Tech: Origin Neuron PC review - The Seven Year Itch

PC gamers like me are always on the upgrade treadmill. My 2014 Lenovo K450e desktop was fine for last-gen games, but getting long in the tooth for the ray-traced, PS5/Xbox Series X-level titles on the horizon. So it was time to get a new computer.

Complicating things this time was the COVID-19 pandemic and the worldwide silicon chip shortage. Whereas in olden days I might have swapped out some parts (like when I jammed a new power supply and a GeForce GTX 970 into the cramped K450e case) or built a new PC from scratch, that all seemed impractical when I'd be paying north of $1,300 for the GPU alone. It also meant spending a lot of time ordering stuff online, putting it together, and troubleshooting problems.

So, I went with the expensive, lazy route - I bought a gaming desktop from Origin PC, a Miami-based custom PC maker owned by component maker Corsair:

I went with Origin since I've had good experiences with Corsair products in the past, and because they shipped fast (the computer shipped 10 days after my order, which is incredible in this strange time). It wasn't cheap - an eye-watering $2,700. But the system is equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X, a GeForce RTX 3070, and enough air and liquid cooling, RAM, and SSD hard drive space to support them. Recent games like Doom Eternal and Resident Evil Village run fast, even on max settings and 1440p, so much so that I had to get a new HP Omen 27" display to keep up.

Downsides? Well, aside from the exorbitant price, the small Corsair liquid cooler Origin uses seems pointless, and I could take or leave the glass door and RGB lighting. Still, if you need a gaming PC and you need one now, there are worse choices.