Origin Chronos Review: A Compact Gaming Desktop Done Right

Our Verdict

The Origin Chronos delivers high-finish gaming performance within a compact, customizable and easy-to-upgrade chassis.

For

Sleek, living-room-friendly design
Adequately upgradable
Great overall functioning
Lots of customization options

Against

Some of the amend add-ons are pricey

Tom's Guide Verdict

The Origin Chronos delivers high-end gaming performance within a meaty, customizable and easy-to-upgrade chassis.

Pros

+
Sleek, living-room-friendly pattern
+
Fairly upgradable
+
Great overall performance
+
Lots of customization options

Cons

-
Some of the meliorate add-ons are pricey

Gaming desktops built for the living room are a tempting prospect, but most always come with caveats. Some are powerful but non upgradable, while others are incredibly sleek but can't compete with the guts of a big belfry. That'southward where the Origin Chronos comes in.

The console-shaped Chronos ($ii,931 as reviewed, $ane,200 starting) ticks every box you'd want from a gaming desktop -- information technology's powerful, it's sleek and, unlike many of its competitors, information technology's easy to open up up once yous're ready to upgrade parts. Factor in some smart ergonomic features and a wealth of customization options, and the Chronos is 1 of the best machines you tin buy for enjoying high-end PC gaming from the comfort of your burrow.

Design

Few desktops are as good as impersonating consoles every bit the Origin Chronos is. This little black box is compact, sleek and filled with neat highlights, such as a side window that lets you lot drool over its GTX 1080 Ti graphics card in all its cherry-red-backlit celebrity.

The Chronos also packs lots of neat features that brand it actress-adaptable to your living room setup. The PC comes with four rubber anxiety that attach magnetically, which makes information technology incredibly easy to switch from horizontal to vertical. You can fifty-fifty rotate the front-facing Origin logo to have it match the PC'south orientation.

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At 13.8 x 11.viii 10 4 inches, the Chronos is notably chunkier than a PS4 or Xbox 1 as well equally MSI'southward panel-shaped Trident (13.9 x 9.9 10 3.8 inches). Simply it'southward more than sleek enough to sit under a TV, and unlike the pocket-size simply cylindrical Corsair One or MSI Vortex, will actually slide into an entertainment center.

Key Specs

Origin Chornos	Original Configuration	Our Configuration
Price	$1,200	$2,931
Processor	AMD Ryzen 3 1200	AMD Ryzen 7 1800X
RAM	8GB	32GB
Storage	128GB SSD	500GB SSD, 4TB hard drive
Graphics	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 Ti	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti
Size	xiii.viii x xi.8 10 iv inches	xiii.8 x eleven.8 10 4 inches

Ports and Upgradability

The Chronos' front-facing port selection is pretty standard, with two USB 3.0 ports and headphone and mic jacks for easily plugging and playing (though I would have loved to have seen a front end-facing HDMI port for VR, like the Corsair I offers.

In the back, you lot'll find three more than USB 3.0 ports, a USB ii.0 port and a USB Blazon-C port for newer gadgets. There'south likewise a standard smattering of sound jacks, an Ethernet port and a PS/2 port for old-schoolhouse mice and keyboards. The desktop's Nvidia GTX 1080Ti has its usual HDMI port and three DisplayPorts, giving you plenty of options for monitors.

Unlike about meaty gaming PCs nosotros've tested, the Chronos is remarkably easy to open up upwards if you want to tinker with the guts. After removing 2 hand screws, you can slide off the PC's side panel and easily gain access to components such as the RAM slots and cooling system.

While getting inside the Chronos is easy, swapping out nigh parts, such as the graphics bill of fare, will take a screwdriver and a bit of extra legwork. (Origin noted that its support technicians volition help users through the upgrade process.) The whole process isn't as blissfully dummy-proof as it is on, say, the Alienware Aurora, simply the Chronos' upgradability is some of the best I've seen on a small PC.

