Origin’s Chronos V3 (begins at $1,730; $3,893 as examined) is a small-form-factor desktop that one way or the other finds room for a similar caliber of parts you’d discover in a cumbersome mid-tower gaming rig—within the case of our evaluate unit, an Intel Core i9-14900K “Raptor Lake Refresh” processor with huge 360mm liquid cooler and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 GPU that mix for formidable efficiency. The Chronos additionally helps six storage drives and is not missing in connectivity. The Miami, Florida boutique’s newest creation handily earns an Editors’ Selection award for compact gaming desktops, standing alongside the elite Falcon Northwest Tiki.
Design: Made With Corsair DNA
Ginormous graphics playing cards and higher-wattage CPUs have made small-form-factor gaming desktops a uncommon breed. The Falcon Northwest FragBox and Tiki are sensible decisions with stellar warranties; they have an inclination to run round $5,000 geared up like our Chronos V3. The Asus ROG G22CH is smaller nonetheless, although it tops out with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4070. In any other case, the sphere is restricted, and plenty of former mainstays within the class have departed.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)Not the Chronos, although. We have reviewed Origin’s compact a number of occasions prior to now decade, and it is kicking stronger than ever. The V3 mannequin radically switches issues up through the use of a skyscraper-shaped Corsair 2000D case (18 by 7.9 by 10.7 inches), which is not as petite because the earlier Chronos however continues to be solely about two-thirds the quantity of a typical mid-tower.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)Perforated aspect panels point out this tower is all about efficiency. As we famous in our evaluate of the case itself, six 120mm followers give it airflow to spare. Three Corsair iCUE Hyperlink QX120 RGB followers behind the entrance panel and three extra on the iCUE Hyperlink H150i RGB CPU liquid cooling resolution create a classy mild present. You possibly can configure the lighting by way of the included Corsair iCUE app, which has presets but in addition permits you to concoct layered results and patterns.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)Our unit additionally has ample energy because of a 1,000-watt Corsair SF1000L energy provide beneath the magnetic high panel. The facility cable working down the again of the tower is a bit awkward, however does not intrude with something.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)The aspect panels are secured by two screws and are available off with a mild tug alongside the rear edge. Many of the motion is on the precise, the place you may discover the CPU liquid-cooling radiator and the GeForce RTX 4080 card. The latter will get contemporary air by means of a detachable rear mud filter.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)Most of this desktop’s air exhaust goes to the precise, so you could want to put the tower on the precise fringe of your desk if you happen to do not need to really feel a heat breeze. The largely open design additionally does little to cease fan noise, which is audible whereas gaming however no louder than most gaming towers I take a look at. I solely wished the fan curves have been rather less aggressive; the followers tended to spike when the CPU was loaded earlier than spinning down simply as rapidly.
Accessing the desktop’s motherboard requires eradicating the liquid-cooling radiator, which comes off after undoing two screws. The radiator does not detach totally as a result of its hoses are hooked up to the CPU waterblock. Origin did a good job of cable administration, no simple process in a compact area.
The Mini-ITX MSI MPG Z790I Edge motherboard helps Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.3. Our take a look at system has two 32GB DIMMs of Corsair Vengeance DDR5-6000 reminiscence and a 1TB Samsung SSD 990 Professional solid-state drive in considered one of its 4 M.2 slots. Extra storage comes from two 2.5-inch bays, considered one of which has a 4TB Samsung SSD 870 QVO drive, permitting area for a complete of six storage drives. Eradicating the left panel offers entry to the motherboard’s underside M.2 slot.
Port choice begins up entrance with two 5Gbps USB Sort-A ports and one USB-C port, the latter supporting as much as 20Gbps. You may additionally discover a headset jack and the ability and reset buttons.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)The place are the remaining ports? The motherboard’s orientation means they’re recessed in a cavity beneath the tower, with a rear pass-through for cable administration. The board offers nearly every thing: six USB-A ports (4 10Gbps and two 5Gbps), one 20Gbps USB-C, one 2.5Gbps LAN, three audio jacks (microphone, line-in, and optical out), and HDMI and DisplayPort video outputs. The gold jacks are for the exterior wi-fi antenna. The GeForce RTX 4080 card has the anticipated single HDMI and triple DisplayPort combo.
