Origin PC Millennium: 3-Way SLI And A 4.6 GHz Core i5

[Sakkura]

I feel like the window in which 'Millennium' was a relevant, interesting, and new-age thing to name something has been closed for a few years now. A $700 price premium over the parts purchased separately is nothing to scoff at either. While I'd imagine on cheaper systems the margin is lower, but I still didn't expect it to be more than $50 or $100 over the parts on their own.

Just having them overclock the processor adds $101 to the price.

Edit: It 'only' costs $98 to have them overclock a Core i7-3770k though.

 

[bigleaguejammer]

Measuring noise from the back of the case like that doesn't accurately reflect what people will hear when using the computer. Nobody sits behind the computer when using it. You are usually off to the side and maybe in front of it to a degree.

 

[maxinexus]

Why 3 way SLI ? 2 way 680 is for the same price and with better berformance

 

[Onus]

My ratio of Money:Sense isn't high enough to allow me to consider such a machine.

 

[Th_Redman]

Sorry Tom's...agree with a lot of the commentors that agree that this is overpriced and it's basically no better than people going to their local Best Buy, Futureshop etc and, without doing any research on what they want a computer to do for their needs, buying "retail" and not either building a system themselves or, even better for the economy, having someone build it for them and save hundreds of dollars and employing that tech person. To provide us an article on a store bought system degrades you guys to us that prefer to go on the forums, ask the questions when we have a tech problem, or advice on parts etc., to be able to build our own computers...as you guys do with your $500, $1000 and $2000 systems for performance-to-price comparisons that you do. So, are you getting financially rewarded for bringing this article that you clearly are recommending overall?

 

[blazorthon]

[citation][nom]pchisholm[/nom]They are 4 extra 'threads' not 'cores'. And there is next to no difference in maintaining 3 vs 2 vs 1 graphics card - they all us the same driver. I guess being an AMD fanboi you'd find it hard to get your head around such concepts.[/citation]

I guess you didn't know that different GPU setups are treated differently by drivers. Dual-GPU solutions have nearly as much support as single GPU solutions, but triple and quad GPU solutions have inferior support. Real nice of you to call someone a fanboy for being more knowledgeable about the topic than you, although you're right about cores versus threads for i7s.

 

[g-unit1111]

$3K system you'd better have it come in some good packaging. I'm debating between getting a Sony VAIO or an Origin PC for my next laptop and I'm leaning more toward the Origin for the packaging. :lol:

 

[fkr]

so obviously for me and 90% of the readers of this article we would never buy this; however, if I had a friend who wanted a top of the line machine I would recommend this. I would add the extra warranty and HDD space. A few of my friends that I have known for over 30 years force me to play xbox just because gaming on a computer can have it difficulties. Maybe a few of the readers here have never payed for tech support or had a tech come to their office or home but I used to charge $100+ per hour to do work. At that rate that would only be 10 or so hours of tech support. I think this an okay deal for a non tech savy user who just wants things to work and when they do not they can get 24/7 support. I am not helping my friends at 2 A.M., I have kids.

I enjoy building and troubleshooting machines. I built this same rig minus 2 graphics cards. The first SSD was a fail and one stick of ram was also a fail. Most of the people i know could have never figured this out, they would rather fish than fix computers and maybe fishing while somebody else figures out their issues is worth the extra money.

The market dictates what something is worth not the individual and that is why apple sucks and android rules, jk.

 

[hapkido]

RAID 0 SSDs is not smart -- you lose TRIM support. Spend your SSD budget on a larger drive. With 3rd and 4th gen SATA III drives, they're unlikely to be the bottleneck in anything you'd notice. A mechanical drive will be the bottleneck moving files between drives, network speed will be the bottleneck moving files around your LAN, BIOS boot time will be the slowest part of booting Windows.

