Functioning and Wrap Up

The PC boots up with an Origin logo but you tin still enter the BIOS to brand any tweaks yous may want. Since the included CPU is of the "K" diverseness it is fully overclockable. Factory overclocks are available from Origin for an additional fee if you don't want to do them yourself.

My Core i7 came overclocked to a stable 4.8 GHz out of the box simply your results may exist different due to binning. The 1080 Ti GPU was as well overclocked to +130MHz on the core and +120MHz on the RAM. This is an impressive feat for a calculator of this form factor.

Since the case is and so open, you tin hear a lot of things that y'all may not exist used to. The Chronos is very quiet at idle only things like difficult drive access sounds and liquid cooling bubbles were still faintly audible. In one case the system gets going in a game, you lot'll desire some headphones to drown out the sound. It's not as bad every bit some small form gene cases, merely it's just about there.

The liquid cooling helps keep some of CPU the noise downwardly, just having the GPU positioned correct next to the side panel cutout can easily overshadow that. Tuning the fans and temperature curves can make information technology manageable though so I wouldn't worry likewise much here.

As expected, performance is outstanding. The overclocked 1080 Ti paired with an overclocked i7 7700K devours games and other resource intensive tasks. Temperatures tin can go a niggling warm just if that becomes an effect for yous, it'southward always easy to just dial back the overclock.

The system performs as expected given the hardware inside. For a more than in depth look at functioning, cheque out our reviews of the GTX 1080 Ti and the i7-7700k.

The included software is fine for the virtually part. Origin includes some standard PC hardware tools similar CPUz, EVGA Precision, and HWMonitor. It was also nice to see a recovery partition and USB drive in the box since you don't get the original Windows installation media. What wasn't nice to see though was other pre-installed games like Processed Crush. A game like that has no identify in a $3000 acme of the line gaming PC. If this is an issue for you though, you can just uninstall it in a few seconds. After speaking with Origin, it turns out Windows can re-install bloatware that was uninstalled by Origin when they were building the PC. No fault hither as it is a Windows issue.

Nosotros make it a betoken to brand sure we uninstall any and all boosted software that comes on the system to make certain there is no "bloatware" on any of our systems, including customer units but we have establish that Windows updates seem to push button that software dorsum onto the organisation as a fashion to promote games from the Windows Store.

Overall this system is very well congenital given the size constraints. Cooling and noise levels continues to be a sore point for gaming-grade SFF PCs. With the addition of a liquid cooled CPU though, the Chronos helps solve a few of these issues.

The just major issue I had as well the faulty LED strip was with the power connector. It appeared as if the wires from the power input to the ability supply were groovy slightly. As long as yous don't yank them around though, this should be fine.

Shopping shortcuts:

  • Origin Chronos on OriginPC.com

The Origin Chronos is a serious gaming animate being in a small footprint. A Chronos PC configured every bit reviewed today should set up you back just over $3,000 on Origin's website, compared to about $2,600 if you source the components yourself. That works out to virtually a fifteen% fee for arrangement integration and verification which in my opinion is totally justified hither.

Pros: Splendid gaming functioning in a tiny class cistron. Well idea out design inside and out. User upgradable components.

Cons: Cooling and racket levels continues to be a sore point for gaming-course SFF PCs. Faulty LED strip on our test unit of measurement.