Gaming and VR Performance

Sporting a beastly Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 Ti GPU, the Chronos packs a huge amount of gaming ability into its small frame.

The desktop tore through our Hitman criterion (1080p at max settings), rendering the stealth action game at a baking 127.6 frames per second. That'southward simply a frame behind the GTX 1080-powered Corsair One (129 fps) and well ahead of the MSI Vortex (98 fps, GTX 1080) and our 88 fps desktop average.

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The Chronos continued to print during the more demanding cinematic activeness of Rise of the Tomb Raider (1080p at max settings), in which Origin'southward PC turned in an impressive 95.4 and topped the Vortex (82) and the Corsair One (72). The Chronos even mustered a playable 30fps at 4K with all settings cranked upward, something few desktops we've tested take accomplished.

Origin'due south desktop is a miniature virtual-reality monster, maxing out the SteamVR Performance test at xi just like the Vortex and One did. Our category boilerplate is 10.5.

The Chronos scored a strong six,705 on the 3DMark Burn Strike Ultra benchmark, which measures 4K performance. That tops the Corsair One (five,032), the Vortex (4,503) and our v,097 boilerplate.

Overall Operation

Thanks to its AMD Ryzen seven 1800X processor and whopping 32GB of RAM, the Chronos chewed through daily tasks with no slowdown. I fired up well over a dozen browser tabs while watching v Twitch streams and downloading games from Steam to attempt to tax the system, and it didn't budge one time.

Origin'south PC scored a 21,585 on the Geekbench 4 general functioning exam, topping the Corsair One (17,755, Core i7-7700K) also every bit our 16,920 gaming PC boilerplate.

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The Chronos' speedy 500GB SSD copied about 5GB of files in but 6 seconds, for a blistering transfer rate of 828.3 megabytes per second. That beats the Corsair One'due south 480GB SSD (236.half dozen MBps) and our 339.1 MBps average, while near tying the Vortex's 512GB SSD (848.ii MBps)

Configurations

As with all Origin desktops, the Chronos is made to order and offers a ton of corking customization options. The base Ryzen version of the PC starts at $1,200 with an AMD Ryzen three 1200 CPU, 8GB of RAM, a 128GB SSD and an Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti.

From there, you tin can play a joke on out the Chronos to your heart'southward content, adding extras such as a slick metallic paint chore ($250), glowing interior lights ($20) and colored accents (no actress toll). You lot have enough of options for actress ability, including up to an AMD Ryzen vii processor ($434) and a beastly Nvidia Titan XP graphics card ($1,220).

Our $2,931 review unit of measurement is a good instance of the kind of ability you can pack into the Chronos, sporting a Ryzen 7 1800X CPU, 32GB of RAM, a 500GB SSD with a 4TB hard drive and an Nvidia GTX 1080 Ti GPU. Our system came in the Chronos' default black colour scheme, but with slick red accents.

Bottom Line

The Origin Chronos delivers excellent gaming functioning in a meaty chassis while making very few compromises. The system's console-shaped blueprint makes it ideal for the living room, while its support for AMD Ryzen 7 processors and Nvidia's highest-end GPUs allows it to handle 4K and VR without a sweat. But be ready to pay up if you desire to take advantage of its cooler customization options.

There are plenty of other great gaming PCs for the living room. The Alienware Alpha is even smaller just not nearly as powerful, while the Corsair Ane and MSI Vortex accept nifty designs but aren't as upgradable or piece of cake to slide nether a Goggle box. The Chronos finds a happy centre basis between size, power and flexibility, making it 1 of the all-time means to play demanding PC games on your big living room Tv set.

Credit: Tom's Guide

Mike Andronico is Senior Author at CNNUnderscored and was formerly Managing Editor at Tom's Guide. When not at piece of work, you can usually catch him playing Street Fighter, devouring Twitch streams and trying to convince people that Hawkeye is the best Avenger.