Origin Genesis (Intel Core i7 920)

Origin PC is a new boutique vendor, although as former Alienware employees, its founders have plenty of experience with high-end desktops. We found a lot to like about Origin's $4,998 Genesis. Its chassis has become our new favorite among elite gaming PCs, and the system in general bears the usual attention to detail and performance ambitions we expect to find it a multi-thousand-dollar computer. You'd only want a desktop like this one if you're serious about PC gaming and you have a 24-inch or larger display, if not two or three of them. This configuration also leans heavily toward gaming, and you can find faster high-end productivity desktops for less from other vendors. For those well-heeled consumers committed to PC gaming, however, we have no trouble recommending the Origin Genesis.

Purchasing a PC from Origin on its Web site is intuitive thanks to a well-thought-out, step-by-step order process that shows you exactly what each case and major design option looks like. Eventually you're led to a configuration page that's smart enough to prevent you from selecting incompatible options. Origin says that if you have an option in mind that isn't listed on its Web site, you simply need to call and inform the customer service staff, who will order the part and build it into your system.

Origin offers four desktop case options, and our review unit came with the most expensive one, a towering matte-black beast of a chassis that makes a statement simply by its large dimensions (24 inches high, 9 inches wide, 24 inches deep). Our build included a side-panel window, red fan lighting, and liquid cooling, each an extra feature that contributed to the overall look. The bottom of the case is elevated on four rubber feet to add another air-flow channel. The system also comes with a removable, easy-to-clean filter screen mounted across each underside fan intake.


The Genesis' front-accessible hard-drive trays let you hot-swap 3.5-inch storage drives without opening the case.

The Genesis' hard-drive design is particularly notable. The system comes with two blocks of drives--one for up to four 3.5-inch standard hard drives, another below it for a pair of 2.5-inch solid-state drives. Each drive array is blocked off from the rest of the interior by a removable panel which helps minimize the internal visual clutter. More importantly, the 3.5-inch bays not only feature premounted data and power cables for no-fuss installation, but you can also hot-swap drives through a simple removable tray system hidden behind a door on the front panel. No other high-end desktop we know of has such a convenient, useful drive access feature, and it sets this particular Genesis case apart from its competition in a meaningful way.

After the debacle with the Falcon Northwest Mach V and its heavy ATI Radeon HD 5970 graphics card, we naturally have concerns with the pair of those cards that came with our Genesis unit. Instead of using a support bracket, Origin shipped the system with a form-fitting foam insert inside the chassis. We're glad to see those heavy, expensive cards protected during shipping when a large system is at its most vulnerable. That said, some of us tend to tinker around inside our PCs more than others, which means moving the system around at home as well. Chances are you're likely to be more careful with your $5,000 investment than even the best-intentioned UPS driver. Still, we'd feel more secure with a permanent solution supporting the heavy Radeon HD 5970 cards than the disposable packing foam.

Origin Genesis (Intel Core i7 920) Falcon Northwest Mach V (Intel Core i7 980X Extreme)
Price $4,998 $4,999
Motherboard chipset Intel X58 Intel X58
CPU 4.0GHz Intel Core i7 920 (overclocked) 4.183GHz Intel Core i7 980X Extreme (overclocked)
Memory 6GB 1,600MHz DDR3 SDRAM 12GB 1,333MHz DDR3 SDRAM
Graphics (2) 2GB ATI Radeon HD 5970 2GB ATI Radeon HD 5970
Hard drives (2) 80GB Intel X25-M solid state hard drive; 1.5TB Seagate 7,200 rpm hard drive 80GB Intel X25-M solid state hard drive; 1TB 7,200 rpm Western Digital
Optical drive Blu-ray burner Blu-ray burner
Operating system Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit) Windows 7 Professional (64-bit)

Origin submitted this desktop before it had samples of Intel's new six-core Core i7 980X Extreme chip, but it currently lists Intel's new chip on its configurator, so you could order one to match the Falcon Northwest Mach V if that's what you had in mind. When we compare prices between the two vendors we get an interesting picture.

Falcon Northwest doesn't offer the Core i7 920 CPU in the Mach V, but if you configure one with all of the Origin's other specs, the price from Falcon comes to $5,893. That's with a Core i7 960 in the Mach V, so it's not exactly an apples-to-apples comparison. If you go the other way and build a Genesis to match the Mach V above, Origin's price comes to $5,105, and that's with only 6GB of RAM. In other words, between these two vendors we found prices and options varied. Maingear's competing Shift and desktops from other high-end vendors add another comparison wrinkle. We recommend comparing prices and features among at least three or four vendors to track down the best value, which could change from day-to-day.

For this Origin Genesis at least, we can report that it features the single fastest overclocked Core i7 920 chip we've seen so far. Going from a stock 2.6GHz to 4.0GHz sounds like a reckless clock speed jump, but our testing showed that the Genesis was stable. Origin advertises a 3.6GHz to 4.0GHz range for its Core i7 920 overclocking, and though we can't say how often Origin will hit 4.0GHz, we can at least report that it knows how to manage that setting should your Core i7 920-based Genesis achieve it.

Apple iTunes encoding test
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
AVADirect Custom Gaming PC
90
Maingear Shift
90
Falcon Northwest Mach V
90
Origin Genesis
91
Digital Storm 950Si
101

Adobe Photoshop CS3 image-processing test
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Falcon Northwest Mach V
52
Origin Genesis
56
AVADirect Custom Gaming PC
60
Maingear Shift
60
Digital Storm 950Si
65

Multimedia multitasking
(Shorter bars indicate better performance)
Falcon Northwest Mach V
231
Origin Genesis
247
Maingear Shift
283
AVADirect Custom Gaming PC
310
Digital Storm 950Si
325

Cinebench
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
Rendering multiple CPUs
Rendering single CPU
Falcon Northwest Mach V
33,459
5,938
Origin Genesis
23,677
5,969
Maingear Shift
22,553
5,757
AVADirect Custom Gaming PC
22,315
5,481
Digital Storm 950Si
21,540
5,296

The Origin Genesis was not the fastest desktop on our application tests, but it is the fastest quad-core desktop we've seen, second only to the six-core Falcon Northwest Mach V. Our $5,000 limit on high-end PCs forces vendors to make an artificial choice as to whether they want to show off their gaming or their productivity chops. Origin chose the former, which is fine, and we have no reason to think with an unlimited budget it couldn't compete with Falcon Northwest on our application tests by adding a Core i7 980X chip and more RAM (and vice versa for the Falcon system on our gaming charts below).

Crysis
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
1,600 x 1,200 (high, 4x aa)
1,280 x 1,024 (medium, 4x aa)
Maingear Shift
74
76
Origin Genesis
74
77
AVADirect Custom Gaming PC
62
83
Digital Storm 950Si
59
67
Falcon Northwest Mach V
45
50

Far Cry 2
(Longer bars indicate better performance)
1,920x1,200 (DirectX 10, 4x aa, very high)
1,440 x 900 (DirectX 10, 4x aa, very high)
Origin Genesis
188
222
Maingear Shift
149
193
Falcon Northwest Mach V
128
167
AVADirect Custom Gaming PC
98
113
Digital Storm 950Si
94
110


Price As shown: $594.95