ORIGIN PC NEURON

Now we’re cooking

WINTER IS HERE. Luckily, we have a new heater to keep us toasty through the coldest months of the year. A nice little space heater, and it’s even decked out with some sweet RGB lighting. Oh, and it’s a massively powerful gaming system, too.

We’re talking, of course, about the Neuron, a high-end microATX custom build from Origin PC, outfitted in either a Phanteks EVOLV or Fractal Design Define Mini C case. The system we tested utilized the former, featuring tempered glass panels on convenient easy-open hinges. Inside sits an Intel Core i7-8700K CPU overclocked to 5.0GHz, nestled in a nicely featured ROG Strix Z370 mobo from Asus. Intel’s Coffee Lake CPU shines here, able to stably handle Origin’s overclock up to 5.0GHz. Origin’s Frostbyte 360 liquid cooler keeps CPU temperatures under control, hovering at just above 80 C during intense benchmarking load.

It’s a good thing, because the rest of this system is a heat monster. The main offender is the pair of GTX 1080 Ti GPUs stacked on top of each other in SLI. They’re a beast for gaming performance (more on that later), but also generate a ton of residual heat under intense load. We measured temperatures of 80–85 C both inside the case (measuring the outer panel of the top GPU) and pouring out the blower fans out back while playing games at 4K Ultra. These are well within normal GPU range, of course, and won’t throttle your performance, but it was still enough heat to warm our office up a little. In a brief moment of genius/insanity, we decided to see whether we could cook an egg inside. The easy-open tempered glass panels functioned like an oven door as we popped an egg into a tin foil container on the GPU stack. It took about an hour, but the food did cook. You’ve had eggs over-easy—we call this eggs over-clocked.

POWER OVERWHELMING While it can pull double-duty as a backup breakfast oven, the Neuron’s primary function is that of an extreme gaming PC. That should be expected, with a pair of topend GTX 1080 Tis handling GPU duties, but it was still impressive to see in person. We ran all of our gaming benchmarks at 4K, using the highest available graphics preset, and the pair of monster cards did not disappoint. In Riseof the TombRaider, the Neuron averaged 99fps across the three-part benchmark, returning 125fps in the Mountain Pass, 91fps in Syria, and 81fps in the Geothermal Valley. More demanding was TotalWar:WarhammerII, which we tested using DirectX 11 and the Battle benchmark. The score there was 76fps, again at 4K max settings.

Most demanding was GhostRecon: Wildlands, a game that often cripples single-GPU systems, even when running at only 1080p. The Neuron was up to the challenge, but just barely, scoring 53fps using the Ultra preset—at 4K, of course. With a slight bit of tinkering, that number should stay above 60 without a problem. We also tested all three versions of 3DMark Fire Strike: The Neuron scored 34,380 in the regular Fire Strike test, 22,909 in Fire Strike Extreme, and 13,283 in Fire Strike Ultra, corresponding to performance at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K respectively.

Unrelated to performance, but very impressive all the same, are the elegant RGB touches Origin has added to the already great Phanteks EVOLV case. All the components are tucked away tidily, while a strip of LEDs adorning the viewing panel gives everything a cool, pulsating, moonlit glow. This light show co-ordinates nicely with G.Skill’s Trident Z RGB RAM, an application of RGB lighting we thought was ridiculous on paper, but actually looks pretty awesome in person.

All in all, we were very impressed with the Neuron, even if it does run a little on the hot side. Boasting top-end components (and a price to match), it’ll do just about anything you ask—including cook you breakfast.