Hot on the heels of our recent popular comparison post which compared a gaming PC offered by Harvey Norman to a PC that we offer – here’s a detailed write-up comparing us to Origin PC! Let’s get into it then.
I’ve picked the Millennium series of PC that is offered by Origin PC as it seems to be roughly the closest sized case to what the majority of our cases are.
Once you start customising the Millennium system, you’re greeted with the choice of how you want the motherboard mounted, which admittedly is something we don’t offer, but also a fairly pointless choice at the same time. The next option is picking a colour of the case, the colours offered to me is red, black, and white, something that is usually an option with the cases we offer as a lot of the cases come in 2 or more colours direct from the manufacturer. If you want it in a metallic paint you stand to pay an additional $571, or you can upload your own artwork for an undisclosed price, but at least starts at $571. On the second step I’m also given an estimated ship date for my system, which is 3 weeks away from today, or 15 business days – that’s without even selecting ANY hardware yet. In contrast to all of Evatech’s PCs, unless you select a pre-order item during the build process, after getting payment for your order the maximum days until shipping is 10 business days, but we usually get orders out within 5 business days! We also offer express options if you can’t wait to get your gaming started.
Going ahead, the next step has me select which chipset I want in the PC, I’m going to select the Z170 (Skylake) so we can compare it to our Skylake system. At the top of step 4 we find out that, although the domain suggests it’s Australian with the .com.au address, that all Origin PCs are built and supported in the United States. Hopefully you don’t have any hardware or warranty issues! They also mention they use name brand, non-proprietary components which means optimal performance and maximises upgrade-ability, which is the same as what we do.
For the component selection I’m going to try and match up our version and the Origin PC customised systems as much as they allow. That means keeping it as simple as possible in terms of aesthetic choices, but a healthy PC in terms of gaming and processing performance. While putting the Origin PC together, I got to the end and wanted to change a selected option, there doesn’t seem to be a way to go back or re-customise based on what you already made, so I hit the browser’s back button and it took me all the way back to the beginning with how I wanted the motherboard orientation and case colour choices.
The Evatech Valkyrie custom gaming PC I put together is as follows:
CPU: Intel Skylake i5 6600K 4-Core 3.9GHz
Motherboard: Intel Z170 Chipset ATX Gaming Edition
RAM: 16GB DDR4 Quad Channel Blue Series
Case: NZXT Source 340 Black & Blue Full Tower
Power Supply: 700w ATX 80 Plus Gold
Primary Storage Device: 120G SATA3 SSD
Second Storage Device: 1TB 7200RPM Hard Drive
Graphics Card: Nvidia GTX 980 4GB
CPU Cooler: Cooler Master Liquid Cooler 120mm Seidon 120V Plus
Operating System: Windows 8.1 64bit – Free Upgrade to Windows 10*
Packaging: Heavy Duty Packaging & Internal Packing Foam – Required for all courier shipped custom PCs
Custom PC Warranty: 12 Month On-Site Nation Wide System Warranty
Service: Full Assembly, Burn in Testing & Setup
Total: $2,610
The Origin Millennium is as follows:
Standard Millennium
The ORIGIN Difference: Truly Custom PC’s. Want a component that is not on our site? Call or email us and we will include it in your system.
Variable Mounting: Standard
Case Lighting: Remote Controlled Multi-Colored LED-Millennium
Case Fans: ORIGIN High-Performance Ultra Silent Fans – Black
Motherboard: MSI Z170 Krait Gaming
System Cooling: ORIGIN FROSTBYTE 120 Sealed Liquid Cooling System
Processors: Intel Core i5 6600K Quad-Core 3.5GHz (3.9GHz TurboBoost)
CRYOGENIC Tubing Color: None
Power Supply: 650 Watt Tough Power 80+Gold
CRYOGENIC Liquid: None
Graphic Cards: Single 4GB NVIDIA GTX 980
ORIGIN Professional Graphics Card Overclocking: None
Memory: 16GB ORIGIN PC APPROVED DDR4 RAM 2400Mhz (2 x 8GB) – Z170
Operating System: Genuine MS Windows 8.1 64-Bit Edition
RAID Controllers: None
Operating System RAID Configuration: None
Operating System Drive #1: 120GB ORIGIN PC Approved Solid State Drive
Operating System Drive #2: 1TB SATA 6.0Gb/s, 7200RPM, 32MB Cache
HotSwap Drives RAID Configuration: None
Hot Swap Bay Drive #1: None
Hot Swap Bay Drive #2: None
Hot Swap Bay Drive #3: None
Hot Swap Bay Drive #4: None
Hot Swap Bay Drive #5: None
Hard Drive Cage: 5 Bay Hot-Swap Cage
Optical Drive One: None
Optical Drive Two: None
Playback Software: None
Media Card Reader: None
Audio: On Board Audio
Networking: Onboard Network Port
Capture Cards: None
ORIGIN Maximum Protection Shipping Process: ORIGIN Wooden Crate Armor
Warranty: 1 Year Part Replacement and 45 Day Free Shipping Warranty with Lifetime Labor*
ORIGIN Recovery: ORIGIN Recovery Media
Free ORIGIN T-shirt: ORIGIN PC G8 T-Shirt XXL
Keyboards: None
Mouse: None
Mouse Pad: None
Primary Display: None
Secondary Display: None
Gaming Eyewear: None
Headsets: None
Speakers: None
Security Software: None
Productivity Software: None
Webcam: None
Total: $3,797
Sorry for the walls of text!
