I'm late to this discussion, but I was going through their configurator and saw how insanely overpriced they are. I was thinking maybe it must have been a bug on the configurator or something because the price was so ridiculous, so did a search to see if this was normal. Now I have no problem paying a premium for anything that saves me the trouble doing anything when I get too lazy or am not knowledgeable enough to do it myself, but within reason... Here's an example from their site:
1. I went to the configurator and chose a $166 case, clicked next
2. chose none of the design options, so running price is $166, clicked next
3. it showed the three chipsets to choose from (x79, z87 and AMD FX....), I was looking to choose the x79 and it showed the top of the line processor as the 3970x (this wasn't the selection, it was just showing it as the top of the line for the x79 line). I looked to the right and the running price jumped to $1,975 !!!! What???!?!?!?! ok, so I clicked next assuming this must have defaulted to the top of the line chip which I know is around $1,000 (at this point I'm still wondering where the extra $800 or so was coming from)
4. On the next screen I chose no additional options, but wanted to step down to the intel 3820 i7 which I know was going for $300 at the time. So I'm thinking, if I choose the 3820 plus the $166 case, my running total should drop to $466 plus whatever reasonable markup they would put on top....
5. No, turns out the $1,975 price already had the $300 i7 3820 selected...??? What ?!?!?!
6. I went through the rest of the configurator to see if there were a gang of other options selected by default that were driving up the price... granted Origins available selections are not the crappy options you get with a lot of the other online builders, and are the type of selections I would make if I were building one pieced by piece myself, but the markups seemed crazy... when pricing it out I could prob build the same for about 300-400 less, BUT I started to think that it would save me time sourcing parts, ordering from 10 different vendors, doing the build (which I wouldnt mind actually, worry if it will post because I couldnt guarantee the rev of the board I got, worrying about getting damaged components and going through subjective RMA's...etc....
In the end the question went from is it overpriced to, would I pay an extra 300-400 to skip that above aggravation???
I don't know...now it doesn't seem too bad if you go the cash
With that said, their system do look good though...