The situation of those ports is clearly awkward for getting issues linked—you may have to lie the tower on its aspect to see or entry them—nevertheless it in the end streamlines the look since no cables can be protruding out the again.
Testing the Origin Chronos V3: Punching Above Weight
Our $3,893 Chronos V3 is well-equipped with an Intel Core i9-14900K CPU (24 cores, as much as 6.0GHz turbo), an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 graphics card, 64GB of DDR5-6000 RAM, a 1TB Samsung SSD 990 Professional with Home windows 11 Dwelling, a 4TB Samsung SSD 870 QVO for mass storage, and a one-year guarantee. We sometimes do not specify part manufacturers in our critiques, however Origin permits patrons to pick out precise elements when customizing to order.
The Chronos V3 will face the talked about Falcon Northwest Tiki and Asus ROG G22CH in our benchmark comparisons together with two bigger mid-towers, the Alienware Aurora R16 and the Dell XPS Desktop (8960). The Alienware and Asus depend on GeForce RTX 4070 GPUs whereas the Dell and the Tiki match our Chronos’ RTX 4080. The Tiki can be particularly formidable with its 16-core AMD Ryzen 9 7950X3D.
Productiveness and Content material Creation Exams
We run the identical normal productiveness benchmarks throughout each cellular and desktop techniques. Our first take a look at is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates a wide range of real-world productiveness and workplace workflows to measure general system efficiency and in addition features a storage subtest for the first drive.
Our different three benchmarks concentrate on the CPU, utilizing all out there cores and threads, to fee a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 makes use of that firm’s Cinema 4D engine to render a posh scene, whereas Geekbench 5.4 Professional from Primate Labs simulates in style apps starting from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine studying. Lastly, we use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to transform a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p decision (decrease occasions are higher).
Lastly, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Programs, which makes use of the Artistic Cloud model 22 of Adobe’s well-known picture editor to fee a PC’s efficiency for content material creation and multimedia purposes. It is an automatic extension that executes a wide range of normal and GPU-accelerated Photoshop duties starting from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving a picture to making use of masks, gradient fills, and filters.
The Chronos posted distinctive scores in PCMark 10 and tore by means of our CPU exams, with main scores in all however Cinebench, the place it completed simply behind the Tiki. All these PCs are blazing quick, however the Origin and the Falcon Northwest are on one other stage. In actual fact, the Chronos desktop’s Photoshop rating is without doubt one of the highest we have ever seen.
Graphics and Gaming Exams
For gaming desktops, we run each artificial and real-world gaming benchmarks. The previous contains two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, the extra modest Night time Raid (appropriate for techniques with built-in graphics) and extra demanding Time Spy (appropriate for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). We then run two OpenGL workouts, rendered offscreen by the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5, which permits for various native show resolutions; extra frames per second (fps) means greater efficiency.
Our actual gaming benchmarks are these constructed into F1 2021, Murderer’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege, examined at greater resolutions and high quality settings than on gaming laptops. These three characterize simulation, open-world action-adventure, and aggressive/esports shooter video games respectively. We run Valhalla and Siege twice every at Extremely high quality (at each 1080p and 4K), whereas F1 2021 is run at 4K with and with out AMD and Nvidia’s performance-boosting FSR and DLSS options turned on.
The Chronos continued accumulating gold medals in our artificial exams. The precise gaming benchmarks noticed it nearly even with the Tiki, although the latter’s particular AMD CPU could have given it an edge. Nonetheless, the distinction is not going to be noticeable at such excessive body charges.
On that be aware, the Chronos can be configured with an AMD Ryzen processor, together with the Ryzen 9 7950X3D, in addition to AMD GPUs, topping out with the superb Radeon RX 7900 XTX. Solely hardcore 4K avid gamers want apply for our evaluate configuration; the bottom mannequin’s GeForce RTX 4060 is greater than sufficient for 1080p play.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)Verdict: Small Tower, Huge Energy
Small-form-factor gaming is clearly alive and effectively with the Origin Chronos V3. This downsized tower makes few compromises to realize its compact dimension, accommodating full-bore desktop parts to go head-to-head with a lot bigger towers. Our Core i9 and GeForce RTX 4080 take a look at system merely annihilated our efficiency benchmarks. We additionally like its expandability and connectivity and that Origin sells it in each Intel and AMD flavors. The Chronos V3 earns a well-deserved Editors’ Selection award amongst compact gaming desktops.
