Falcon Northwest Mach V Desktop Review
When I first heard the leaked news of the Falcon Northwest Mach V Desktop I was impressed to say the least. And I was overjoyed when the system was released to the point that I was about to order one when the $8,000+ price tag hit me. I would not argue the price of this system, but I will say that if you have a few Franklins lying around the place, you won’t be disappointed if you put them to good use by getting this system.
DESIGN
As Falcon has put this, this is the best of the best in PC performance. They are telling no lie. Each system is custom built to order so there is a great possibility that if you should order one of these your specs might differ a bit depending on what you configure it with. Falcon makes sure that the performance is not the only thing that speaks, but rather the design also. As proof to this is the optional $500 automotive paint job that can be purchased with the system.
In terms of processing, you are getting Core i7-965 Extreme Edition which has been overclocked from 3.2GHz to 3.79GHz. This requires that the system is liquid cooled and it is. Moreover is the 12GB of DDR3 RAM which boasts 1066GHz is the most that has been packed into a consumer desktop. But if that seems like an oddity, let us remind you that the Core i7 processor supports triple-channel memory interfaces so with the SDRAM’s coming in triples is not nonsensical.
Hard drive options include 1TB at 7200rpm provided by Hitachi. There is an 80GB x25m SSD which allows the system to perform faster on multi tasking such as transferring large files and moving up game levels at a faster pace. Other features include Blu-ray burner, 1GB ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 GPU and Vista Ultimate 64-bit with SP1.
PERFORMANCE
There has not been another system that was able to beat the Falcon Northwest Mach V in performance specs. It easily trumped a similarly priced Alienware Area-51 ALX system in every test. Although the system does not meet the design specifications to be considered an HEPC it can easily serve as one. Although there is no HDMI out port, you do get a dongle to convert from DVI-to-HDMI.
Gaming was second to none and this has been the first system that has been able to get a full 60-frames from Crysis which is the standard for testing gaming systems. Other tasks such as Photoshop, HD video editing and your daily web excursions can all be performed without the computer crying out.
CONCLUSION
The only drawback that we have is the price. With a price of $7,600 (without the $500 paint job) this is expensive to say the least and we’re not sure if Falcon will be able to get many orders for this system considering the state of the economy. But if you’re one of the lucky persons who has enough dough to afford one, we envy you.
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