When Falcon Northwest turned 20 years old, the builders at
the O.G. boutique PC reseller celebrated the company's anniversary in
style. They custom-built the Tiki, an intriguing blend of power, looks
and stealth-like silence.
Let's step back for a second.
In the early '90s, no one – literally, no one – believed that a PC
vendor could survive for five years, let alone twenty, with a business
built around high-end systems for gamers and flight simulator nerds.
Falcon NW proved to be ahead of the curve, and has carried on assembling
custom, premium systems for geeks like us. This alone is worth
celebrating.
With
the Tiki, Falcon NW enters an interesting category. Thin, quiet, and
loaded with the latest high-end silicon, this is a versatile gaming
system that would fit right in the living room (or just about anywhere
else). And the rig has one unique, signature touch that I've never seen
before in any PC.
OK, this is beginning to sound a bit
like a love letter. So, I'll stop with the googly eyes and get on with
the review. (Sorry for that.)
A paint job you can see your own face in
Design
Aesthetically,
the Tiki is one of the more intriguing high-powered PCs you'll ever
see. At first glance, that sleek, modern design will fill your eyes.
That's thanks to a custom case that is a little bigger than an Xbox One,
but with room for standard parts, including a mini-ITX motherboard and a
12.5-inch graphics card. Measuring 13 inches tall by 4 inches wide,
this is an elegant little system – particularly considering how much
muscle lies inside.
Not
surprisingly, given Falcon Northwest's track record, the paint job
stands out as top notch. TechRadar's system came in a stark candy blue,
but other options, including a hand-painted flame kit and a
pewter-looking Hematite paint job, are on offer.
Naturally,
these custom paint jobs cost a pretty penny, with solid colors costing
an extra $375 (about £222, AU$400), and the more exotic coatings running
up to $900 (around £534, AU$961). Thankfully, the default black chassis
– which is free – also looks sharp.
The highlight of
the Tiki's chassis design is the smoothed granite block that the rig
rests on, which gives the whole system a unique and classy vibe.
Frankly, I've never seen anything like this before, and while it adds
considerable weight to the system, I appreciate the extra stability it
provides.
Because the Tiki is meant to stand upright, and
because it is fairly narrow, our initial fears were that it would be
easily knocked over in a living room environment. That is not going to
happen, thanks to such a heavy base. The only downside is that the
granite protrudes out in such a way that you can't lay the system on its
side.
Given Falcon's elite reputation, it's no surprise that the
Tiki's innards are immaculate, with all cables neatly tucked out of
sight, and plenty of open space to allow for more air circulation and
more efficient cooling. This is an important consideration, given how
quietly the system runs. (Four conveniently placed grills help greatly
in this regard.)
For such a small box, the Tiki packs
plenty of power. And as configured for TechRadar, this Tiki costs a cool
$3,061 (about £1,819, AU$3,268). While this is no small amount of
money, it does seem like a fair value given the top-shelf components
detailed below.
It's a tight fit, but a mighty neat one too
Here is the Falcon Northwest Tiki configuration sent to TechRadar:
Spec sheet
CPU: 3.5GHz Intel Core i7 4770K (quad-core, 8MB cache, up to 3.9GHz with Turbo Boost)
Motherboard: Asus Z87i Deluxe
Graphics: EVGA GeForce GTX 780Ti (3GB GDDR5 RAM)
Cooling: Asetek 120MM liquid cooling loop
Memory: 8GB DDR3 (1866MHz)
Storage: Crucial 512GB M550 SSD; Western Digital Green 3TB, 7,200 rpm HDD
Ports: 2 USB 3.0, audio/mic jack (top); 6 USB 3.0, 4 USB 2.0, 2 DVI, 2 HDMI, 3.5mm audio/mic jack, SPIDF-out
As
you've probably surmised, there is a lot to like here. The only real
shock here is that all of the above manages to run on a 450W power
supply.
Credit Falcon's decision to go with the Z87
chipset for that. For a fairly small form-factor rig, Z87 is a
no-brainer, given Haswell's thermal efficiencies. The beauty of the Asus
Z87i Deluxe in our test rig is that it is a no-compromise motherboard,
providing an obscene number of USB 3.0 ports as well as some extra
features like a BIOS flashback button. This allows PC nerds to flash the
firmware using a USB thumb drive and dual-channel, 802.11ac Wi-Fi
signal.
Like all Falcon NW systems, buyers can choose
from a number of configuration options. For the motherboard, there's the
option of either the default Asus Z87I deluxe or you can upgrade to the
Asus Maximus VI Impact. (Both are Z87 chipset motherboards.)
CPU
options scale from the default 3.2GHz Core i5 4570 to the 3.4GHz Core
i5 4670K to the high-end 3.5GHz Core i7 4770K featured in TechRadar's
test rig. The 4770K is a great choice for a high-end gaming PC for its
unlocked multiplier, which allows for more extreme overclocking. You
can, as expected, choose to have Falcon overclock your PC for no extra charge. (We did.)
