Who said console gamers and PC gamers can’t play nice? Origin PC’s Big O, revealed here at CES 2020 today, combines the two in one chassis. Besides a high-end PC, the company will also jam in either a PlayStation 4 Pro or an Xbox One S All-Digital Edition. It’s on sale today starting at $2,499 on Origin’s website.
This isn’t the first time Origin has shown one of these off, either as a concept or a sale piece, but it’s the first time Origin PC has released one since being bought by Corsair last year.
And that means some differences. Primarily, PC gamers may notice a modified Corsair Crystal Series 280X case, rather than one that Origin designed. The dual-chamber design houses the PC on one side and the console on the other.
Origin PC Big O Specs
| PC CPU | Up to AMD Ryzen 9 3900X or Intel Core i9-9900K CPU |
|---|---|
| PC GPU | Up to Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti |
| PC RAM | Up to 32GB DDR4 @ 3,200 MHz |
| PC Storage | M.2 PCIe SSD options |
| Power Supply | 750W |
| Console included | PlayStation 4 Pro or Xbox One S All-Digital |
| Other options | Elgato 4K60 Pro Capture Card, optional SSD to replace console hard drive, RGB, Laser etching |
Both the gaming PC and console portions are liquid cooled, which should result in near-silent operation.
On the PC side, it will go up to an AMD Ryzen 9 3900X or Intel Core i9-9900K, and up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti, though as with most of Origin’s boutique systems, it will be customizable.
The final price will depend on add-ons, including a built-in 4K60 Pro Capture Card from Elgato (another Corsair company), as well as aesthetic options like laser etching.
In theory, you could use the Big O to run both a console and a PC at the same time, as long as you have enough power going to each of them.
I don't get what possible purpose there is for this, or what possible target audience.
Also, the pricing is quite high for what you get. That $2500 starting price for the PS4 Pro version just gets you a GTX 1660 SUPER, an i5-9600K with 120mm AIO, a 1TB mechanical HDD with a 240GB SSD, 16GB DDR4-3000 RAM, a 450 watt SFX PSU, and of course a PS4 Pro. You can technically cut that starting price down by another $150 for the One S version, though I'm not sure why one would do that, especially considering most Xbox One exclusives quickly make their way to the PC, where they should typically run and look significantly better, even on this mid-range hardware.
Plugging this base system's exact same components into PCPartPicker, before adding the console or a Windows license, they only add up to roughly $1050 worth of hardware. Add a PS4 Pro and $100 for a full-priced OEM copy of Windows, and you're still under $1500, making the markup of the system over $1000. And of course Corsair doesn't pay full list price for many of these components. One could also swap some things around and get more gaming performance for their money out of a PC with a $1050 hardware budget, like a better graphics card (RTX 2060), a terabyte of SSD storage, and a PSU with more headroom for future upgrades. And for $1000 more, roughly the price they're asking? One could move up to a 2080 Ti, an 8-core processor, and additional RAM and/or SSD storage, a system that would provide over double the gaming performance in demanding titles.