Basically they are the same systems hardware wise, and probably quite similar visually speaking too.
- Both systems have a 120mm fan attached to a radiator to liquid cool the same CPU
- Same motherboard
- Same graphics card (Origin does not offer the choice of variant for each card)
- Same RAM
- The power supply on our system has the same rating (80+ gold) but a higher wattage, just because we don’t offer in 50W increments. Your PC will only draw as much power as it needs and no more, so if you buy a 1500W power supply but only need 500W, you’ll only use 500W! The increments on Origin PC’s website jump from 650W, 850W, 1200W, and then 1500W – not much option in the middle range.
- Both come pre-installed with Windows 8.1 64bit (both sites have Windows 10 and Windows Pro options).
- Both PCs have a 120GB SSD as the primary storage drive and a 1TB hard drive as secondary.
- Admittedly we don’t offer a wooden crate armour option for shipping, but we haven’t found anything more than our internal packaging foam, the box and packaging that the computer case came in, and our two layers of bubble wrap to be necessary so far.
- Origin PC offers a 1 year part replacement warranty and a 45 day free shipping warranty with lifetime labour. In contrast to our approach, where we give a minimum of 1 year part replacement warranty (warranty varies with different brands/models of selected hardware, but usually ranges from 2-5 years and sometimes has lifetime warranty), and selectable options for an on-site warranty service agent to come to your location and diagnose hardware faults at no extra cost. Our customers often praise us for our after-sales support when our support team goes out of their way to find solutions for customers with queries. You can see some of the customer feedback here.
Basically, what I’m saying above, is that the two systems are as identical as you can get from us here at Evatech, and the people at Origin PC Australia/USA. For some reason though, you’ll pay $1,187 more at Origin PC. That’s almost half the cost of the PC if you were to buy with Evatech! Undoubtedly both systems, if ordered, would be of equal quality and reliability – neither company would still be in business if they had a bad reputation and unhappy non-return customers, but you have to wonder if it’s worth paying over $1,000 more for essentially the same thing at the end of the day. Origin PC offers a lot more “customisation” in aesthetic ways, but you’ll be charged an arm and a leg for the luxury, and not given any extra performance for doing so.
When it comes to shipping costs, currently here at Evatech we’re offering free shipping on all our custom PCs, if we weren’t offering that however, for just a PC you wouldn’t expect to pay anything more than $100 for an extremely rural destination. Metro/city areas are more around the rate of $20, and we of course offer free in store pick-up for those local to us. On the other hand, Origin PC’s shipping starts at $149 and only goes up from there, no matter where you live, and there’s no mention of pick-ups at all.
Let’s not forget that even if you did decide to pay the exuberant price hike for the same thing at Origin, you’d still be waiting 3 weeks for your order to be dispatched (from the US?) and then endure the shipping times. With Evatech, you’ll definitely get it dispatched within 10 business days (as long as nothing you ordered is pre-order), but more than likely dispatched within 5 business days – and you have the option to get it dispatched sooner if you need it.
Evatech makes high quality custom gaming PCs with a touch of personal style from case design and colour, to fans with various coloured LEDs, and coloured LED strips. Origin makes high quality custom gaming PCs with a lot of personal style options, but will ensure to charge you a lot more than necessary whether you want those options or not – I can’t even imagine how much you could spend on design options if you felt inclined. We feel that the most important thing you will spend the most amount of time looking at is the result of the hardware on the monitor you have, so our focus is on the performance. Origin PC seems to have gone the route of “who has the most unique and ‘good looking’ PC?” Neither approach is necessarily wrong, however. Choice is what makes humans great.
We certainly hope you’ve gained something from this article – it was quite informative for myself and the rest of the staff here to see that we’re going in the right direction and are certainly not overcharging our customers.