'm a bit antsy about this for obvious reasons, but I'll get into that in more detail later on.
The robust overclock and fast Samsung SSD give the Chronos pretty solid footing. iBuyPower's Ivy Bridge-based Erebus GT is really the one to beat, with its 4.4GHz i7-3770K and SLI'ed GeForce GTX 680s. In terms of raw clock speed, the Erebus has a slight disadvantage, but boasts substantially better threaded and GPU performance elsewhere.
The massive 4.6GHz overclock on the i5-3570K gives it fantastic performance in single-threaded tasks, but once software that can leverage the superior threading power of the hexa-core and/or hyper-threading enabled processors comes into play, the 3570K loses some steam. That's fine, though; most games aren't going to see any advantage from more than four physical/logical cores, making the robust single-threaded performance more relevant.
The fast CPU and respectable GeForce GTX 670 give Origin's system a strong showing in 3DMark. You really need to go multi-GPU to make a substantial break away from the GTX 670, especially after even a minor overclock is applied. It's essentially competitive with AMD's Radeon HD 7970 and nips at the heels of NVIDIA's own flagship GTX 680.
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dman3k - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
Can someone tell me what psu they are using in here?I got a Silverstone SFF PSU like Anandtech recommended, and now I have to buy molex to SATA power adaptors because it does not have enough SATA power plugs and that the cable is too short if you have an ODD and three HDD.
HCAIT - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
They say it in the specs on the first page. 550W Corsair TX550MHisDivineOrder - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
Also shows you what PSU in the picture of the layout.zero2dash - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
Looks very clean and nicely built.headbox - Saturday, July 28, 2012 - link
you mean "Looks like an Apple PowerMac G3 from 13 years ago"sulu1977 - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
I'd prefer to have most of the USB 3.0 and eSATA ports in the front, not the back or the side. Messing around the back of the case is usually a pain in the donkey.xweb - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
The one thing I look for in these reviews that is missing is sound measurements. Does this thing sound like a blow dryer under load?cknobman - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
I would buy this thing in a heartbeat!!!It really does look like one of the most well designed, thought out, and executed LAN builds I have ever seen.
No signs of cost cutting anywhere and IF you can really get that configuration for $1499 it really is sold at a reasonable price.
WOW
ImSpartacus - Friday, July 27, 2012 - link
Grabbing everything from Newegg (except the disk drive, OS & OOS case) comes to $1248 (using coupons). Toss in $80 for the case and about $30 for the LG GT60N disk drive. and we're past $1350. Then add in a $40 Windows 8 (or retroactive 7) license with the double upgrade method and we're at $1400.So Origin gets about $100 to build, overclock and warranty this machine. If I had the money, this would be a tempting purchase.
graf1k - Saturday, July 28, 2012 - link
Well, they are going to get a better price on all those parts than you or I would buying @ retail from a company like Newegg, but still it's a competitive price either way.