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Origin Genesis Z68

07.09.2011
If you're looking for power and performance, you probably won't be surprised to find it in Origin's latest monster desktop. Origin's Genesis Z68 is powerful as well as different-looking in its pretty white chassis (though, thankfully, less Stormtrooper-y than the ).

Our review model, which costs $2464 (as of 9/7/2011), features an Intel Core i5-2500K processer overclocked to 4.3GHz. It also sports 16GB of RAM, two 60GB solid-state drives and a 500GB hard drive, and two Nvidia GTX 560Ti video cards.

In performance, the Origin Genesis Z68 climbs to the top of the , outpacing our previous leader -- Maingear’s F131 Super Stock -- by a decent margin. It earned a score of 228 on our WorldBench 6 est, eclipsing the F131 Super Stock’s score of 215.

It also performs well in graphics, thanks to the dual cards. The still has it beat here, as expected -- those machines generally house larger, more powerful cards (with the commensurate price bump). For example, in our Unreal Tournament 3 graphics tests, the Z68 managed an impressive 203.6 frames per second (highest quality settings, 2560 by 1600 resolution). However, the Origin Genesis 2011 (212.9 fps) beats it, as does the V3 Convoy (224.8 fps). Still, the Z68 should have no problems tackling whatever graphics-intensive programs you throw at it.

The Z68 is housed in a white BitFenix Shinobi chassis. The sides of the case are white aluminum (with a large, plastic triangular window on the left), while the front and top of the case sport a soft, rubbery texture. This rubbery texture is overly fond of dirt -- after just a few days, our review model looked as if it had been around the block a few times, and we saw a lot of discoloring along the edges of the case. (Keep that in mind if you plan on keeping this huge tower on the floor.) Despite the minor cosmetic issues, the case is both attractive and functional.

Four USB ports are along the top of the chassis, as well as headphone and microphone jacks and power and reset buttons. The front of the machine offers a Blu-ray player, a multiformat card reader, two USB 3.0 ports, and another USB port. The back offers six more USB ports, two USB 3.0 ports, one each for eSATA, S/PDIF-out, DVI, HDMI, VGA, and gigabit ethernet, and support for 7.1 surround sound. Additional display ports are on the two graphics cards: Each card has two DVI ports and one micro-HDMI port. And if you manage to run out of ports somehow, there’s also Bluetooth.