Original Link: https://www.anandtech.com/show/4251/origins-genesis-flagship-bling



Introducing the Origin Genesis

Now that we've been getting a fairly steady influx of desktop machines from boutiques, Origin PC is stepping into the ring by sending us their go-to flagship model, the Genesis. Origin is a boutique founded by former Alienware executives, and is relatively young compared to some of the other companies we've reviewed towers from. The Genesis is almost more of a brand than a flagship, but Origin is opting to put one of their best feet forward by sending us a configuration they're sure will do them proud against the competition. 

After our pit stop with the iBuyPower LAN Warrior II, we're now back firmly in the realm of boutique desktop gaming towers. I should've known better when Kevin Wasielewski, the CEO, mentioned in his e-mail for me to contact him when the tower arrived with my thoughts on the packaging. Please try to ignore the mess, questionable taste in film, and mountain of additional hardware in the background needing my time and attention and get a load of this:

As I mentioned in the last review, I'm not a large man by any stretch of the imagination. So when the delivery man arrived in the morning and knocked on my door and asked me to help him bring a wooden crate up, I was understandably surprised. For scale, that's an Antec Mini P180 on the floor to the left of this 86 pound monstrosity. And what's inside?

As the proud owner of a Corsair Graphite 600T (the same case this Origin Genesis was built in), I can tell you that the packaging was decidedly American and absolute overkill, and I would've been more amused by it had I both the space and upper body strength to contend with it constructively.

Origin Genesis Specifications
Chassis Corsair Graphite 600T with Side Window
Processor Intel Core i7-2600K @ 4.5GHz (45x100 BCLK)
(spec: 4x3.4GHz, 32nm, 8MB L3, 95W)
Motherboard ASUS P8P67 Pro Motherboard with P67 chipset
Memory 2x4GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600 @ 1600MHz (expandable to 16GB)
Graphics 2x EVGA NVIDIA GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB GDDR5 in SLI
(384 CUDA Cores, 850MHz Core, 1701MHz Shaders, 4.1GHz RAM, 256-bit memory bus)
Hard Drive(s) Intel 510 128GB SATA 6Gbps SSD
Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB 7200-RPM SATA 6Gbps HDD
Optical Drive(s) Pioneer 12x BD-RE Drive
Networking Intel 82579V Gigabit Ethernet
Bluetooth 2.1+EDR
Audio Realtek ALC892 HD Audio
Speaker, mic, line-in, and surround jacks for 7.1 sound
Digital and optical out
Front Side Optical drive
Card reader with USB 2.0
Top Headphone and mic jacks
4x USB 2.0
USB 3.0
6-pin FireWire
Fan controller
Back Side 2x PS/2
Optical and digital out
2x eSATA
6x USB 2.0
Bluetooth
6-pin FireWire
2x USB 3.0
Ethernet
Speaker, mic, line-in, and surround jacks for 7.1 sound
Operating System Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
Dimensions 10.4" x 23.3" x 20" (WxDxH)
Weight 28 lbs (case only)
Extras Silverstone 750W Power Supply
12-in-1 Card Reader
Asetek 570LC Liquid Cooling
SATA Hot-swap bay
Internal LED lighting
Warranty 1-year limited warranty and lifetime phone support
Pricing Starts at $1,337
Review system on website at $2,549

Now that Intel has begun shipping fixed P67/H67 chipsets in earnest, Sandy Bridge is all over the place in boutique builds, and Origin's Genesis is no different. It sports an Intel Core i7-2600K, the weapon of choice for pretty much everyone these days, with a healthy overclock of 4.5GHz. Origin advertises being able to push this chip over 5GHz and given what we know of i7-2600K overclocking that doesn't seem entirely unreasonable, though you'll pay for the privilege. They keep the processor cool with an Asetek 570LC 120mm watercooling kit.

The other major player in the Genesis is the pair of EVGA GeForce GTX 560 Ti cards running in SLI. These cards both feature a mild overclock to 850MHz on the core, 1.7GHz on the 384 shaders, and 4.1GHz on the GDDR5 attached to a 256-bit memory bus. A pair of 1GB GTX 460's in SLI was (and to an extent still is) a price/performance king, and the two 560's hopefully should build on that. 

