![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
- Date:
- Tuesday , October 25, 2005
- Author:
- Chris Morley
- Google +1
Falcon Northwest FragBox 2 Evaluation
Falcon Northwest, the granddaddy of boutique gaming PCs, joins our systems evaluation program with a small form factor gaming rig sporting full sized power and capabilities. Is Falcon Northwest still the gold standard for premium computing?
Part I - Product Overview: Purchasing, Packaging, and Presentation
Making The Call
Falcon Northwest wants to talk to you. Their toll free number is prominently displayed on their Web site, and they've been taking phone orders for as long as they've been in business, and long before customer configurators were the norm. Therefore, we decided we'd give them a call. Since Falcon Northwest specializes in gaming machines, we decided that we wanted the best Battlefield 2 configuration they could build.
A Falcon Northwest sales representative answered our call very quickly, and we got right down to business. Acting completely clueless as to what configuration would serve us well, we asked the Falcon representative to make some recommendations.
First recommendation: AMD. Check.
Second recommendation: NVIDIA GeForce 6800GT or better. Check.
Third recommendation: 2GB of RAM. Bingo, this guy is on a roll.
Battlefield 2, when all options are set to "high", "chugs" on systems with only 1GB of RAM. We were impressed that our sales rep knew this and it is a credit to their experience and training.
Furthermore, without being presented with a budget, our representative tried to keep the costs down and I had to be the one to ask for an upgrade. While this may seem like a small thing to some, consider the body of knowledge you'd have to possess in order to not just mindlessly recommend the best of everything. It is understood that the latest, fastest, and most expensive components are going to run current games very well, but the ability to recommend parts that will save you some cash and still deliver an excellent experience really speaks to his knowledge of hardware and the gaming scene. (NOTE 10/27/05: Falcon Northwest offered, and we took them up on it, to install and test Battlefield 2 using our CD Key. This is a wonderful service that not many companies offer.)
The only thing that I regret is not getting an add in sound card. Since many onboard sound solutions these days support all kinds of surround sound modes and hardware acceleration, I did not ask for anything more than onboard sound. However, this will turn out to be a problem, as you'll see in the coming pages.
In the end, our system was configured as follows:
CPU | Athlon 64 3800+ Socket 939 |
Motherboard | MSI RS480M2 with ATI Chipset |
System Memory | 2 x 1GB Corsair XMS |
Video Card | BFG GeForce 7800GTX 256MB PCI-Express |
Audio | Integrated AC'97 |
Hard Drives |
74GB Western Digital Raptor 10,000rpm SATA/150 250GB Western Digital 7200rpm SATA/150
|
Optical | Lite-On 16X Dual Layer DVD Burner |
Misc. | Floppy/Multimedia Card Reader, Microsoft Keyboard and Logitech MX518 Mouse |
Connectivity | USB2.0: 2 Front, 4 Rear FireWire 400a: 1 Front, 1 Rear |
Network | 10/100 Ethernet |
PSU | 520W Custom Silverstone |
OS | Windows XP Home SP2 with DirectX 9.0c |
Monitor | None |
Speakers | None |
The price we paid was $3219 delivered and we received it 21 days after ordering. While there is quite a price premium attached to having a Falcon Northwest system, you can pinpoint a few things that definitely contribute to Falcon's bottom line cost. First, there is the custom chassis and PSU from Silverstone. While other OEMs may benefit from the economies of scale by paying low prices for an off the shelf chassis that is sold barebones to the public, Falcon Northwest must pay a premium for an exclusive component that is manufactured only for them. This fact alone raises the cost of good sold (COGS) due to the low volumes that Silverstone is undoubtedly shipping as compared to publicly available products. Furthermore, the quality of tech support that Falcon provides is head and shoulders above the competition, as you'll see later in this article. Knowledgeable, well-trained personnel like that come at a price premium. Finally, Falcon has to build into the costs of the system their Falcon Overnight Service. Even if they execute this service only once during the duration of the default one-year warranty, they are seriously cutting into the margin dollars associated with the sale of their products. However, a fancy custom case and fantastic customer support might not be very important to everyone. You can get the same components for less from another supplier. If these premium items are important to you, then you must be prepared to pay for them.
Packaging
We received three slick looking, all black boxes sporting the Falcon Northwest logo. Falcon did a great job of packing our system, and our FragBox was protected by custom foam inserts (a favorite of yours truly). One thing to note is that our keyboard had to be drop shipped from their supplier, as they didn't have it in stock at the time our system was ready to be shipped. The keyboard showed up before our system did, so no harm no foul.
Freebies
The two boxes that came with our system contained the user's manual, cables, and...coffee?
A completely separate box contained nothing but 'freebies' that Falcon Northwest throws in to say 'thank you,' including a personal note from their president, Kelt Reeves; a T-shirt; a mouse pad; and a coffee mug with 'Falcon Fuel' coffee for late night gaming sessions. We found no way to overclock the coffee, and the coffee mug’s BIOS settings were limited at best. Seriously, the coffee was great and the mug is a pretty cool design.
Documentation
The Falcon Northwest user manual is excellent. This three ring binder contains your itemized invoice, shipping checklist, and most notably, a System QA checklist. I'm a big fan of Falcon Northwest’s binder, and it gives visibility to their attention to detail. Our QA checklist was checked and double checked by a Hardware Technician, Software Technician, and Second check technician. This ensures that everything that needs to be done to this PC is done. In addition, they include a self addressed, stamped envelope so you can send in your customer comments.