Editors' note: Origin is no longer offering the Chronos with a Core i5 2550K chip featured in this review. An otherwise identical version is now available for $1,279 with an overclocked Core i5 3750K chip, and an Intel Z77 motherboard.
Origin Chronos
The Good
The Bad
The Bottom Line
The Origin Chronos small form-factor PC helps illustrate why I did not give the Alienware X51 an Editors' Choice Award. Alienware crammed some nice design innovation into its little PC, but unlike the Chronos, the X51 still shows performance compromises due to its small size and, I suspect, Alienware's ties to Dell and the precautions necessitated by large-scale manufacturing. Origin navigates around the size issue with well-chosen components, and the company's independence and smaller manufacturing scale allow it the freedom to overclock. The result is a small gaming desktop I would recommend to anyone.
Our Chronos review system came with the Silverstone SG08 case option, the smallest Origin offers under its Chronos line. The case measures 7.5 inches high, almost 9 inches wide, and just under 14 inches deep, slightly larger overall than the Alienware X51 (13.25x3.75x12.25 inches), but still small enough to make for an unobtrusive living-room system.
The Chronos' size permits only a single graphics card, and Origin has also capped the power supply at 600 watts. That's a reasonable amount of power for a small PC, and almost double the capacity of the Alienware's X51 330-watt PSU. Practically speaking, it means you can use almost any current-generation graphics card in the Chronos. The chief innovation of the X51 is its ability to use a double-wide graphics card in a slim tower case, but the Alienware's smaller power supply means you're limited to midrange GPUs.