Origin's remaining component choices are solid and top shelf: a shiny new Intel 510 128GB SSD is used as a system drive while the boutique favorite Western Digital Caviar Black 1TB SATA 6Gbps hard disk handles storage duties. It's also nice to see a full 8GB of DDR3-1600 from a reputable brand, a blu-ray burner, and the SATA hotswap cage is a welcome nice touch.

Finally, everything is housed in Corsair's Graphite 600T, a case we've had the privilege of reviewing in the past, and powered by a respectable Silverstone 750-watt power supply. The 600T is no stranger to water cooling, but we'll see that not everything here is quite as good as it could be. Origin is also in a privileged position with Corsair and as a result are among the first to get their hands on the new windowed side panel which they make use of by illuminating the internals with strips of white LED lights.

What you'll want to notice are two components that aren't immediately available on the configuration page of Origin's site: the Corsair Graphite 600T and the SATA hot-swap bay. Origin will build systems by request in other enclosures, and the hot-swap bay becomes an option they can add alongside using the 600T.



Application and Futuremark Performance

We've had the opportunity to take an overclocked Intel Core i7-2600K for a spin before, but Origin's 4.5GHz overclock is the highest we've seen from a boutique system thus far. The Intel 510 series SSD is also very fast and should placate PCMark, so let's see how the Genesis stacks up.

Much to the surprise of no one, the Origin Genesis hangs out at the top of every chart. It boasts the highest overclock on Sandy Bridge (already a performance-per-clock demon) and has among the fastest SSDs on the market along with one of the fastest graphics solutions we've ever tested. The key word, really, is "fast."

Amusingly, the only 3DMark not tied up in being as heavily CPU-bound is 3DMark03. All of the other tests show the SLI'd GeForce GTX 560 Ti's powering the Origin Genesis beating up on faster graphics solutions. We've been questioning the value of the 3DMark suite for some time, and while it makes for easier comparisons in notebooks, desktop machines are so incredibly fast now that these results are much less useful. What are you supposed to do when an ostensibly independent benchmark is so easily skewed by a single component it's not even expressly designed to test, as is the case when the PCMark scores inflate on account of an SSD or 3DMark gets hung up on processor power?



Gaming Performance

Of course, while the Origin Genesis is attractive and fun to run tests on, its true stated purpose is gaming and on that front it's not unreasonable to expect it should put up a good fight. What will be of particular interest is seeing how well the SLI'd GTX 560 Ti's compete with NVIDIA's new flagship, the dual-GPU GeForce GTX 590.

In games that are principally shader-limited, the Genesis falls in about where you'd expect it to in our "high" preset testing. When we move to the "ultra" presets, the relative strengths and weaknesses of its graphics solution should become more readily apparent.

As you can see, we're still fairly CPU-bound. These kinds of gaming solutions really aren't appropriate for gamers using a 1080p screen. A single Radeon HD 5870 (or 6870) or GeForce GTX 560 Ti (or 570 or 580) is really ample for anyone running up to 1920x1200, as I can attest in personal experience. So since these solutions are just too much for running in 1080p, let's see how they fare in ultra high resolution surround settings.

It's hard not to find these results frankly academic. While the GTX 590 always holds a decent lead (and stands to increase that lead with the application of anti-aliasing in some cases), it's awfully hard to argue the 590 as being $250+ better than a pair of GTX 560 Ti's. The oddball in the bunch is the STALKER result, which gets freakishly inflated during the "Night" portion of the benchmark. Other results remain fairly in line with the GTX 590's performance. You'll want to check my review of the iBuyPower LAN Warrior II to read about that along with just how fraught with difficulty (and believe me, it's extremely so) getting NVIDIA Surround to run properly can be.



