Falcon Northwest Talon Gaming PC Review

Posted: July 14, 2010

With over a decade in the gaming PC business, Falcon Northwest now brings the Talon to the market. Kevin Pereira and Olivia Munn review the steel encased gaming PC with its Intel Core i7 processor, NVIDIA GTX 480 video card and more for $3,500.

What You Need to Know

The computer is only about 1.5’ tall
It’s a little over 6” wide
One bad thing about having a small case is that there may not be enough room to get in and make modifications or upgrade parts, but Falcon Northwest did an excellent job of maximizing space inside with good cable management and smaller heatsinks
The hard drives aren't easily removable since you have to unscrew the metal bays that they're held in, so expanding might be a problem
It's not as quiet as the iBuyPower from Monday, but it's definitely quiet enough
It has two video cards and an overclocked quad core processor (the iBuyPower from Monday only had one video card, but it had a six core processor
In our 3DMark Vantage tests, it just barely came in as our second fastest computer of all time; we're inclined to call it a tie with the CyberPower from almost a year ago.
Of course, it'll play any game on the market with maxed out settings, and we're confident it'll be great for years to come
For productivity tasks, it wasn't as fast as iBuyPower

Configuration

Falcon Talon case with optional paintwork
Intel Core i7-875K 2.93 GHz Unlocked CPU, overclocked to 3.88-4.15 GHz (overclock changes dynamically depending on # of cores in use)
Asetek liquid cooling
Dual Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 cards in SLI (1.5 GB of GDDR5 memory each)
1000Watt Silverstone modular power supply
ASUS P55 chipset motherboard
8 GB Crucial DDR3 memory (16 GB max in this system)
LG Blu-Ray reader with Cyberlink PowerDVD Ultra software for Blu-Ray playback (because Windows still doesn't support Blu-Ray playback)
Intel 80 GB Solid State Drive for primary disk (for OS and currently used games, etc.)
1 Terabyte Western Digital Caviar Black SATA3 (6GB/Sec) drive for storage
Multi-format media card reader
Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Price

The configuration we have here is a little over $3,500, and if you want the custom paint job, it's $400 extra
We like the understated design and solid build quality, and of course, the performance is outstanding, especially for the price

Overall Rating

5 Seals of Approval Out of 5 (How do we rate gadgets?)

Want something reviewed on Gadget Pr0n? Email us your suggestions to gadgetpron@g4tv.com.

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Kevin Pereira, Olivia Munn, Gadget Pr0n, Tech, Technology

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Bigsampson

I love all you gys who claim to have this amazingly good comp that costs $700- $900 and say they compete with this. I will tell you right now that you did not build it from scratch and half of the comp is old parts I assume unless you're a good thief! You can penny pinch all you want but you are not gonna make this comp from scratch for under $1500. Lie all you want you troll but it isnt gonna happen. This comp will be fine for 3-5 years and it can still be upgraded .

@ piggy She has been kickin it with me all month.

Posted: August 4, 2010 2:24 PM
ZombieDragon24

FALCON ATTACK! that is hilarious

Posted: July 19, 2010 6:10 PM
connman46

FALCON ATTACK!!! rofl

Posted: July 16, 2010 2:24 PM
piggy978

Where in the world has Olivia been recently?

Posted: July 16, 2010 12:57 PM
xjohn

l

Posted: July 16, 2010 12:08 AM
jigsaw808

lol frick'n bald eagle

Posted: July 15, 2010 8:58 PM
SteveKB

I still play cod4 on my 9600gt at mostly 90fps figuring it's about time for an upgrade after having this semi outdated gfx card for one year

Posted: July 15, 2010 8:17 PM
zpjack

2.93 unclocked is still slow, for that price i would at least expect 3.2, and the equivalent over clocked.

and the 875k is only a quad core for 350$ they give you the good graphics, but cheep out on the core

Posted: July 15, 2010 8:15 PM
PcBuilder

@lawrence123 this is way overpriced and over rated I built my pc for $800 and it plays all modern games @ 1920x1080 @ 60 fps, save for say crysis which I average 50 fps. So you don't need this ridiculous pc to play games better than those consoles you have.

Posted: July 15, 2010 3:57 PM
xjohn

i agree. a good gaming pc that runs all game should be no more than $500. I'll stick with new consoles till then

Posted: July 15, 2010 3:35 PM
Lawrence123

$3,500 to play Transformers WFC, I'll stick with my 360 and PS3 witch only set me back $700 for the both of them

Posted: July 15, 2010 3:01 PM
unfungames

hmmmm I dont know....its only got a quad core processor. Thats not much of an issue right now, but it will be down the road. This computer might be really good right now, but it wont be long before those 6 core cpu's are much better. the dual 480's are nice (i think the one from monday probably had dual 5850's which are just a touch slower).

I'd still go with the i7 980, which is what Im using, actually...with dual 5850's. runs everything nice, unless you try to get into a super high res, then stuff starts to chug.

Posted: July 15, 2010 11:40 AM
drangel_jam

too costly

Posted: July 15, 2010 9:28 AM
bgreene

The reason we don't normally is because it would get a little long in the tooth, but I will post it up above in the article.

Thanks for the feedback!

Posted: July 15, 2010 8:27 AM
Suhaila

I really wish that Gadget Pr0n would list exactly the configuration that they reviewed since that can make a difference in what you experience as far as speed and overall gaming experience.

Posted: July 15, 2010 12:21 AM
karasublue84d

Isn't that a Bald Eagle?

Posted: July 15, 2010 12:09 AM
warman58

they pretty good machine my dad had icore7 his dell he paid like 1200$
for but i core7 are good this one is about closest to my dads dell..

but his hads like 2video cards on his like 1tb video cards in his. his
he bought it at best buy during march... it will played about every game
what they are showing on here.

its dell studio xps 8100
http://www.stickam.com/viewM edia.do?mId=188150569

well his icore7 which puts 2.80 ghzs i's almost near 3ghzs
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/ Dell+-+Studio+XPS+Desktop+/+In tel%26%23174%3B+Core%26%23153% 3B+i5+Processor+/+8GB+Memory+/ +1TB+Hard+Drive/9973586.p?id=1 218202914651&skuId=9973586 &st=dell%20studio%20xps%20 8100&cp=1&lp=1

Posted: July 14, 2010 8:42 PM
longshotk1

nice catch, Olivia's got hands. very hot

Posted: July 14, 2010 8:41 PM
saranpion

Isn't that an Eagle?

Posted: July 14, 2010 7:21 PM
Atavax

@BBHSbenito, 3dmarkvantage is a synthetic benchmark. it is susceptible to manufacturer optimization. it often does not correctly mimic real programming practices. it lacks the programmer level of optimization present in real games and arbitrarily uses inefficient code to stress the hardware.

Posted: July 14, 2010 7:01 PM