Along with revealing their plans to launch Steam Machine PCs that will support Valve's SteamOS sometime later in 2014, ORGIN PC made some waves at last week's CES 2014 with the introduction of two new cases, MILLENNIUM and GENESIS, that support what the company calls Variable Mounting. In very basic terms, the motherboard and graphics cards inside those cases can be orientated in four different ways.
ORIGIN PC also announced that that its mid-tower MILLENNIUM case supports an expansion kit that can be placed on the bottom to turn it into a full tower GENESIS case, which will allow it to add two 360 radiators, up to 12 3.5 inch storage drives or up to 24 2.5 inch storage drives. We got the company's CEO Kevin Wasielewski to answer some of our questions about both of these new PC case product innovations.
How did the idea for Variable Mounting of motherboards inside ORIGIN PC's case come about?
When we first launched Origin PC we wanted to give the customer every option possible to configure their system the way they wanted and what would be the best fit for them. We learned in the past that cases play a big part in a custom build. Size, cooling, HD space, drive bays, where it’s going to be placed (left side or right side) and so on. The way we handled it in the beginning, was to give the option of building customer systems in any case they wanted. For the customers, it was great! But internally it wasn’t easy. With so many case builds every department had to deal with unique builds and challenges to deliver a quality product.
So when talks started about designing our own case, we still wanted to give our customers options. It was simple, let’s make a case that can do everything our customers have been asking for! This gave our customers the options they wanted and internally made our lives easier. Supply chain wouldn’t have to source or forecast multiple cases, manufacturing could work off one SOP, shipping had one set of packaging and so on. We also wanted to offer a quality case, it couldn’t just be a re-skin or a case made at our local sheet metal shop, it had to be a case that could compete with other system builders and case manufactures. A lot went into it, we have been working on it for 2 years, with the exception of the hot swap unit, we designed every part and made every tool for the 100+ parts needed. We’re extremely happy with the end result and excited for the launch.
The ability to expand a PC case from a mid-tower to a full tower is also fascinating. Again, how did this idea come about?
This falls in with (the previous question), having a case that could be both a mid or a full gives customers options at purchase as well as a case that can handle whatever type of upgrades they want in the future. You can start with a mid tower air cooled single card set up and upgrade it over time to a full liquid cooled multi card system, all in the same case you started with. For example, small form factors have been popular lately, we have small form factor customers that as time went on they would want to upgrade and will the small form factor they would be limited or have to start over in a new case. So having a case with the ability to expand as you want is a great option.
Everyone says the PC industry is slowing but PC gaming seems to be actually growing. Do you think that companies like ORIGIN PC will benefit more from the slow decline of the larger PC makers?
I don’t think we benefit or continue to grow because of the decline of any other PC makers, I think we are growing because we offer something unique. We strive to offer every customer the best possible PC experience: Personalized service, the most quality customization options, the highest performance, and lifetime 24/7 U.S based support.
Finally is there anything else you wish to say about ORIGIN PC's plans for 2014?
Thanks for your support John and to all of our fans. We are passionate PC gamers and enthusiasts. We wake up every day hungry to keep improving our high performance PCs and we look forward to providing each and every fan the best PC experience possible!
We would like to thank Kevin for answering our questions!
Image via ORIGIN PC
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