Build, Noise, Heat, and Power Consumption

Before anything else, it's really just nice to see a boutique builder opt for a quality case. It's true that I may harp on cases too much, but the enclosure can play a big part of the overall experience and it's the first thing you see when you get a new tower. None of the cases Origin offers their towers in are chintzy, and their close relationship with Corsair means access to nice cases like the Obsidian series or in the case of this build, the Graphite 600T.

The component choices across the board are strong and I can't really split hairs in those respects, but it looks like the Intel Core i7-2600K in this machine may have drawn the short straw. Even with the Asetek liquid cooler running full bore (and oh how it runs full bore), you'll see temperatures are really quite high compared to other machines. At first it looked like my old nemesis, the Viscount von Lazyoverclocking, was rearing his ugly head, but a quick trip into UEFI revealed a fairly tuned overclock, complete with offset voltage. If anything it just looks like this particular chip needs a healthy amount of voltage pumped into it to hit high speeds; it idles at a higher voltage than my desktop i7-930 does. Under those circumstances I'm not liable to ding Origin for this.

On the other hand, what I will ding them for is just how damn loud this tower is. The Graphite 600T's fan controller isn't the greatest in the world, but everything else in the case completely overpowers the noise of the two 200mm fans at high speed. Honestly, the culprit seems to be the Asetek 570LC liquid cooler, which draws all kinds of attention to itself and even seems to smother the coolers on the well-spaced GeForce GTX 560 Ti's. Most damningly, you'll see it doesn't have a whole lot to show for itself either.

Those peak temperatures on the CPU aren't horrible, but they're not big winners either, especially not for a Sandy Bridge processor. The voltage this i7-2600K requires to hit 4.5GHz doesn't really make up for the mediocre cooling performance of the Asetek cooler or the overpowering fan noise. And with all that voltage...

Yeowch. I'm still inclined to chalk this up to a bad chip. The idle power consumption is really out of character (although the two GTX 560 Ti's don't help), and under load it's downright brutal. iBuyPower's system may have a lower overclock ("just" 4GHz), but that seems to help it keep power consumption down. CyberPower's system has a 4.4GHz overclock and it still manages to keep idle power low by requiring 0.7V less to hit its overclock than the Origin Genesis does. 



Conclusion: Good Value, Mixed Results

One thing that's important to keep in mind is that for what's fundamentally a boutique desktop gaming machine, the Origin Genesis (at least in our review configuration) delivers. The performance is there to do what you need to and then some, and the SLI GeForce GTX 560 Ti proves to be the right call for getting a good balance of price and performance.

That's really the tack I want to take with the Genesis, too: the price is right. Our configuration is pretty beefy and uses a lot of the latest and greatest, but I don't feel like the pricetag is particularly onerous. Origin will overclock the i7-2600K to these speeds basically for free, and none of their upgrade prices are particularly outlandish. Paying north of $2,500 for a machine feels steep, but everything in this build is quality. Putting together a similar configuration on NewEgg runs roughly $2,200 (including the Windows 7 license), so Origin's markup on the Genesis feels reasonable for what you get.

Well, everything except the processor in our review unit and the cooler, apparently. The overclock was properly tuned to use an offset voltage, but there seemed to be no fan control on the cooler, which just ran like a maniac and made reviewing the Genesis less than enjoyable. The push-pull fan configuration just meant two fans making a racket. And then the voltage the processor needed resulted in high power consumption and thermals. We can't really ding Origin for that since overclocking is a crapshoot to begin with and even their techs told us the processor was a little more power hungry than the norm, but we can ding them for the mediocre cooler.

As a whole, though, the Genesis is easy enough to recommend given the quality case and otherwise optimal components Origin chooses to use in the build. The bling of the LEDs isn't going to be for everybody (remotes are included to change the colors!) but the Graphite 600T's more austere appearance makes up for the gaudiness to an extent and prevents the machine from looking full-blown spinning-rims crazy. Of course, you can choose another case for your build, too, and Origin's selection doesn't have a weak link among them.

But when you order, be sure to have a power screwdriver and someone with good upper body strength on hand to help you open that wooden crate.

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