I'm ok with the tri-SLI setup, but not with gtx660ti and its 2GB memory and 192-bit memory interface. It's fine for single-screen 1600p or lower, but I'd want at least 1GB memory for each 1080p or 1200p screen in a three-monitor setup. hd7950s would have been a better choice for similar cost.

i7 may not be needed for gaming today, but it's completely silly a $3000 PC only has an i5. Those four extra threads will come in handy over the life of this thing.

I'm not going to complain about the price because they type of people who buy PCs like this have more money than they have know-how or patience, but it's like they asked a 15-year-old who's just getting into building PCs to pick out parts.

 

[Hellbound]

As a custom PC builder, its easy for people like myself to say "meh, to much for what you get".. But for those people who have no idea where to start, or are all thumbs (my brother included), purchasing a "made to order" pc is just about their only option.

 

[DarkSable]

As a custom PC builder, its easy for people like myself to say "meh, to much for what you get".. But for those people who have no idea where to start, or are all thumbs (my brother included), purchasing a "made to order" pc is just about their only option.

1) Get a bit of advice, from say, his tech brother, or from forums such as these.

2) Watch a 5 minute youtube video, watching it again as you assemble the computer.

3) ...? (Presumably staring in astonishment at how much money you didn't waste)

4) Profit.


Either that, or pay someone $100 to design and build the computer for you. You bolster the local economy and STILL get a way better computer.

 

[fedelm]

I guess this article is the opposite of preaching to the choir, huh?

Is there no microstuttering analysis? I'd be concerned if I paid 3k for a machine in which games microstutter.

I'd focus on this in every multi-card setup article.

 

[Onus]

Hapkido, the only reason I couldn't thumb-up your post (I didn't thumb-down) is because the new Intel drivers do indeed support TRIM in RAID0 arrays.

 

[husker]

To call the pricing a rip-off is just plain stupid. This company has to employ people, paying for things like salaries, insurance, payroll taxes, etc. They also have to factor in the cost of their building and administrative facilities (things like electric bills, leasing costs, office furniture). Then on top of that there is the tech support which is mentioned in the article which is easily worth a hundred dollars. People say they like to build PC's -- me too. Who here likes getting a phone call at dinner time because someone downloaded a virus and they want you to come over and fix things because "you built the PC" and therefore are their only source of support? And those types of calls become endless: how do I install/uninstall this? where is the windows option for that? Also, if you build PCs as a hobby, are you registered with your respective local, state, and federal government agencies so that they can ensure that you comply with all the regulations and tax codes? Better add the cost of an accountant and lawyer to you PC build costs.

 

[quangluu96]

[citation][nom]EzioAs[/nom]"This system’s starting price is a relatively modest $1,225. For that, you get a Core i3-2120 CPU, an AMD Radeon HD 7750 graphics card, and a 500 GB hard drive."Wow, talk about rip off...[/citation]
Agree, since I'm lazy to build my own, I just head off to cyberpower and get myself a GTX 680, 8GB ram an i5 3570k for around 1300$

 

[bryonhowley]

[citation][nom]DjEaZy[/nom]... origin had the poor sense to put windows 7 in it...[/citation]
So not only are we paying way to much for it we get a inferior out dated slower obsolete OS that we would have to spend more money on just to bring it up to date with Windows 8.

 

[hytecgowthaman]

Gpu set up look like this. 1x gpu=x16; 2x gpu=x16+x16=(x32); 3x gpu=x16+x8+x8=(x32); 4x gpu=x16+x8+x4+x4=(x32). so 2xgpu=4xgpu.
My questions:
1.That motherboard has 3gpu x16slots.
2.Cabinet support how many extra fans.
3.Is the processor has watercooled or air cooler only.
4.Did you believe 1 TB hdd is enough for backup.
5.Why not using ssds for boot.
6.Why use i5 processor for above 3000$ system.
7.How much year warenty.(give lifetime warenty).
8.Is the system has any custamization options available.
9.How much psu it has.
10.It support i7 processor.
11.It has ddr3 2100mhz+ oc enabled x6 ram slots.

