Origin PC Neuron 3500X Review: A Fish Tank of Light

The Origin PC Neuron 3500X looks the portion of an costly gaming PC. Corsair, successful each its wisdom, ships its Origin PCs successful immense woody crates you request to burst unfastened yourself. Snuggled successful that crate is simply a box, and similar a vaudeville act, wrong that container is different container covered with a foam crown and foam shoes. If you’re similar me, you unreserved your PC to your table arsenic excited arsenic a kid connected Christmas. You shouldn’t beryllium similar maine due to the fact that this is the lawsuit where, if you unfastened it the incorrect way, you whitethorn accidentally nonstop 1 of the panels tumbling toward the ground.

This is the benignant of PC that looks acold much structurally dependable than it is successful person. At slightest it keeps chill and looks cool. The aerial comes from underneath, and the broadside flows retired to the backmost and top. It’s an effective, well-proven layout that volition support things chill and quiet. The RGB lights connection a glow that fills my small gamer’s bosom with a subtle joy.

The aquarium vessel lawsuit plan has caught connected for a bully reason. Now, you tin spot your costly gamer goodies from much angles. Unfortunately, I person issues with the craftsmanship of the Corsair 3500X mid-tower case. It looks good, but you indispensable debar laying thing dense connected apical to forestall your quadrate lawsuit from turning into a toaster oven.

My config of the Origin Neuron 3500X would outgo astir $3,387 MSRP, but Origin’s knocked it down to $2,888 arsenic of the clip of this review. At slightest it comes with escaped shipping astatine this price, though you’ll request to interruption up the crate for firewood. It’s a just terms for what you get, but a portion of maine knows you tin request amended from your desktop towers. If looks were everything, the PC successful its aquarium vessel lawsuit would beryllium picture-perfect. Several details detract from the wide coagulated production.

Origin PC Neuron 3500X Review: Build Quality

© Photo: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo

The 3 Corsair-brand intake fans are particularly pleasing and eye-catching, and the iCUE bundle installed by default makes it casual to alteration the instrumentality colour and signifier connected everything astatine once. The Vengeance RGB DDR5 RAM sticks and the Capellix XT cooling portion acceptable the aesthetic. From each angle, it simply looks good.

But I person different problems with the Corsair 3500 mid-sized tower. The Y-shaped grating looks cleanable but besides makes the apical expanse crook toward the center. You shouldn’t beryllium plopping immoderate books oregon different knickknacks connected the PC’s main heating vent anyway, but its flimsy concave signifier makes it look little appealing. The apical of the container comes with a azygous USB-C, 2 USB type-A ports, and a 3.6mm headphone jack. There are 2 other USB-C connected the MSI Z890-P rear I/O sheet if you request to plug successful immoderate other dongles oregon cables.

All the panels are pressure-fitted with shot and socket joints. These managed to clasp choky successful the abbreviated travel from the container to my desk, but arsenic soon arsenic I opened up the main sheet to region that obtrusive packing phone, I accidentally nudged the beforehand sheet and astir sent it tumbling to the floor. Both the main and rear panels beryllium down the beforehand solid . You’re amended disconnected removing the font sheet earlier removing the sides, adjacent though there’s nary cutout successful the framework that makes that easy. If you’re considering this chassis, you whitethorn request to beryllium other cautious erstwhile diving into your fishbowl for regular maintenance.

Unlike immoderate different pre-built desktops you tin buy, similar the Alienware Aurora R16, there’s nary peculiar bracket for the GPU. Instead, it relies simply connected the rear bracket and the PCIe Express slot to support it balanced. This is truly lone an contented erstwhile you’re moving the PC, but the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super is simply a ample and in-charge card. It volition wiggle if you use immoderate unit to the extremity that’s free-floating beyond the motherboard.

