Origin PC Chronos review

In the past few years, high-end gaming PCs have gained a lot of popularity as a way to relax and play video games with more power than a console can usually offer. The Origin PC Chronos is one of these high-end gaming systems. It has enough power to run even the sharpest games on the market, but it would be unfair to say that’s all it can do for you.

The Origin PC Chronos can fit a lot of impressively large hardware into a fairly small space. The PC’s guts are built into a case that is about half the size of a full tower, but Origin doesn’t call it a Mini-ATX tower. It has a good-looking design and lets users see how the insides work through a tempered-glass side.

Corsair’s iCue software can be used to control the RGB lights. Also, the whole building is whisper quiet, so there won’t be any annoying hums or sounds in the background.

Origin PC Chronos review: Design and features

The Origin PC Chronos is 15.5 by 7 by 11 inches and weighs about 17.8 pounds, but it looks much bigger than it is. If you want a quiet experience, the small size and whisper-quiet performance (thanks to closed-loop coolers and a lot of fans) make this a good choice. If you want a little more flash, you can use the optional Corsair iCue lighting to bathe the chassis in any color you like.

Even though desktops are small enough to fit on a desk, we like to leave them on the floor so we can pretend that the tangled mess of cables is someone else’s problem. It almost disappears there because of all the fans and the closed-loop CPU cooler, which keep the temperature down without making it louder.

Side panels made of mesh came with the unit we looked at. As someone who worries about breaking tempered glass, we like this option, which has a 240mm radiator on the side to improve airflow. The tempered glass option only costs a few dollars more and gives you a better view of the insides and the RGB light show. You can get this gaming CPU from its official website.

Ports and upgradeability

On the back of the Chronos, there are a total of 4 USB Type A ports (3 USB 3.2 Gen 2, 1 USB 2), a USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 port, a USB-C audio port, an HDMI cable port, a DisplayPort, and an ethernet jack, all provided by the motherboard. There is one HDMI port and three DisplayPorts on the GeForce GTX 3070 Ti.

On the front, there is a 3.5mm audio jack and one USB-C 3.1 port and one USB 3.0 port. The Chronos works best on a desk, and it’s nice to have a variety of ports that are easy to reach. The Chronos can be opened without tools because the sidewalls are held to the chassis by four thumbscrews.

Still, you’ll need a screwdriver to get past the 240mm radiator and get to the insides of the machine. The GPU takes up most of the free space inside the case. There isn’t a lot of room to move around, but it should be enough for maintenance or easier upgrades.

Origin PC Chronos review: Gaming performance

The gaming computer is very good at playing games. But it’s still impressive that such a small system has so few flaws. We didn’t find any games that really pushed the system. Metro Exodus was able to keep 100fps on Ultra at 1080p and well over 60fps in 4k, according to our tests. And it felt like that. Everything always felt like that.

The Chronos is a very powerful computer. At the highest settings, the Chronos could handle high frame rates in every game we played, even though my review unit only had 16GB of RAM, we never felt it slow down my gaming, even when we have a lot of apps open in the background. Even though these were more like Chrome or Spotify than Photoshop, we were still very impressed by them.

When we played Metro Exodus while we have a lot of other apps open, the computer quickly started to hum, but it never got loud. Even when we put it through the ringer, it only made as much noise as a small fan in the corner of my room. Also, neither the air nor the aluminum mesh top ever got too hot to touch.

At one point, we ran the Metro Exodus benchmark ten times in a row with several game launchers open, several Chrome windows open, Steam open, and Spotify blasting music. On the tenth test, the average frame rate was still 96 fps, and the computer was still only getting slightly warmer.

Origin PC Chronos review: Graphic Tests

Like all Origin PC systems, you can pay extra for a custom paint or etching job to make it look more interesting. In this case, that’s on top of the $3,225 we paid for our test configuration, which had a 10-core Intel Core i9-10900K processor, an EVGA XC3 GeForce RTX 3080 graphics card, 1.5GB SSD, and 16GB of 3.2GHz DDR4 memory.

If you choose aluminum mesh side panels instead of the tempered glass we got, you can get a bigger CPU cooler and custom overclocking. The Chronos can be set up for as little as $1,449, which is about £1,135 or AU$2,060.

Origin PC Chronos review: Price

The Chronos is expensive for its base model, which costs $1,540. It has a six-core processor (either an Intel Core i5-10400F or an AMD Ryzen 5 3600X), a GeForce GTX 1660 Super, 16GB of memory, and 250GB of solid-state storage, all of which can be found in Lenovo’s Legion Tower 5i for around $1,200 as we type this.

The Lenovo is much bigger than the Chronos, so it’s not a perfect comparison. Some of the Chronos’s value comes from the fact that it’s small. But it looks better when it’s set up with things that aren’t in budget towers. At 11 by 7 by 15.5 inches, the Chronos is indeed small (HWD). Mainstream companies like Alienware and Lenovo don’t usually make gaming PCs this small, but smaller companies like Maingear Turbo do.

Origin PC Chronos review: Final words

Building your own PC is a sacred act for many PC fans. But there are good reasons to buy a pre-built computer, such as the high quality of the build and the ability to get high-end parts like the RTX 3080. If you’re willing to spend, the Origin Chronos gives you the best of the best. Best of all, it does all of this in a case that looks good in most places. If you’re willing to sacrifice FPS, the Origin Chronos shows that 4K gaming is here, and in a size that would make towers jealous.