Origin PC EON17-SLX Gaming Laptop Review

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Price Analysis & Conclusion

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Unlike the Acer Predator 21 X, the Origin PC EON17-SLX isn’t a flashy showpiece. It’s a no-nonsense gaming powerhouse.

In synthetics, the EON17-SLX is second to none, besting the Predator 21 X in GPU-heavy workloads such as 3DMark, while trading blows with the Eurocom Tornado F5 in platform-based benchmarks. The Origin also produced the highest 128K sequential read speeds, making it not only the king of productivity, but of multimedia as well.

But you don’t consider a gaming laptop for productivity alone. Gaming comes first and foremost, and the Origin PC EON17-SLX doesn’t disappoint. The dual GTX 1080s turn Full HD into a cakewalk, with titles such as Alien: Isolation and Bioshock Infinite performing in excess of 100 FPS. Even Metro: Last Light Redux, a demanding game in years past, proves insignificant against the EON17-SLX’s prowess.

The EON17-SLX even stands tall at Ultra HD in all but the most demanding titles. One noteworthy example is The Division, where only the Origin laptop is capable of delivering 60 FPS.

Thermal dissipation proved to be one of the EON17-SLX’s biggest challenges, particularly because its cooling solution was responsible for maintaining both a desktop CPU and two GTX 1080s at safe operating temperatures. The graphics cards maxed out at 71° C after a 15 minute Furmark stress test, which isn’t alarming, but not quite as cool as the competition. The much larger Predator 21 X sports a more robust cooling solution, and the other systems simply consumed less power, thus generating less heat than the Origin.

The heat generated by the EON17-SLX is a result of power-hungry components. The Origin had the shortest battery life out of all competitors, and with SLI enabled, couldn’t even deliver an hour of game time. Disabling one of the GPUs only improves matters by about eight minutes, whereas less powerful systems such as the MSI Titan SLI was capable of at least 80 minutes of play time with one GPU disabled. The EON17-SLX simply wasn’t made to game while on the move.

While the Origin’s UHD IPS display exhibited great contrast, it had the lowest grayscale and color accuracy out of the bunch.The calibration profile only improved the grayscale accuracy, but imposed a detrimental effect otherwise. With and without the profile, RGB levels were imbalanced in favor of reds, and its high average gamma point results in oversaturation.

Origin EON17-SLX’s chassis features an exclusively plastic build, but despite that it doesn’t compromise on build quality. The keyboard is comfortable to type on, the lighting effects are comprehensive, and the sound quality is outstanding. Our biggest complaint is M.2 storage access, which requires a full teardown to access. To a lesser degree, the touchpad felt lackluster, but you probably won’t use it much anyway.

This particular EON17-SLX comes in at $4,934, but you can drive the price down if you don’t include the wooden crate and Origin PC poster or find an Origin PC promo code. We would hardly call that affordable, but it’s still nearly half the price of the Predator 21 X, which is priced at a staggering $9,000. On top of that, it performs better nearly across the board, so if you can live without the 21-inch curved display and half the SSD storage volume, the Origin is a no-brainer. However, at this point you have to consider whether the additional performance is worth it. The MSI GT73VR Titan SLI and Eurocom Tornado F5 both offer outstanding performance as well, and they do so at $3,600 and $3,100, respectively. At nearly $5,000, you can build an outstanding gaming desktop with enough money left over for a budget or even modest gaming laptop.


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Alexander Quejado
17 Comments Comment from the forums
  • g-unit1111
    What's up with laptop manufacturers including A/C adapters that are the size of a small textbook? Does it really take a huge A/C adapter to power laptops these days?
    Reply
  • Rookie_MIB
    Heck, at $3600 for the MSI, you could take the difference and build a VERY good full blown desktop class gaming machine.
    Reply
  • the nerd 389
    Just curious:

    Have you guys ever considered testing using an external display so you can do a frame-time/F-CAT analysis?