 

[army_ant7]

So... no mention of the fact that you're paying for a lot of things you don't need? In it's head-to-head against the DIY rig, I'm noticing a LOT of parts that I wouldn't even consider spending extra money on.
And they're getting those parts at a discount, so you're paying a lot of money for that tech line.

I believe the writer specifically pointed out the fact that there is a price premium, but also mentions what you're paying that premium for. Whether the do or don't get discounts on the parts (which isn't surprising if ever), it's all the same to us since we don't normally have access to those discounts anyway, because a lot of us may not buy parts in bulk or something (which takes some management and investment on their part).

I think there a reason for 3 way SLI/CFX used, the third card usually smooth/fix micro shuttering issue... even there no performance benefit/scaling

Is there no microstuttering analysis? I'd be concerned if I paid 3k for a machine in which games microstutter. I'd focus on this in every multi-card setup article.

I'm not sure if it would work the same with multiple cards in SLI, but as shown here Adaptive V-sync seems to effectively combat micro-stuttering with the GTX 690.

 

[army_ant7]

@hytecgowtham
I'm not sure if you're trolling. I don't want to jump to conclusions and accuse you of it. The thing is, a lot of your "questions" are contradictory to what I remember was mention in the article.

For instance:
3. It was mentioned and (or at least) shown to be using a (closed-loop) water cooling system for the CPU/proc.
4. It was at least implied that it would've been nice to have a bigger HDD for backup, so I don't think the author believed 1TB was enough.
5. The SSD's in RAID0 were mentioned to be used as the boot drive.
6. Though it's a valid question, it was mentioned that that's just how it was configured.
7. The warranty was mentioned. I don't totally remember but it's 1 year I think, and can be extended with a price. (Check back in the article to be sure how long.)
8. It was mentioned that you can customize your order, I believe.
9. It was probably listed on the specs page, but I remember something like 1100W from the picture(s).
10. Why wouldn't it?
11. I'm not sure about the max RAM speed, but I doubt it had 6 RAM slots. Didn't pay much attention to that, so I might be surprised and be wrong.

You're questions 1 and 2 could've been easily answered by looking the mo-bo and chassis on the Net, and the rest by reading the article thoroughly and understanding it. Again, I can't help but think you're trolling, but I'm also thinking of the possibility that English isn't you native tongue and you had trouble understanding the article or that you were too lazy to read it thoroughly (no offense).

 

[jemm]

"The included one-year warranty covers parts replacement and 45-day free shipping in case there’s an issue with your system out of the box, as we had with our first system."

I wonder what that issue could be!

 

[Sakkura]

"The included one-year warranty covers parts replacement and 45-day free shipping in case there’s an issue with your system out of the box, as we had with our first system."

I wonder what that issue could be!

They describe the issue on page 2:

With all that said, the first Millennium system we received, while not appearing damaged in any way, failed to recognize one of the three graphics cards. After going through some diagnostics with Origin’s well-informed and patient support staff, we eventually had to send the system back.

 

[jemm]

Oh! I had missed that then, thank you!

 

[Guest]

$730 is labor for Origin to build the system in the first place. I'm good building computers but I don't think I'd touch this build. I'd pay the $700 extra. You guys are too hard on Tom.

 

[BulkZerker]

[citation][nom]rdc85[/nom]I think there a reason for 3 way SLI/CFX used, the third card usually smooth/fix micro shuttering issue...even there no performance benefit/scaling[/citation]

I dunno, when Toms (I think) Did a scaling test with a quartet of 5770s the scaling was fine out to 3 cards, the 4th smoothed it out but only boosted performance around 20% so 5% overhead? Not too shabby.

 

[wdmfiber]

For $3000 they should remove the IHS and replace the cheap tim used on that i5-3570K.

Intel should do a run of 3770K's using fluxless solder. Call it the i7-3770X or something.