Gadgetory

whether or not si is like origin CyberPower and I rep our interest you as a DIY builder this review should have some pretty interesting data for you we did extensive thermal analysis on this small form-factor enclosure you can see the GPU is pretty tight in there but it's got a ventilation port and it's using a blower fan so interesting test to look at so we have extensive data that may be interesting whether or not you're gonna buy one of these things now this is an Origin Chronos I think it's the VR edition though they also have an on VR edition and it's basically it's a small form-factor box I think this is a custom case I do not know who the OEM is but I couldn't find it on new egg so it is a custom case it is similar in some ways to IO power revolt to the power three volts who they made and that's only because it's also a small form-factor box they've each got their own kind of flair this one has red LEDs around the window whatever it's just it's a box right but it's a small box so that makes thermals pretty interesting with this thing I think this is a $2,300 23.92 dollar units counting the LEDs the GTX 1080 the i7 6700 K and a few other components and we'll do a price analysis later before getting to our call audits where I audit the tech support and the sales teams posing as an incompetent customer let's talk about thermals then we'll go to noise power fps and all that other stuff and see if this thing's actually any good even if you're a DIY builder so thermals first these numbers are presented as a delta T value that means we subtract out the ambient temperature we have a video on this that you can check on the channel was posted just before this one add in your local temperature to get me full temperature value the Chronos runs pretty hot the result of a small form-factor box with overclocked components is that it will run hot and this one hits 74.6 delta T over ambient that's in Celsius for the CPU cores and that means we're regularly hitting 100 C on a few of the CPU cores if you factor in ambient and that causes the CPU to throttle back upon hitting t.j.maxx the same issue happens with the GT X 1080 efi which is hitting 60 2.58 Celsius peak average and that's in the range of 90 91 Celsius when accounting for ambience and an open-air bench without the inherent restrictions of an ITX box we saw peak temperatures around 80 to C with a throttle point for the GT X 1080 Fe at that temperature just maintaining these temperatures of seventy four point six C delta T for the CPU and the sixty two point five eight C for the GPU just maintaining those requires the vrm fan to run it a hundred percent and we Auto configure the GPU fans a fifty five percent for some tests which are shown on the screen now and the reason I did that is to get a direct apples-to-apples comparison of how well this box performs without the window versus with the window and so we actually see a somewhat different performance output we're getting about 5 Celsius better when removing the acrylic window which creates somewhat of a basically a diathermic wall I guess is one way to say it and our suggestion to origin based on this data would be to just drill a few holes in this thing they don't it doesn't even have to be a mesh just a couple of small holes well look quite as pretty but if you get a couple degrees out of it that's actually a big deal and I'll tell you why for our short-term tests the GPU spikes in frequency erratically over the test period as a result of thermal fluctuations this means that the 1080 is functioning as designed and it's using boost 3.0 to bounce the clock rate as a means to reduce or control temperature and we'll use cross bars to highlight these spikes note that around the 600 second mark the temperature is hitting a range of 90 Celsius for the non Delta value or about 65 C Delta and compare that to harsh sudden drops of frequency where we fall to nearly 1600 megahertz we see that the temperature spike lines up with the frequency spike and the reduced clock is the only way the GPU can stay within its spec this results in heavy impact of framerate at times and as the clock rate was initially 1960 to 2000 megahertz it over the course of testing fell to 1600 megahertz and we do see that reflected in frame rates and sometimes frame times during the spikes but this can be partially resolved we ran a two hour endurance using a different game Metro last light to see how it responds to 1440p with complete max settings in Metro last light and it's a little bit less intensive on the clock right not quite as clock biased and the test was conducted with the pre-configured overclock and auto fan speed settings in this test the first chart shows GPU temperature versus frequency was time notice that the frequency is more stable here than in the previous test that we showed we still can't maintain the 2009 Hertz clock rate but we're able to sit at about 1900 megahertz and the temperature is represented as a non Delta value this time so what you're seeing is the actual GPU diode temperature with ambient added we're at 90 C here and the only way to achieve the thermal and oscillation clock oscillation stability is to allow the fan to auto boost up to a hundred percent speed or 4,000 rpm that obviously impacts noise so let's look at the noise data next this chart shows our noise testing we subtract out ambient noise floor by using a logarithmic formula for computing the Delta is between decibel values as they can't be simply subtracted for reference the gtx 1080 fe on our open-air bench is present origins Chronos runs at a pretty steady hum with its idle noise level at about 52 point nine DB use in the pre-configured by a smart fan and auto GPU fan settings for comparison the open air test bench with a 1080 fe idles about 37 point 5 DB but that is using an x 41 CL c and a hale 90 PSU these are the only fans in that test system so they're a good deal quieter than something like an ITX box a better comparison of course would be ITX builds from other s eyes but we only just recently added EB testing so I didn't do it back when we had the revolt 2 because we didn't have DB testing methodology