An aquarium of sunshine

THE Original PC Neuron 3500X appears to be like like an costly gaming PC. Corsair, in all its knowledge, ships its Origin PCs in enormous wood crates that you need to open your self. Snuggled inside this crate is a field, and like in a vaudeville act, inside that field is one other field lined in a foam crown and foam footwear. When you’re like me, you rush out of your laptop to your desk as excited as a toddler at Christmas. You should not be like me as a result of that is the case the place if you happen to open it the incorrect manner you would possibly by accident trigger one of many panels to fall in the direction of the bottom.

It is the type of PC that feels far more structurally sound than it’s in individual. No less than it stays recent and appears cool. The air comes from beneath and the facet flows backwards and upwards. That is an efficient, confirmed structure that may maintain issues cool and quiet. The RGB lights present a glow that fills my little gamer’s coronary heart with refined pleasure.

Aquarium tank housing design has caught on for good cause. Now you possibly can see your treasured gamer presents from extra angles. Sadly, I am having points with the Corsair 3500X mid-tower case manufacturing. This appears to be like good, however it’s best to keep away from placing something heavy on it to forestall your sq. field from turning right into a toaster oven.

My setup of the Origin Neuron 3500X would value round $3,387 MSRP, however Origin has it right down to $2,888 on the time of this evaluate. No less than transport is free at this worth, though you will have to interrupt the crate for firewood. It is a cheap worth for what you get, however a part of me is aware of you possibly can demand higher out of your desktop towers. If appears to be like have been every little thing, the PC in its aquarium case can be good. A number of particulars detract from the general solidity of the manufacturing.

Origin PC Neuron 3500X evaluate: Construct high quality

The three Corsair-branded consumption followers are notably good and attention-grabbing, and the iCUE software program put in by default makes it simple to vary the fan shade and sample on every little thing without delay. The Vengeance RGB DDR5 RAM sticks and Capellix XT cooling unit match the aesthetic. From each angle it simply appears to be like good.

However I’ve different points with the Corsair 3500 mid-tower. The Y-shaped grille appears to be like neat but additionally causes the highest sheet to bend in the direction of the middle. You should not place books or different knickknacks on the PC’s major heating vent anyway, however its barely concave form makes it much less engaging. The highest of the field comes with a single USB-C, two USB Sort-A ports, and a 3.6mm headphone jack. There are two further USB-Cs on the rear I/O panel of the MSI Z890-P if you want to plug in further dongles or cables.

All panels are strain mounted with ball joints. These managed to carry tight in the course of the quick journey from the field to my desk, however as quickly as I opened the primary panel to take away this intrusive packaging cellphone, I by accident pushed the entrance panel and virtually despatched falling to the bottom. The primary and rear panels are behind the entrance glass. It is best to take away the font panel earlier than eradicating the edges, though there isn’t a cutout within the body that makes this simpler. If you’re contemplating this chassis, you could should be additional cautious when diving into your aquarium for normal upkeep.

Not like different prebuilt desktops you should purchase, just like the Alienware Aurora R16there isn’t a particular help for the GPU. As an alternative, it merely depends on the rear bracket and PCIe Specific slot to maintain it balanced. That is actually solely a problem once you transfer the PC, however the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Tremendous is a big and busy card. It is going to transfer if you happen to apply some power to the tip that floats freely previous the motherboard.

No less than the PC is silent. The low hum of the followers at idle gives soothing white noise, and even below stress the tower by no means picks up sufficient to be distracting. The within of the PC affords a spacious inside the place you continue to have two RAM slots and a single PCIe Gen 5 slot for gaming if you happen to go for the bigger Nvidia playing cards. Whenever you open the again, you will see that the cables are properly organized, that’s, till you see the mess of cables going in all places within the PSU.

However if you happen to’re shopping for this PC to have a shocking PC that may bathe you in a refreshing RGB glow, the Origin 3500X does the job admirably. Origin’s engineers did an excellent job placing this all collectively, however I discovered there to be too many design particulars for the Corsair case, which detracted from its general score.

Origin PC Neuron 3500X evaluate: efficiency

The configuration Corsair despatched me included 32GB of DDR5, 6,400 MT/s of RAM, the RTX 4080 Tremendous, and Intel’s newest high-end Arrow Lake processor, the Core Extremely 9 285K. This CPI usually reaches clock speeds of three.7 GHz, however TurboBoost is predicted to overclock it as much as 5.7 GHz, not less than in response to the designers.

Till I encountered the Origin, I had but to completely dive into Intel’s newest desktop processor. I nonetheless do not perceive why the chipmaker would abandon earlier technology naming conventions in favor of extra “Extremely” monikers like its latest. laptop chips.

Regardless, I’ve additionally heard murmurings in regards to the chip’s efficiency in comparison with last-generation high-end desktop chips just like the Intel Core i9-14900K. In my very own benchmarking, I discovered that the brand new Intel chip could not sustain in addition to the 14900K, the MG-1 main drive with the identical GPU however the 14th technology Intel gaming processor. The Extremely 9 scored about 200 factors decrease in Geekbench 6 single-core assessments and greater than 1,500 factors decrease in multi-core assessments. The Extremely 9 performs about 65 factors higher in Cinebench multi-core rendering duties.

None of my CPU benchmarks have performed something to defeat chip aficionados’ claims that Arrow Lake is healthier for productiveness however worse for gaming. Within the 3D Mark assessments, in opposition to an RTX 4080 Tremendous, Maingear’s PC carried out higher within the 3D Mark Time Spy and Metal Nomad benchmarks.

It isn’t such as you will not get nice gaming efficiency from this Origin PC. I put the machine by means of its paces in a number of video games at totally different resolutions. In Cyberpunk 2077 non-benchmarked gameplay with an ultra-wide decision of 3440 x 1440, I might obtain round 50 FPS on the highest settings, with ray tracing enabled and with out DLSS. With Nvidia’s upscaling, you possibly can attain round 90 FPS in frenetic scenes. In 4K, Cyberpunk begins to drop to 30 FPS.

You actually cannot anticipate higher from a PC at this worth. Baldur III’s Gate was easy, doing 105 FPS outside in Act 1 and round 87 FPS within the metropolis in Act III, I performed Warhammer 40K: House Marine 2, I used to be seeing round 90 FPS in chaotic scenes.

You may anticipate to max out probably the most demanding titles. On common, I used to be doing 70 FPS with DLSS in Horizon Forbidden West and round 90 FPS in God of Struggle: Ragnarök. The system charges video games properly and performs them properly as properly. The one downside is that it isn’t as clear an expertise as you’d get with the gaming-focused 14th Gen Intel processor. The Neuron mannequin has choices as much as an AMD Ryzen 9 9950x. To be on the secure facet, you possibly can wait till the anticipated AMD 9950x3d is launched subsequent yr.

Origin Neuron 3500X evaluate: Verdict

The Origin Neuron is a stable PC that appears nice in your bed room desk, and it may possibly bathe your whole room in an RGB glow. Keep in mind to consider carefully about your selection of CPU if you happen to go for the PC. It is a beginner-friendly kind of desktop, though you possibly can’t simply rip it out of its wood home and cardboard mattress and bounce into gaming with out some thought. As sturdy because it appears to be like, it has some poor design selections that require you to are inclined to it.