Gadgetory

hi I'm rich brown senior editor for cnet today we're going to take a look at the origin Kronos so this is an editor's choice winning small form-factor gaming PC our config here costs about 1199 so it comes with an overclocked core i5 CPU as well as a fast mid-range geforce gtx 560ti graphics card from nvidia so overall I really like this PC for a few reasons it's fast it's small it's relatively affordable and it also has some nice expandability which you don't necessarily expect in such a small system so if we go over the features in the front of the case you can see there's a blu-ray burner here so let's USB 3 ports and a couple of analog audio jacks on the front now in the back of the case you've got a nice selection of ports on the graphics card over here you've got to DVI Ott's as well as a mini HDMI output over here you have some used to be two point O Jack's you've got a couple ports for wireless antenna USB 3.0 7.1 analog audio as well as digital optical output now you might see a few video outputs here but those actually don't work because they're connected to the embedded graphics chip which is overwritten by the graphics card so going inside the case you'll see origin is not a nice job of keeping the system tidy so back here there's a core i5 CPU it actually has a liquid cooler on it which is pretty impressive given the size of the case you can see the memory slots here they're both occupied and here's the hard drive bay it can actually take a couple of solid state drives if you go for that option this config though has a 750 gig mechanical hard drive and it takes up all the hard drive expansion space so swim around on the other side you can see here's the graphics card it's a double slot model and picks up all the card expansion slots what's particularly cool about this is that origin is throwing a 600 watt power supply in the system that means that not only can this PC take nice large dual slot cards but can also go up to very high end cars if you want to upgrade down the road it was a point of comparison we wanted to show the origin next to the alienware x51 so this system has gotten some press lately alienware just released it back in January it's a nice design and it also has a full-size graphics card inside it which is pretty rare for a slim tower case limitation for the alienware those it doesn't have quite as many upgrade options as the origin does alienware won't overclock and because it was a small power supply it actually has relatively limited upgrade options the fact that alienware got a full size card in here at all is pretty impressive but as limited power supply means that the system is only going to be so fast you look at the performance comparison between the two this origin outperforms alienware on every performance test for gaming or applications when you look at the performance charts you'll see the origin outperforms the alienware on every test from gaming to applications by a healthy margin if we're going to spend upwards of a thousand bucks on a gaming PC the origin is the clear choice here so it's compact it's upgradeable it's also one of the fastest pcs in its price range so I'm rich brown this is the editors choice winning origin Chronos