Origin PC Chronos Review: A Powerful Small Form Factor Desktop PC For 4K Gaming

Before bringing this article to a close, we'd like to cover a couple of final data points— namely, power consumption and noise. Throughout all of our benchmarking and testing, we monitored acoustics and tracked how much power our test system was consuming using a power meter.

Total System Power Consumption And Acoustics Tested at the Outlet

Noise

Let's talk a moment about system noise. A compact system of this caliber is not going to be silent, and so it goes with the Chronos as configured—you can hear the whir of the CPU's liquid cooling fan and graphics card cooler when either part is stressed. The Chronos is mostly muted when knocking around Windows, but once you tap into those resources, you're going to hear the fans. That's not to say the Chronos is obnoxiously loud, but it's definitely audible.

What we found more annoying is the near constant clicking of the 4TB Western Digital Caviar Black hard drive. At first we thought it might be a defect—clicking noises are rarely good when it comes to mechanical HDDs, though oddly enough, it's a good sign in this case. In doing some digging, we found that others have reported hearing the same sound with this particular model (along with some others), which Western Digital explains as a "preventive wear leveling" feature.

"The drive arm frequently sweeps across the disk to reduce uneven wear on the drive surface," Western Digital explains.

We don't want to make a mountain out of a mole hill here, as the clicking sound is mostly muffled and certainly not audible over playing games or music. However, if the Chronos sits just a few feet away, it's hard not to notice the repeated clicks when there is no other other noise to drown it out.

Also keep in mind that the 4TB HDD installed here is optional. There are other HDD options for bulk storage, including an 8TB Seagate HDD that is only $112 more than the 4TB WD model.