Falcon gaming computers reviews

The one caveat is the graphics card, which requires a separate bracket to hold it in place. You can, of course, also build the Talon around Intel parts with the Z chipset. Falcon Northwest pairs the CPU with an all-in-one liquid cooling system from Asetek that includes quite a large radiator with a pair of mm fans mounted to it.

As you might expect, the Ryzen 9 X absolutely dominates in benchmarks. It scored an insane 23, in multi-core and 1, in single-core. Content creation is where those 16 cores and 32 threads start to show their potential. It encoded a 4K movie trailer to H. Here, the two GPUs trade blows on the different tests.

It surpasses the RTX — again, tested in the same exact rig. Just make sure you have a monitor that can handle frame rates this high. But in p, the game really shined, hitting fps with graphics quality maxed. The game still averaged fps at 4K on Ultra settings. The impressive gaming results spell good things for AMD. Nor does it offer the same level of ray tracing capability. That might not be a deal breaker now, but in a few years, it could easily become a must-have feature.

More power to you! But for my money, the RTX offers a better overall value. The step up in quality and extra features make it worth your money, though, especially if you plan to make use of the extra expansion slots. Falcon Northwest also sells its smaller Tiki desktop with up to the Ryzen 9 X, though the configuration options are quite limited at the moment.

The Talon also bundles in an extensive three-year warranty, which covers both parts and labor. How far north depends on what level of computing luxury you are after. Here is what it includes It's decked out with all the bells and whistles, like Wi-Fi 6E, dual 2. Both motherboard options are based on Intel's Z chipset, designed to take full advantage of Rocket Lake.

That includes native PCI Express 4. At a glance, the Talon appears unchanged from when Falcon Northwest redesigned the custom chassis in for its 20th anniversary. We reviewed an AMD-powered Talon back then and came away impressed with the overall build quality and attention to detail, and of course the top shelf parts worthy of a dream PC. While it may look similar, there are several key changes to the newest iteration.

One that Falcon Northwest is particularly proud of is a re-tooling of the hinges. The lofty investment underscores Falcon Northwest's obsession to luxury styling and detail—if you're plunking down several grand for a PC, a minor annoyance can be a major turn-off. It also highlights the flexibility afforded to Falcon Northwest by designing its own case.

By skipping off-the-shelf enclosures for its own design, the boutique builder puts itself in a position to continually tweak and refine them, rather than be bound by what case makers have available any moment in time. The chassis is slightly on the wide side for a mid-tower, which Falcon Northwest cleverly disguises with an angled front panel.

It gives the illusion of a narrower frame, and we only noticed the width after staring at the build for a very long time. The cutout logo of a falcon on the front also diverts the viewer's eyeballs, and gives the Talon some visual flair. This is a metal chassis, with 4mm thick aluminum plating that has been sand blasted for a slightly textured feel.

Along with the matte black finish, it does a mostly good job at resisting fingerprints. Alternatively, Falcon Northwest will happily splash your build with custom UV prints on the front panel, the side panel including the glass side panel , or all around.

We're not just talking about different colors, but complete themes, if you have the requisite coin, like the bodacious Ultima-themed Talon the company built for Richard Garriott aka, Lord British. We did not opt for a paint job, because we wanted to see the system how most people will receive it—with tinted glass side panels on both sides.

And if you'd like a clear glass panel for an unobstructed view of the interior, you can request one, though Falcon Northwest tells us it's a "be careful what you wish for proposition," because without a custom UV print applied, it can show off things you might not want to see, like the adhesive that holds the magnetic strip for the door.

But it's an option. We must admit, though, the tinted glass works well with the RGB lighting. The top of the case is flat and wide—a good resting place for objects, if you're not worried about scratching it up. For our test build, we positioned the external Wi-Fi antenna on top.

There are a lot more ports on the back, courtesy of the motherboard and GPU. But it generally doesn't work out to be a way to save money over an identical prebuilt gaming PC, or if you don't know what a motherboard is and how it works. It may be cheaper to do your own PC build than getting a premium custom PC model from a company like Origin PC , Falcon Northwest , Digital Storm , Maingear and the like, but the flip side is that it's nice to have someone else do the overclocking iterations, stability testing and burn-in runs.

There are few things more frustrating than gearing up and sitting down to play the latest AAA only to have it crap out during the opening cutscene with only yourself to blame. The other high-level decision you may confront is whether to go with a gaming desktop or laptop, especially since inch gaming laptops with desktop-class CPUs and GPUs like the Alienware Aream , Acer Predator Helios and Gigabyte Aorus 17X deliver desktop-level performance with convenience similar to an all-in-one.

An all-in-one with a really fast, gaming-optimized display. Though big laptops like these usually support upgrades, it's usually not as cheap or easy to do it as it is with even the least expensive gaming desktop. Choosing the best gaming desktop for your gaming experience is all about trade-offs. You can't even count on resource usage to be consistent across a specific game genre, such as first-person shooter, platformer or simulation, because optimization levels can vary wildly.

Gaming and content-creation PCs are the angry toddlers of consumer electronics: They're loud, willful and require constant supervision. And just when you think they're under control, they veer off into crazy-town. HP's Pavilion Gaming Desktop is a compact, budget gaming friendly, spare-me-the-flashiness model, targeting the same "casual" gamer as Dell's Inspiron Gaming or Acer's Nitro lines, but a lot more understated.

The Pro model of the Corsair One I reviewed is oriented toward content creation, but it differs only from the PC gaming models by its processor -- Intel's X series rather than K series -- which also makes the gaming systems cheaper. The Corsair One models may not eke every bit of performance out of the components, but that's the tradeoff for going with a petite powerhouse.

Read our Corsair One Pro i review. Maingear's Apex liquid-cooling system has a stunning, look-at-me-I-game style, plus it keeps high-end components like an AMD Ryzen X and Nvidia GeForce RTX chilled, quiet and running at top speed for your 4K gaming and heavy-duty simulation gameplay.