in place yet origins hitting about 58 DB under 100 percent rpm which is only slightly louder than the open air 1080 at 100% fan rpm the two are more or less the same to the listener but the big point here is that the 1080 Fe will basically never hit a hundred-percent fan speeds when in an Venera bench or in a sort of full tower case the only reason it will go that high is if it can't sit steady at 82 Sal zis with a 50 ish percent fan speed this case it can't do that obviously so it's pushing pretty hard up to 100 rpm which is 4,000 and then it's able to keep its 90 Celsius temperature a bit better so it's a fairly loud idle noise level the GPU fan does regulate itself idle at 1100 rpm by the CPU fans pushing 2,000 it's one of those slim fans on basically a liquid cooler it's a 120 millimeter liquid cooler so it's it's a little bit noisy idle but the full load temperature is what you would expect it's just ideally you don't hit 100% rpm with the GPU found or full load so let's talk about power next the system we have has a 450 watt SFX PSU from Corsair it's actually good power supply and it does sound a bit crazy on the surface to put a 450 watt PSU with basically a flagship card like a 1080 but that's where the world is now with TDP so technically Nvidia recommends a 500 watt power supply it's a bit of a safe recommendation unless you are putting the system under a trance code 100% workload for the GPU and a 100% may be the large Fourier transforms on the CPU unless you're doing that simultaneously this 450 watt power supply availability is not going to be an issue and that's not really a use case you would have for almost any system anyway so the 450 watts is plenty when we did the testing I saw a power draw of 282 time 9 watts for a full system power when running 3d mark fires like ultra at 4k looping using the combined test to hit both the CPU and the GPU pretty heavily so that's fully with an acceptable range it's a bit over the 50% power draw mark that's fine this power supply is not gonna be threatened it'll still live a long and good life so I will commend origin I'm not going to overkill with the power supply this is something a lot of the essays really fail with they'll send us I think I'm empowered did this in the past and I think cyber power has as well they'll send us a system with us 100 watery hundred watt power spine it's totally unnecessary and it just pushes this idea that more watts equals better but we all know that's not how performance works so I am glad that in at least this one way origins recommending a good amount of power and not going crazy overkill on it just to spike the price or use em DFS or whatever alright so frame rates are next this is a very trivial test here it's not like our GP reviews with frame rate testing for SI billed you're gonna see the same performance you see with the review of the GTX 10 ad other than the pre overclocked they've applied but we're still gonna run through them anyway so just if this is what to expect if you want to play at 1440p or 480 this system for quick burst at FPS tests shows a 145 FPS average for black ops 3 on high with tightly times one percent in point one percent blue is doom with opengl 4.5 it's 121 FPS with settings tweaks are Vulcan you could hit 144 Hertz GTA 5 has worse 0.1 percent lows but it's hitting a 113 FPS average and these charts don't tell us anything we don't already know obviously 1080 can handle 1440p the same is mostly true for 4k which is represented on the screen now the overclock is mostly beneficial but we do see some stability test and endurance runs resulting in heat buildup and this does actually negate the overclock pretty much immediately and drops us down to the 1600 megahertz range and that impacts framerate over time if you were to look at such a metric now build quality as a whole this is one of the places origin does pretty well in addition to the power supply selection component selection I mostly agreed with I really wouldn't have made any major changes to the components now obviously this is this particular case is basically a matter of pick the highest end thing and put it in there so it's it is kind of hard to do poorly with that but the motherboard is a good one it's an Asus z170 board they didn't go crazy in that regard but it's it's not bad either the assembly quality is good the Cale management is very clean in the main compartment you don't see a lot of cables one major point that I would really recommend Origen improve on is the PCIe riser cable and I'm only mentioning this because it doesn't good the performance is gonna be the same but the PCIe riser cable they're using basically looks like it has duct tape on it it's kind of a gray with I think green and black so it's irrelevant to performance you can't even see it through this window so the average user is never gonna know but if someone does open it up and say maybe they produce b-roll for a video it just looks kind of bad so it's one of those things that making it black isn't gonna impact anything other than people won't think it looks bad which is important if you're trying to market a product so that is a suggestion I would make but it's kind of a moot suggestion in the face of performance metrics because it won't impact anything the other thing with build quality tubes cables that's done pretty well the overclock was 4.6 gigahertz on the CPU that's a pre OC the voltage the be core was was maybe a little aggressive but I would not feel bad about the vcore I think it was one point pushing like one point three something like that I don't feel bad about it but not bad for something that's getting pushed out of a factory the GPU was hitting a frequency of nineteen sixty one megahertz also not bad unfortunately can't really sustain that because the thermals but it's a decent overclock overall I believe they use EVGA precision that's pre-installed it auto boots the startup so everything's done for you and that is something that they do well PSU selection is good they didn't go crazy with any of that stuff price is okay if you went to Newegg or whatever and sort of picked us out yourself which I did you'd be