Origin Systems’ entry in the Steam Machine market would look right at home atop your television, if we hadn’t advanced to the point where such a thing requires tremendous balancing skills. The Chronos looks like my brother’s stereo in 1989. I can dig it.
Steam Machines come in all shapes and sizes — one might say they come in as many sizes as gaming PCs themselves, which would be incredibly accurate. Some try to be fancy. Others try to sidle up to your television so you don’t notice it. The Chronos sits there, as if to say “What? You have a problem with me sitting here?”
It might look a bit staid here, but inside it’s all party. Fully customizable, it’s got support for Origin’s FrostByte liquid cooling. It can handle up to 14 terabytes of storage (6tb in the standard edition). It comes with a Steam controller, and the option to dual-boot Steam OS with Windows. It can even handle two video cards in SLI at once, or you can opt for the smaller, stockier standard edition.
Again, I like it. It’s a no-nonsense sort of machine. Sure, you can trick it out with custom paint, but why ruin such a proud, boxy figure?
How much will we pay? That’s still up in the air. All we know is the Chronos is coming “soon” in 2014, and God help anyone who gets in its way.
CHRONOS (Standard Edition) –Specs Will Be Fully Customizable
Entry specs (always subject to change)
Motherboard: ASUS Maximus VI Impact
Optional Custom Paint With Automotive Finish
Liquid-Cooling: ORIGIN FROSTBYTE 120 Sealed Liquid Cooling Systems
Processor: Up to an Intel Core i7 4770K Quad-Core at 4.0-4.5GHZ with ORIGIN PC Professional CPU Overclocking
Power Supply: SG08 600 watt
Graphics Card: Up to Single 3GB NVIDIA GTX 780 Ti with Professional GPU Overclocking
Memory: Up to 16GB 2133Mhz (2x8GB)
OS: Steam OS (Will Include Optional Dual Boot to Windows 7 or Windows 8 Home or Pro)
Hard Drive 1: Up to Dual 1TB Samsung 840 Evo Series
Hard Drive 2: 4TB Western Digital Black SATA 6.0Gb/s, 7200RPM, 64MB Cache
Optical Drive: 6X BD-R Slim Blu-ray Burner/8X DVD+/-R/2.4X +DL
Audio: ROG SupremeFX High Definition 7.1 Channel
Network: Built in Wi-Fi
CHRONOS (SLI Edition) – Specs Will Be Fully Customizable
Entry specs below (always subject to change)
Motherboard: ASUS Maximus VI Gene
Optional Custom Paint With Automotive Finish
Liquid Cooling: ORIGIN FROSTBYTE Sealed Liquid Cooling System
Processor: Intel Core i7 4770K Quad-Core at 4.0-4.5GHZ with ORIGIN PC Professional CPU Overclocking
Power Supply: 850 Watt Corsair RM850
Graphics Cards: Up to DUAL 3GB NVIDIA SLI GeForce GTX 780 Ti with Professional GPU Overclocking
Memory: Up to 32GB 2133Mhz (4x8GB)
OS: Steam OS (Will Include Optional Dual Boot to Windows 7 or Windows 8)
Solid State Hard Drive: Up to Dual 1TB Samsung 840 Evo Series
4 Hot Swap Drives: Up to 4 (1TB) Samsung 840 Evo Series
Additional Storage Drives: Up to Dual 4TB Western Digital Black SATA 6.0Gb/s, 7200RPM, 64MB Cache
Optical Drive: 6X BD-R Slim Blu-ray Burner/8X DVD+/-R/2.4X +DL
Audio: ROG SupremeFX High Definition 7.1 Channel
Media Card Reader: 40-in-1 Media Card Reader
Network: Built in Wi-Fi
