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Origin Chronos: Awesome Things in a Small Space

02.04.2012
The Origin Chronos packs a ton of power in a (relatively) small package. This performance PC is built inside a low-profile Silverstone case, and offers blazing-fast performance on our new WorldBench 7 benchmark suite.

Our review model, priced at $1399, sports an overclocked Intel Core i5-2550K processor (at 4.7GHz, over the stock 3.4GHz), 8GB of RAM, an Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti GPU, and it runs Windows 7 Home Premium. It also has 750GB of hard-drive space, and a 90GB SSD boot drive for quick boot times.

On the PCWorld Test Center's new WorldBench 7 benchmark tests, the Chronos scored an impressive 204. Our baseline testing model (which has a score of 100) is similarly specced, with an Intel i5-2500K processor (at the stock 3.4GHz clock speed), 8GB of RAM, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti. The key differences that lead to the Chronos's considerable performance bump lie in its heady overclocking and its solid-state drive. (You can read up on our revamped testing process in Jason Cross's .")

The Chronos also does well in our graphics tests, managing frame rates of 38.4 on our Crysis 2 benchmark at a resolution of 2560 by 1600 pixels. At a resolution of 1920 by 1080 pixels, it earns 70.3 frames per second. These tests are at high settings, so dialing down the resolution a tad (if you're not equipped with 30-inch displays) will give you lots of legroom. In Dirt 3, the Chronos achieved 87.4 frames per second at that 2560-by-1600-pixel resolution. If you're a fan of Codemasters' rally-racer, this isn't a bad place to start looking for your new compact racing rig.

The Chronos is housed in a low-profile Silverstone SG08 case. The chassis features a thick (0.39 inches) black aluminum front panel, and thinner metal sides with lots of vents to help keep components cool. The front panel is elegant and simple, with brushed aluminum styling, Origin's logo in the bottom-right corner, and a large brushed power button in the bottom-left corner. The front panel also has a tray-loading DVD-RW drive, two USB 3.0 ports, and headphone and microphone jacks.

The rest of the Chronos's ports are on the back of the machine. The Zotac Z68ITX-A-E motherboard sports four USB 2.0 ports, two USB 3.0 ports, dual gigabit ethernet, two HDMI-out ports, one mini-DisplayPort, one PS/2 port, support for 7.1 surround sound, and optical audio out. The Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 Ti has two DVI ports and a mini-HDMI out.