looking at about 18 18 $1,800 for the build DIY approach that's assuming you can find an ITX case that's similar to this I kind of just picked a row or a silver stone rvz case that's like think $70 so you'd be looking at about eighteen to nineteen hundred dollars and then obviously you build it yourself this is 2396 having the notes here in front of me now that includes the fifteen dollar LED strip so it's 23 something that puts origin at about five hundred and eighty dollars almost more than DIY and that makes them really a premium over some of their competitors power is about 100 to 200 dollars more on average for most of their systems if you pick strictly part versus part we're not changing the part selection here cyber power is about the same 100 to 200 dollars more and that's really not unreasonable if you don't want to build a computer to pay someone 100 to 200 bucks to do it for you it's not that bad of a deal now obviously folks you can do it themselves do it yourself whatever so it's it's got a bit of a premium versus the competitors that fits origins sort of boutique shop appearance and their justification of this price is mostly 24/7 support pre over clocks and a custom case so the one that we can audit the best is the support I called the support line I audited and so we called tech support twice the first time it is 24/7 so the first time we call that 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time and I got no answer after 25 minutes so I gave up I called back during normal business hours during this just before the shoot at 3:40 p.m. Eastern and got an answer in under five minutes from tech support which i think is mostly acceptable I think the way origin could improve this would be a callback feature so sometimes you'll call support and it's like we have 30-minute wait do you want us to call back when we're ready for you hit one and it just does it I think they should do that for their after normal business hours support if it's gonna take 30 minutes get an answer in terms of competence I was pretty happy with the tech support I acted like a complete noob to hardware totally I told him I didn't know anything about the computer I don't know what video card was in it all I know is I bought it like a year ago and I said I saw the program that said it's running at like 90 Celsius and I wanted to see if that was okay and he said 94 90 Fahrenheit 90 Celsius no which it's correct he said no you should check for software that's changing the fan rpm you should check ventilation dusts all the normal suggestions so I completely agree with all the suggestions made those are the ones I would have made myself troubleshooting with someone who doesn't know they own and I think they've done well in that regard I also called sales support I got an answer in about a minute sales is always that way isn't it because they want to tell you something and a sales support I basically said I'm on your site I don't know what I should buy I have a 1080p monitor I'm playing GTA 5 and mirrors edge at high settings what's a good video card for me to own and I was expecting them to say buy a 1080 because the most expensive and they've got an idiot on their hands me who clearly doesn't know any better they didn't they said he actually directly said I'm not gonna push you to the 1080 I think it's too expensive for what you're doing the 1070 makes more sense for you and I more or less agreed with that based on the kind of price range I gave him I also asked him should I get 8 gigabytes of RAM or 16 he said you don't need 16 gigabytes for just gaming and watching streams you'll probably use 6 to 7 gigabytes during those tasks simultaneously but you'll be fine and I agree with that as well that's data I've seen so their support is clearly competent which is not always the case for SI so well done Origen there all right so overall this needs some work with thermals it seriously it does that is the main problem with this I am pretty happy with the overall build quality in part selection other than that PCIe riser thing which really is basically irrelevant I'm happy with the support line for the most part and I think that really the fault is in thermals noise idles a bit loud but if you fix thermals you fix fix the noise because if it's running at 100% fan rpm when this thing's under gaming load that's obviously gonna be loud and it's running at a high CPU rpm idle just because a small kind of hot box and there's another there's a fan back here as well I believe which doesn't help things so they need to work on thermals the system as a whole is ok it's acceptable the closest competition has started the revolt 2 which is a wider form factor and is flashy er so if you don't want that in your living room or something I guess you'd be looking at something like this but this is going to be a louder box so I wouldn't really recommend it necessary for htpc it would be okay if you're using it as an on-the-go land computer or as a system in your main gaming room where you're gonna put headphones on you won't hear the noise it's not that crazy loud so don't let this get blown out of proportion but it is loud enough where in a living room home theater environment I would not want it so thermals that's the the only real issue see if I have any other notes here not really support was good build qualities decent price is a bit high but not terrible considering kind of origins attempting to position themselves as a boutique shop rather than a factory that just pumps out systems like some of their competitors so I overall not bad that needs work but ok overall I think the support is good if you buy something like a mid Tower from them it'd be much better obviously so that's the review fold disclosure origin sponsored us during the AMDR x 480 release I want to put that out there this was the sponsor quite obviously we don't let sponsorship interfere with editorial quality or integrity or ethics and that's really I just want to put that out there because it's important so yeah patron commercial they trying to help us out directly subscribe as always for more content thank you for watching I'll see you all next time