Origin Genesis Review: Triple Titan Terror
by Ryan Smith on April 23, 2013 9:00 AM ESTFinal Thoughts
Though it didn’t go as initially intended, our time evaluating Origin’s Genesis ended up being enlightening for entirely different reasons. It’s one thing to look at a tri-SLI system, but it’s extremely rare that we get to look at any kind of liquid cooled GPU system, let alone one packing 3 cards as fast as NVIDIA’s GTX Titan. NVIDIA told us that they wanted to showcase tri-SLI Titan in an interesting manner, and though this isn’t quite what they had planned Origin has unquestionably done just that.
The Genesis, simply put, is obscene. With a heavily overclocked Core i7 processor, 3 overclocked GTX Titans, RAID-0 SSDs, liquid cooling throughout, and a number of other smaller touches, the performance of the Genesis is on a level all its own. Which almost presents us with a problem, since so much of the review process is comparative. The Genesis is essentially the fastest thing you can build in an ATX form factor, packing some of the most powerful components available today and built in a case heavy-duty enough to flatten someone ACME style. What can you even begin to meaningfully compare that to?
At nearly $9,000 for our system as equipped, the Genesis stands alone in every possible way. Perhaps it’s fitting then that it’s a lot like the GTX Titan itself: expensive, powerful, and impressive. With Titan NVIDIA set out to create a luxury video card, and the Genesis is the logical conclusion of that process, bringing Titan into a luxury computer. A $9000 gaming computer isn’t economical by any definition of the word, but for the few that can afford such a toy, there simply aren’t any other toys like this.
Ultimately in evaluating the Genesis it’s not a question of value for its potential customers, but rather a question of needs and tradeoffs. 3 Titans in tri-SLI offers a level of gaming performance that exceeds all but the most challenging games, and while even 2 Titans may be necessary to drive a single display, with 3 Titans it’s simply a foregone conclusion that it’s intended to drive surround gaming. It takes something this powerful to unlock the ability to run at the highest quality settings at the highest resolutions.
The tradeoff for all of this is that powerful systems consume a lot of power themselves, and the Genesis is no exception. The Genesis is built to consume 1200W in power and expel it as 1200W in heat, something it does extremely well thanks to the liquid cooling system. That liquid cooling system is always active however, so if the Genesis does have one drawback it’s that while it sings under load, that cooling system is singing under idle, too.
As for Titan itself, though Anand and I agreed in our look at Falcon Northwest’s Tiki that the SFF is the most interesting application of Titan right now in this age of power efficiency and quiet computing, tri-SLI Titan is a stark reminder that there are benefits for going big, too. Once you get past the hump of SLI versus the multi-monitor performance penalty, SLI scaling is at least solid on everything we’ve tested. And despite our concerns about being CPU limited, at multi-monitor resolutions and backed by a bleeding edge CPU there’s still plenty of room for Titan to soar. Tri-SLI Titan can handle everything we throw at it and then-some. Ultimately it’s serving a niche of a niche (of a niche), but the performance is there for a price.
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sticks435 - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
I agree with some other replies, they should have waited and used the 900D and also used thicker rads. That's the reason the fans have to be turned up so high. Those look like 35mm rads, which probably have a high FPI count (20-30) is my guess. If they had used thick 60mm rads, they could have turned the fans down much lower or only used 1 set and got the same or better temps at lower noise. Dual loops would have also helped, but at that point you might as well do it yourself lol.rohini - Wednesday, April 24, 2013 - link
oh God!What the hell will you do with such a config? You're wasting power nothing else. Even a single Titan is more than sufficient for all the latest games let alone the 3 way SLI.
Silma - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
For $9k I'm not expecting a 51dB loud computer but rather about 35dB.I have a loud computer with otherwise perfect specs and boy I am looking forward to the next one which will be silent as a priority.
Also 240GB SSD is absolutely not enough, for the price I'm expecting 480GB at the very least.
Otherwise it looks like a great PC.
ChuckyDB - Thursday, April 25, 2013 - link
Honestly, the cooling is clearly poor for that price.That crazy overclock sure is heating up the water, but not like those power hungry Titans.
I have seen on a forum a dude with 2 Titans on water at around 40C.
This build, with the cards being at 66C, that means the water is quite hot. No wonder the cpu is going over 80. For a build of this magnitude, it is quite sad.
For cooling that CPU, I would have taken 2 radiators because of that overclock, and 2 radiators for each GPU to keep that water temperature down. That's 8 radiators total. 5 isn't enough for a single loop.
Personnaly, I would have either:
1) Made a double loop, that way the gpus could have heated the water all they wanted on their side and the cpu would have had more breathing space.
2) Or, if I'm not mistaken, that looks like some Koolance quick disconnect plugs around the gpus. http://koolance.com/help-quick-disconnect-shutoff-...
That means we could easily add a radbox on the back and get 3 more radiators in that system. http://koolance.com/radiator-mounting-bracket-with...
That would give a much better thermal performance, and mabey give the chance to keep the fans a low speed at all time. Sure it looks ugly, but someone who can do it should in my opinion.
dishayu - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
This system has more frame buffer than RAM. :|chazh - Friday, April 26, 2013 - link
this is 8K stuff. beastly mainly. it must be targeted the enthusiast gaming user.with those triple titans it seem the motherboard is not quite match.
otherwise, maybe maximus v extreme will be a wise choice.
and without a discrete sound card..well i feel something missing in this rig.
wshawn - Saturday, April 27, 2013 - link
Let me buy a server and a couple of I7-3xxx systems and a decent laptop. I'll probably still have money left over. There isn't $9k worth of anything here."These aren't the droids you're looking for. Move along."
Conficio - Sunday, April 28, 2013 - link
+Ryan are you susing a DSLR type camera? If so you can reduce the glare and reflections on the cases by buying a polarization filter and using it accordingly. Would make great reviews even better!Thanks for your hard work.
fuzz111111 - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Are you sure it was the CPU holding some games back? Nvidia cards, without a patch, run at PCIE 2.0 on X79, and this apparently bottlenecks SLI setups:https://forums.geforce.com/default/topic/516811/ge...
UltraTech79 - Tuesday, April 30, 2013 - link
Really? $9000 and they put fucking TITANs in there?Morons.