Price isn't a factor during our reviews here at PCWorld, nor does it determine what category a particular machine falls into -- that's largely determined by hardware. Machines with six-core processors (or four cores and 8 threads, care of hyper-threading on Intel's higher end Core i7 CPUs), oodles of RAM, and top-tier GPUs will generally fit the bill. But all that hardware generally pushes machines over the edge. We've seen PCs in this price-range before -- , for example -- but you're generally going to expect sacrifices.
The new Genesis Midtower stands out, delivering the expected high-tier experience at a price tag than quite honestly feels like a typo.
Under the hood: a second-generation Core i7-2600K processor, overclocked to an impressive 4.7GHz, a pair of 640GB hard drives in RAID 0, 4GB of DDR3-1333MHz RAM, and an Nvidia Geforce GTX 570 graphics card. A humble load out for the Performance category -- a little light on RAM, and quite light on storage -- but the test results allay concerns: it earned a 186 on our WorldBench 6 test suite.
That score puts the new Origin Genesis Midtower well ahead of anything in its price range on the . It topples most of the Performance chart's offerings too, currently outpaced by its, and Maingear's $8000 .
Games performance comes care of -- a single GPU, but a capable one. It saw an average of 81 frames per second on our Call of Duty 4 test, and an average of 222 frames per second on Dirt 2.
Performance in extensively graphically intensive games was a bit tempered: the Genesis Midtower saw an average of 32 frames per second in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of Pripyat, and an average of 24 frames per second in Just Cause 2. Keep in mind that all of these results are run at a resolution of 2560-by-1600, with the highest possible settings, on 30-inch displays. Adjust the settings or the resolution, and you'll get a smoother experience.
Like , the new Genesis midtower is packed into a rather plain case. It isn't unattractive by any means. But after spend a fair bit of time futzing with the Origin Genesis' remote-controlled light show, the single blue LED bar illuminating the Midtower's innards is something of a let down. But you can't expect too many frills, if you're going to shave $4000 off of the bill.
So the luxury lighting is gone. But the Lian-Li PC-8NWX chassis doesn't skimp of on features, packing a tool-free design in its relatively spacious shell. There's a single free hard drive bay left, and room for two more 5.25-inch drives -- the machine ships with a DVD-burner. There are two more DIMM slots available on the motherboard, a single free PCIe x16 slot, and a pair of PCI slots. The motherboard's third PCIe x16 slot is blocked by an internal USB card. Fitting a second GTX 570 into the chassis isn't entirely out of the realm of possibility, though it'll take a bit of rearranging, and dissipating all of that heat might become a concern.
The overclocked CPU is kept in check by a beefy Asetek radiator. It's attached to the rear of the chassis, and while large doesn't block anything of importance. Like the larger Genesis, the wiring job is meticulous: all of the cables are tied down, sleeved, and tucked out of the way. This is great for airflow -- the CPU may be liquid cooled, but that GTX 570 will need room to breathe.
The case is fairly accessible, overall. The front offers a multiformat card reader (with a USB port), the expected headphone and microphone jacks, a pair of USB 3.0 ports, and 1 eSata port. Having advanced connectivity options front and center is great, and USB 3 has becoming increasingly common in desktops across all categories.
On the rear, there's another pair of USB 3.0 ports, a pair of eSata ports, and 8 USB ports. You'll find a bluetooth receiver, 7.1 optical and analog surround sound, dual gigabit ethernet, and a PS/2 serial mouse / keyboard combo port. The GPU offers a pair of DVI ports, and a mini-HDMI port. All told, a fine loadout (unless you're especially attached to Firewire).
There are some compromises and concessions here, to hit that $2000 price point. The lack of a Blu-ray player is lamentable, as every other machine on the Performance chart has one, and we've begun to see them shipping on inexpensive Budget desktops, too. There's also the 640GB of storage, but dropping RAID 0 to take advantage of both hard drives would ding the machine's performance scores a bit. But you can always add a 2TB hard drive and a Blu-ray burner, and still have a powerful machine at a very reasonable price.