You gotta' love a slick presentation
Video
card options are similarly robust, allowing for everything from the
default 2GB GeForce GTX 750 Ti all the way up to workstation-caliber
Nvidia Quadro cards – at 12GB, no less.
The system comes
with either 8GB or 16GB of RAM, which may disappoint buyers looking for
32GB of memory. At default, the Tiki comes loaded with a Crucial M550
256GB M550 SSD and no mechanical drive. While you must choose solid
state for the primary drive, the chassis can fit up to two additional
drives for extra storage. SSD options range up to 1TB, and HDD options
include Western Digital's 7,200 rpm, high-performance Green drives
(between 2 and 4TB). You can even configure these drives in either RAID 0
and RAID 1.
If the relatively high-end price-tag makes
your checking account feel bad, it is encouraging to know that at the
low-end, you can get into a Tiki at $1,888 (about £1,122, AU$2019). That
will net you an Intel Core i5 4570, the same Asus Z87i Deluxe mobo, 8GB
RAM, 256GB SSD and a 2GB GeForce GTX 750 Ti video card.
Performance
Given
the specifications above, it will probably come as no surprise to
TechRadar readers that, in this configuration, the Tiki absolutely blew
through our benchmark tests. Here are the results: Benchmarks
PCMark 8 Home: 4,876 ; Creative: 5,569
Cinebench: 28,084 (7,231 with 1x CPU)
3DMark: Ice Storm: 147,696; Cloud Gate: 24,520; Fire Strike: 9,910; Fire Strike Extreme: 4,955
BioShock Infinite: 120 fps
Metro Last Light: 132 fps (medium quality)
The
long and the short of the above numbers is that in all aspects of
performance, the configuration specified above threw off favorable
results. The Tiki deftly out-muscled CPU-intensive tasks like Cinebench
and PCMark 8. This is certainly no surprise, given the overclocked Core
i7 chip.
And, while I won't say I'm surprised by the Tiki's 3D performance – our Nvidia GeForce GTX 780Ti review
left me fairly breathless – the sheer might of this rig was
nevertheless impressive. One of my primary gaming systems is a massive,
$5,000 full-size tower PC with a 4770K CPU, 32GB of RAM and a 6GB
GeForce Titan card. To date, no system had bested it in neither
synthetic nor gaming benchmarks. Across the board, the Tiki bested it by
8 to 10%. What
does all this mean in terms of real-world performance? The long and the
short of it is that I was able to play any game I wanted on my
ultra-wide 2560 x 1080 display at maximum detail levels, and was
constantly rewarded with high, smooth frame rates.
Even
more impressive is that, despite all this power, I had to try to produce
any noticeable fan noise whatsoever. Even under peak performance loads,
this is one seriously stealthy PC.
We liked
For
starters, the Tiki packs an impressive amount of power and performance
into a small, elegant-looking system. Its near-silent profile and
relatively low power draw make it a fairly versatile system, equally
capable of serving as a media center and gaming system in the living
room or as a dedicated gaming PC.
Falcon offers a wide
set of configuration options that allow for a nice (and not outrageously
expensive) range of price versus performance – a major plus. Frankly,
the choices are much broader than I would have expected, given the
chassis' size.
At a higher level, the Falcon Northwest's
willingness to experiment with a new form-factor is admirable. The
custom chassis and the granite base are bold design touches, and fully
embrace the notion that PCs can and should be exciting to look at. That
this system is capable of out-gunning much bigger machines makes it all
the more interesting.
We disliked
The only
significant beef I have with the Tiki is that the custom chassis
prevented me from laying the system on its side. This could make the PC
tough to squeeze into a living room media center.
I fully
admit that some people may find the granite base to be a bit much. I
love it, though it does add a little too much weight to consider this a
portable PC suitable for schlepping to LAN parties.
[Editors Note: We've
been informed that users are able to remove the granite base through
four screws underneath. This solution removes a considerable 6 pounds
from the product's overall weight and makes portability easier. Also,
Falcon Northwest informed us that it's capable of providing a Tiki with
horizontal orientation, but not without special modifications to the
chassis like rubber feet.]
One final nit to pick:
Hardcore PC aficionados may be disappointed in the Asus Z87i
motherboard's 16GB memory ceiling. Truthfully, most people don't need
any more than this, unless they are running multiple virtual machines or
working with humongous graphics and media files.
Final Verdict
No
surprise here: Falcon Northwest's Tiki is a fantastic high-end system
that quite elegantly sums up everything that is great about gaming PCs.
It is extremely fast, tiny and looks gorgeous in almost any setting.
Plus, even when fully loaded and running the latest games at maximum
settings, this machine whispers. What more can you ask of a premium
gaming machine?
/falconnorthwesttiki-hero-623-80.jpg)
Not
surprisingly, given Falcon Northwest's track record, the paint job
stands out as top notch. TechRadar's system came in a stark candy blue,
but other options, including a hand-painted flame kit and a
pewter-looking Hematite paint job, are on offer. 
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