    I get the feeling that the cooling solution in this laptop is coming up short, and that would show up in your frame time variance tests.
    Reply
  • dark_lord69
    "cooling solution"
    "show up in your frame time variance tests."

    LOL
    Reply
  • TMTOWTSAC
    To be fair, trying to effectively cool a pair of 1080's along with a 7700k plus a 4k screen all shoehorned into an 18 inch laptop would probably require the bottom of the laptop to consist entirely of fans at rpms so high the laptop hovers in midair.

    Actually...that would be a completely awesome no-lap-needed computer/drone.
    Reply
  • TJ Hooker
    19980951 said:
    "cooling solution"
    "show up in your frame time variance tests."

    LOL
    Why "LOL"? If the cooling solution is insufficient, the components could throttle (intermittently), resulting in stuttering, which would show up in frame time measurements.
    Reply
  • FritzEiv
    19981179 said:
    19980951 said:
    "cooling solution"
    "show up in your frame time variance tests."

    LOL
    Why "LOL"? If the cooling solution is insufficient, the components could throttle (intermittently), resulting in stuttering, which would show up in frame time measurements.

    In many of our laptop reviews now, especially when we started seeing odd behavior with Max-Q laptops, we started looking at temperatures during gaming benchmark runs. When we see results that don't seem quite right (say two laptops share a configuration -- GPU, CPU, DRAM), we're going back and re-running the tests; and in fact, we're starting to collect more of this information just so that we have it, since we do have to send these samples back.

    Further, we have discussed showing more frame time data, just like we do in our gaming tests on CPUs and Graphics Cards. We're in the middle of re-tooling some of our scripts, but once we have that pretty much automated, we may start doing that in our laptop reviews.

    Finally, we're also trying to up our game, so to speak, in all areas here. We've done some display calibration, we've had Chris Ramseyer devise some better storage tests, and Igor has worked with us on dialing in the thermal imaging. We'll keep pushing all of it, so thanks for the suggestion(s).
    Reply
  • Kunra Zether
    I like the overall design it's nice and clean cut , I really love the led accents on the back of the screen. I feel like at this price point they should have a mechanical keyboard minus the number pad section. There should definitely be a better quality touch pad, and plastic really?? How about aluminum or even steel I mean at over $4K they give you plastic and on top of it I think you could design a better bezel around that screen too. Unfortunately aswell it sounds like that display is lacking aswell.

    Just build a nice home PC for about 2 to 3K and get a 1060 gaming laptop for on the go much better deal.
    Reply
  • lazymangaka
    I can't help but think if you need 2 AC adapters, you've gone too far in stuffing the laptop full of hardware.

    Also, why do you need 2 AC adapters, but they're still able to combine down to a single port? That seems like a lot of power to pack into one little port.
    Reply
  • ledhead11
    My family asked and help pitch in years ago for an MSI GT80 TITAN 980M SLI rig for graduation. Mostly happy other than feeling burned when MSI abandoned various levels of support for it.

    That being said, it was one of the final of these types of SLI monsters to feature the single brick.

    @Just curious:

    "Have you guys ever considered testing using an external display so you can do a frame-time/F-CAT analysis?

    I get the feeling that the cooling solution in this laptop is coming up short, and that would show up in your frame time variance tests."

    For awhile I had it hooked up to a couple of different displays(a 1080p/120hz/3d and 1440p/144hz/3d). I can at least tell you that yes, if the external display offers greater potential the rig will do its best and eventually throttling happens. I never did f-cat with mine but did do plenty of gaming. Ultimately I just use it's built-in display now and as a portable high end desktop between work and home.

    Now years later having built/upgraded my desktops to 1 1080TI and the other 1080 SLI I really feel they should just abandon any SLI and just stick with a 1080TI/1440p-144hz Gsync. I know they don't exist yet but honestly that would be the best path IMO. Less power, less heat, maybe back to single brick, smaller chasis/case(maybe) and a screen that would impress most hardcore gamers.
    Reply