Specifications and Outside Features

ORIGIN PC sent along an incredible system for review that includes a 4.9 GHz SNB-E and dual GTX 690s.

In recent weeks we have been getting a lot of requests for system reviews, but when ORIGIN PC approached us about testing a super-high-end system with dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690s, we were definitely interested.  When we were told to expect a 4.9 GHz Sandy Bridge-E platform to base those Quad SLI GPUs on, we were sold. 

ORIGIN PC has been around since 2009 when several people started the company after leaving Alienware.  While boutique computer builders are still fairly common in today's market, ORIGIN tries to differentiate with ideas like lifetime (yes, lifetime) phone and forum support for your system, lifetime labor for upgrades and services and 72 hours of burn in testing on each machine. 

The rig we are looking at today falls under the Genesis brand and is the highest end starting point for a custom PC from ORIGIN.  Options for this series include Sandy Bridge-E, Ivy Bridge and even AMD FX processors all with water cooling, multi-GPU configurations and of course, fancy lighting.

Here is a quick overview of the most prominent specs:

  • Corsair 800D chassis
  • Intel Core i7-3930K 6-core Sandy Bridge-E @ 4.9 GHz
  • Intel DX79SR Motherboard
  • Dual NVIDIA GeForce GTX 690 4GB cards (Quad SLI)
  • 16GB DDR3-1866 quad-channel memory
  • 1200 watt Corsair AX1200i Power Supply
  • Dual 120GB Corsair Force GT SSDs in RAID 0
  • 1TB Seagate 7200 RPM SATA 6G HDD
  • Custom ORIGIN Cryogenic liquid cooling setup on CPU

Our estimated cost is…$5,750. 

Some of the more expensive ORIGIN PCs ship in impressive looking and feeling wooden crates as our did and I have to say it certainly gives you a strong first impression.  High quality (and high priced) systems like this definitely need to give the buyer a sense of that quality in the buying process as well as the components and build itself. 

Make sure you have your drill ready when your PC arrives. You won't want to open this with a hand crank screwdriver.

Removing the system and opening it up you'll find a bit of Instapak that ORIGIN uses to attempt to keep the insides of the system in tact during shipping.  Removal is easy and quick.

Our system was built with the Corsair 800D and a windowed side panel to give you a glance at all of the expensive hardware inside.  You can show off your white water cooling tubes, dual graphics cards, 1200 watt power supply and even turn on the lights (we'll show you a bit later). 

This is a chassis we have seen many times before so we won't dive too much into it but you should know that the Corsair 800D remains one of my favorite high end cases on the market.  My personal system at home is build around one before the USB 3.0 internal cabling was added.

On the front of the ORIGIN Genesis is the Blu-ray burner drive, a 40-in-1 memory card reader as well as the reservoir for the water cooled components for the processor.  The window into the 5.25-in bay reservoir will let you monitor the fluid level in case you need to add any of the extra bottle that ORIGIN provides.

The Corsair 800D has four hot swappable drive bays on the front of it and ORIGIN is using them for the 1TB 7200 RPM hard drive included for storage.

On the back of the system we find the external connections on the motherboard that give you some details of the features included like 10 total USB ports, four of which are USB 3.0.  Firewire, dual Gigabit Ethernet connections and analog and digital 8-channel audio support round out the config.

The Corsair AX1200i power supply will have enough power to push all of these components along with our overclocked Sandy Bridge-E processor.  We did recently review the AX1200i so I would encourage you to teach yourself about this impressive PSU. 

Up top the Corsair's triple 120mm area is occupied by three-quarters of your water cooling radiators which creates a bit more noise that we would like.  We'll discuss that once we head inside the system on the following page…

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