Fish tank of light

This is the kind of PC that looks much more structurally sound than it is in person. At least it stays cool and looks great. The air comes from the bottom, and the side flows back and up. It’s an effective, well-proven layout that will keep things cool and calm. RGB lights provide a glow that fills the little player’s heart with hidden joy.

The design of the sump tank can has caught on for good reason. Now, you can see your valuables from more angles. Unfortunately, I’m having issues with the craftsmanship of the Corsair 3500X mid-tower case. It looks good, but you should avoid placing anything heavy on top of it to prevent your square box from turning into a toaster oven.

My Origin Neuron 3500X configuration would cost around $3,387 MSRP, but Origin has reduced that to $2,888 as of the time of this review. At least it comes with free shipping at this price, although you’ll need to disassemble the firewood box. It’s a fair price for what you get, but part of me knows you can demand the best from your desktop towers. If looks were everything, a PC in its own aquarium case would be picture perfect. Many details detract from the overall solid production.

Origin PC Neuron 3500X review: Build quality

The three Corsair-branded intake fans are particularly fun and eye-catching, and the iCUE software installed by default makes it easy to change the fan color and pattern on everything at once. The Vengeance RGB DDR5 RAM and Capellix XT cooling unit fit the aesthetic. From every angle, it simply looks good.

But I have other problems with the Corsair 3500 midrange tower. The Y-shaped grille looks clean but also makes the top layer curve toward the center. You shouldn’t put any books or other objects on your PC’s main heater vent anyway, but its slight concave shape makes it look less attractive. The top of the box comes with one USB-C port, two USB Type-A ports, and a 3.6mm headphone jack. There are two additional USB-C ports on the MSI Z890-P’s rear I/O panel if you need to connect some extra dongles or cables.

All panels are press fitted with ball and socket joints. These managed to survive the short trip from the box to my desk, but as soon as I opened the main panel to remove that annoying packaging phone, I accidentally pushed the front panel and sent it nearly crashing to the floor. Both the main and rear panels are located behind the windshield. It’s best to remove the line panel before removing the sides, although there’s no hole in the frame that makes this easy. If you are considering this structure, you may need to be extra careful when diving your aquarium for regular maintenance.

Unlike some other pre-built desktops you can buy, e.g Alienware Aurora R16There is no special chip for the GPU. Instead, it relies solely on the back bracket and PCIe Express slot to keep it balanced. This is only really an issue when you’re transporting a PC, but the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super is a large, portable card. It will vibrate if you apply some force to the end that is floating freely outside the motherboard.

At least the computer is quiet. The low hum of the fans during idle provides soothing white noise, and even under stress, the tower never picks up enough to be distracting. The inside of the computer offers ample internal space as you still have two RAM slots and one PCIe Gen 5 slot to play with if you opt for larger Nvidia cards. When you open the back, you’ll find that the cables are neatly organized, that is, until you see the jumble of cables going in every direction to the PSU.

But if you’re buying this PC to get a great-looking PC that bathes you in a cool RGB glow, the Origin 3500X does the job admirably. Origin’s engineers did a fair job of putting it all together, but I find that there are too many design details to the Corsair’s case, which hurts its overall rating.

Origin PC Neuron 3500X review: Performance

The configuration Corsair sent me included 32GB of DDR5 memory, 6400MB/s RAM, an RTX 4080 Super, and Intel’s latest Arrow Lake CPU, the Core Ultra 9 285K. CPI typically reaches clock speeds of 3.7GHz, but TurboBoost should overclock up to 5.7GHz, at least according to the designers.

Until I met Origin, I had never fully delved into Intel’s latest desktop-level CPU. I still don’t understand why the chipmaker ditched the naming conventions of last generation in favor of more “Ultra” monikers like its latest Laptop chips.

Whatever the case, I’ve also heard some rumblings about the chip’s performance compared to better desktop chips from last generation like the Intel Core i9-14900K. In my benchmarking, I found that the newer Intel chip couldn’t keep up with the 14900K — MEINGER MG-1 With the same GPU but Intel’s 14th generation gaming CPU. The Ultra 9 scored about 200 points lower in the Geekbench 6 single-core tests and more than 1,500 points lower in the multi-core tests. The Ultra 9 does better in multi-core rendering tasks in Cinebench by about 65 points.

None of my CPU tests did anything to counter chip enthusiasts’ claims that Arrow Lake is better at productivity but worse at gaming. In the 3D Mark tests, up against the RTX 4080 Super, Maingear’s PC scored better on the 3D Mark Time Spy and Steel Nomad benchmarks.

It’s not like you won’t get excellent gaming performance from this Origin PC. I’ve put the device through its paces in multiple games at different resolutions. in Cyberpunk 2077 During non-standard gaming at 3440 x 1440 ultra-wide resolution, I was able to reach around 50 fps at the highest settings, with ray tracing enabled and without DLSS. With Nvidia’s upgrade, you can get up to around 90fps in hectic scenes. At 4K resolution, Cyberpunk starts to drop to 30fps.

You can’t really expect more from a computer at this price. Baldur’s Gate III It was very smooth, as I performed 105fps outdoors in Chapter 1 and around 87fps in a city in Chapter 3, and I played Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 and was seeing around 90fps in chaotic scenes.

You can expect to reach the maximum on the most demanding titles. On average, I was doing 70fps with DLSS Forbidden Horizon West And about 90 frames per second God of War: Ragnarok. The system rates games well and plays them well too. The only problem is that it’s not as clean an experience as you’d get with a gaming-focused 14th Gen Intel CPU. The Neuron model has options up to the AMD Ryzen 9 9950x. To be extra safe, you can wait until the expected AMD 9950x3d launches next year

Origin Neuron 3500X review: Verdict

The Origin Neuron is a rugged PC that looks especially great when placed on your bedroom desk, and can bathe your entire bedroom in an RGB glow. Remember to carefully consider your CPU choice if you choose a PC. It’s an entry-level type of desktop computer, although you can’t simply yank it out of its wooden house and cardboard bed and start playing without forethought. As durable as it looks, it has some poor design choices that require you to baby it.