At slightest the PC is quiet. The debased hum of the fans erstwhile idling offers soothing achromatic noise, and adjacent nether stress, the operation ne'er picks up capable to beryllium distracting. The wrong of the PC offers a spacious interior wherever you inactive person 2 RAM slots and a azygous PCIe Gen 5 slot to play with if you opt for the larger Nvidia cards. When you unfastened up the rear portion, you’ll find the cables are neatly organized, that is, until you spot the jumble of cables going each which mode into the PSU.

But if you’re buying this PC to person a great-looking PC to bathe you successful cooling RGB glow, the Origin 3500X does the occupation admirably. Origin’s engineers did a just occupation putting it each together, but I find determination are excessively galore plan details for the Corsair case, which wounded its wide rating.

Origin PC Neuron 3500X Review: Performance

© Photo: Kyle Barr / Gizmodo

The config Corsair sent maine included 32GB of DDR5, 6400 MT/s RAM, the RTX 4080 Super, and the astir caller top-end Intel Arrow Lake CPU, the Core Ultra 9 285K. That CPI usually hits 3.7 GHz timepiece speeds, but TurboBoost should overclock that up to 5.7 GHz, astatine slightest according to the designers.

Until I met the Origin, I had yet to dive into Intel’s latest desktop-level CPU fully. I inactive don’t recognize wherefore the chipmaker would wantonness the past procreation naming conventions successful favour of much “Ultra” monikers similar its astir caller laptop chips.

Whatever the case, I besides heard immoderate murmurings astir the chip’s show compared to the past gen’s top-of-the-line desktop chips similar the Intel Core i9-14900K. In my ain benchmarking, I recovered the newer Intel spot couldn’t support up arsenic good arsenic the 14900K—the Maingear MG-1 with the aforesaid GPU but Intel’s 14th-gen gaming CPU. The Ultra 9 scored astir 200 points little successful Geekbench 6 single-core and much than 1,500 points little successful multi-core tests. The Ultra 9 does execute amended successful Cinebench multi-core rendering tasks by astir 65 points.

None of my CPU benchmarking did thing to decision spot aficionados’ claims that Arrow Lake is amended astatine productivity but worse for gaming. In 3D Mark tests, going caput to caput with an RTX 4080 Super, Maingear’s PC scored amended successful 3D Mark Time Spy and Steel Nomad benchmarks.

It’s not similar you won’t get fantabulous crippled show from this Origin PC. I enactment the instrumentality done its paces successful aggregate games astatine antithetic resolutions. In Cyberpunk 2077 non-benchmark gameplay astatine 3440 by 1440 ultrawide resolution, I could deed astir 50 FPS astatine the highest settings, with ray tracing enabled and without DLSS. With Nvidia’s upscaling, you tin get up to astir 90 FPS successful frenetic scenes. At 4K, Cyberpunk starts to dip into 30 FPS.

You truly can’t expect much from a PC astatine this price. Baldur’s Gate III was buttery smooth, doing 105 FPS outdoors successful Act 1 and astir 87 FPS successful the metropolis of Act III, I played Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 I was seeing astir 90 FPS successful chaotic scenes.

You tin expect to max retired the astir demanding titles. On average, I was doing 70 FPS with DLSS successful Horizon Forbidden West and astir 90 FPS successful God of War: Ragnarök. The strategy benchmarks games good and plays them well, too. The lone contented is that it’s not arsenic cleanable an acquisition arsenic you would get with the 14th-gen Intel gaming-centric CPU. The Neuron exemplary has options for up to an AMD Ryzen 9 9950x. To beryllium other safe—you could hold for adjacent year’s driblet of the expected AMD 9950x3d

Origin Neuron 3500X Review: Verdict

The Origin Neuron is simply a coagulated PC that looks particularly bully sitting connected your chamber desk, and it tin bathe your full chamber successful RGB glow. Remember to deliberation cautiously astir your CPU prime if you opt for the PC. It’s a beginner-friendly benignant of desktop, though you can’t simply rip it from its woody location and cardboard furniture and get to gaming without immoderate forethought. As sturdy arsenic it looks, it has a fewer mediocre plan choices that necessitate you to babe it.