14 DAY TRIAL // Intel will start selling its Haswell fourth-generation central processing units this month (May 2014), and motherboard makers should already have shipped their platforms to retailers, so it stands to reason that fully-configured PCs would come out as well.
Origin PC is the company now introducing computers based on the latest processing platform from Intel, otherwise known as Chipzilla.
We're looking at systems based on Intel 9-Series motherboards and running one of the new Core-series Haswell chips.
We know that there are a few Pentium and Celeron chips in the collection, but they're not really good enough for gaming PCs.
And Origin PC's Genesis, Millennium and Chronos series are definitely aimed at hardcore customers that want their computers to look as good as they run.
So what do the newcomers have to offer, you might ask? For one thing, the performance is superior to what came before.
This was a no brainer of course. After all, the new Haswell chips are, for the most part, similar to their predecessors but with 100 MHz extra clock speed.
Another thing is faster data access, owing to the solid-state drives installed in the PCI Express M.2 slot (PCI Express 2.0 x2 interface with up to 1 GB/s maximum bandwidth).
It will give SSD caching a whole new meaning, all the while saving on space. M.2 SSDs are only as large as a DDR3 memory module after all.
Needless to say, Intel Rapid Storage technology is included in the BIOS of the motherboard (though you should have more than one choice even here).
Moving on, there are two SATA Express ports, which let products like the ASUS HyperExpress SSD function at up to 800 MB/s.
In addition to that, there is the normal set of SATA III ports (six in number in this case, with RAID), as well as USB 3.0 support, Gigabit Ethernet, and HDMI plus DVI display ports (among other things).
Finally, Origin PC has offered to overclock your system before shipping it to you, further enhancing the performance. Not that you won't be able to do that yourself. It's not like OC software is all that rare at this point. Most motherboards ship with their maker's own application after all.
The Origin PC Genesis, Millennium and Chronos Z97-based gaming PCs have variable prices, since it's you who chooses the hardware. The starting price is of $1,159 / €1,159 for the small form factor system, $1,674 / €1,674 for the mid-tower, and $1,736 / €1,736 for the full tower (the full tower might be the only one with Z97 for a while).