Light aquarium
The Origin PC Neuron 3500X it looks like the part of an expensive gaming PC. Corsair, in all its wisdom, ships its Origin PCs in huge wooden cases that you have to open yourself. Nestled in this crate is a box, and like a vaudeville act, inside that box is another box topped with a foam crown and foam shoes. If you’re like me, you throw your computer on the desk excited like a kid at Christmas. You shouldn’t be like me, because this is the case where if you open it the wrong way, you might accidentally send one of the panels tumbling to the ground.
Origin PC Neuron 3500X
The Origin PC Neuron 3500X looks premium on your desk, but there are some issues with the 3500X’s case design.
pluses
- Solid performance with top-of-the-line specs
- Quiet fans produce good airflow to keep things cool
- The RGB lighting and aquarium design look stunning on the desktop
cons
- The top of the box is prone to bending under any weight
- Care must be taken when removing computer panels
- Arrow Lake’s configuration doesn’t live up to pure gaming performance
It’s the kind of computer that looks a lot more structurally sound than it is live. At least it stays cool and looks cool. The air comes from the bottom, and from the side flows out to the back and above. It’s an efficient, well-proven layout that will keep things cool and quiet. The RGB lights offer a glow that fills my little gamer’s heart with subtle joy.
The design of the aquarium tank housing has become necessary for a good reason. Now you can see your expensive gaming gadgets from more angles. Unfortunately, I am having issues with the build of the Corsair 3500X mid-tower case. It looks good, but you should avoid placing anything heavy on top to prevent your square case from turning into a toaster.
My Origin Neuron 3500X configuration was going for about $3,387 MSRP, but Origin dropped it to $2,888 at the time of this review. At least it comes with free shipping at this price, though you’ll have to break out the firewood crate. It’s a fair price for what you get, but part of me knows you can demand better from your desktop towers. If looks were everything, a computer in an aquarium tank case would be picture perfect. A few details detract from an overall solid production.
Origin PC Neuron 3500X Review: Build Quality
The three Corsair-branded intake fans are especially nice and eye-catching, and the iCUE software installed by default makes it easy to change the color and fan pattern of everything at once. The Vengeance RGB DDR5 RAM sticks and Capellix XT cooler match the aesthetic. From every angle it just looks good.
But I have other issues with Corsair 3500 mid tower. The Y grid looks clean, but it also makes the top sheet bent toward the center. You shouldn’t be splashing books or other trinkets on the computer’s main vent anyway, but its slightly concave shape makes it look less attractive. At the top of the case there is one USB-C, two USB Type-A ports and a 3.6mm headphone jack. There are two additional USB-Cs on the rear I/O panel of the MSI Z890-P if you need to plug in additional switches or cables.
All panels are pressure fastened with ball and socket joints. They managed to stay tight on the short trip from the box to my desk, but as soon as I opened the main panel to remove this obtrusive packaging phone, I accidentally pushed the front panel and almost sent it to the floor. Both the main and rear panels are located behind the windshield. It is better to remove the font panel before removing the sides, although there is no cutout in the frame to facilitate this. If you are considering this chassis, you may need to be extra careful when diving into your aquarium for regular maintenance.
Unlike some other pre-built desktops you can buy such as Alienware Aurora R16no dedicated GPU bracket. Instead, it relies solely on the rear bracket and PCIe Express slot to keep it balanced. It’s really only an issue when you’re moving the PC around, but the Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super is a big and loaded card. It will wobble if you apply any force to the end that floats freely beyond the motherboard.
At least the computer is quiet. The faint hum of the fans at idle offers soothing white noise, and even under stress the tower never picks up enough to be distracting. The inside of the computer offers a spacious interior where you still have two RAM slots and one PCIe Gen 5 slot to play with if you opt for the larger Nvidia cards. When you open the back, you will find that the cables are neatly organized ie. until you see a mess of cables going in all directions into the power supply.
But if you’re buying this PC to have a great-looking PC that bathes you in cooling RGB light, the Origin 3500X does the job just fine. Origin’s engineers did a fair job putting everything together, but I find there is too much detail to the design of the Corsair case, which hurts its overall rating.
Origin PC Neuron 3500X Review: Performance
The configuration that Corsair sent me included 32GB of DDR5, 6400 MT/s RAM, an RTX 4080 Super, and the latest top-of-the-line Intel Arrow Lake processor, the Core Ultra 9 285K. This CPI normally clocks in at 3.7GHz, but TurboBoost should overclock it to 5.7GHz, at least according to the designers.
Before I was introduced to Origin, I had yet to fully immerse myself in Intel’s latest desktop-level CPU. I still don’t understand why a chipmaker would abandon the naming conventions of the past generation in favor of more “Ultra” monikers like the latest laptop chips.
Whatever the case, I’ve heard some grumbling about the chip’s performance compared to the best last-gen desktop chips like the Intel Core i9-14900K. In my own benchmarking I found that the newer Intel chip couldn’t do as well as the 14900K – Main gear MG-1 with the same GPU but Intel’s 14th generation gaming processor. The Ultra 9 scored about 200 points lower in single-core Geekbench 6 and more than 1,500 points lower in multi-core tests. The Ultra 9 outperforms Cinebench’s multi-core rendering tasks by around 65 points.
None of my CPU benchmarks did anything to disprove claims by chip fans that Arrow Lake is better at performance but worse for gaming. In the 3D Mark tests, compared to the RTX 4080 Super, the Maingear PC scored better in the 3D Mark Time Spy and Steel Nomad benchmarks.
Not that you won’t get excellent gaming performance from this Origin PC. I tested the machine in multiple games at different resolutions. c Cyberpunk 2077 unbenchmarked gameplay at ultrawide 3440 by 1440, I could reach around 50 FPS at highest settings, with ray tracing enabled and no DLSS. With Nvidia scaling you can get up to around 90 FPS in frantic scenes. At 4K Cyberpunk starts dropping to 30 FPS.
You really can’t expect more from a computer at this price. Baldur’s Gate III it was buttery smooth doing 105 FPS outdoors in Act 1 and around 87 FPS in the city on Act III, I played Warhammer 40K: Space Marine 2 I saw around 90 FPS in chaotic scenes.
You can expect to max out the most demanding titles. I averaged 70 FPS with DLSS on Horizon Forbidden West and about 90 FPS in God of War: Ragnarok. The system compares games well and plays them well too. The only problem is that it’s not as pure an experience as you’d get with a 14th gen gaming-focused Intel processor. The Neuron model has options for up to AMD Ryzen 9 9950x. To be safe – you can wait for next year’s drop of the expected AMD 9950x3d
Origin Neuron 3500X Review: Verdict
The Origin Neuron is a solid PC that looks especially good sitting on your bedroom desk, and it can bathe your entire bedroom in RGB glow. Be sure to carefully consider your choice of processor if you choose a PC. It’s a beginner-friendly desktop PC, though you can’t just rip it out of its wooden house and cardboard bed and start gaming without some forethought. As tough as it looks, it has a few bad design decisions that require you to take care of it.
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