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- 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: System Build
She's A Looker, For Sure
There's no denying the FragBox 2 is a gorgeous system. Falcon Northwest let me know that they contracted Silverstone to manufacture the chassis, and the brushed aluminum with the etched logo is very pleasing to the eyes. In addition, there's a cold cathode tube that lights up the inside, visible through the see through windows on both sides, along with the logo in the front. If you like the chassis, you can purchase it barebones directly from Falcon.
The FragBox 2 is a micro-ATX form factor, and can accept a standard mATX motherboard. In addition, it takes a standard ATX powersupply, which allows for a more powerful and reliable power supply unit (PSU) than is normally found in these small systems. A small fan above the video card exhausts any hot air that builds up in the expansion bays, and an 80mm fan in the front left side of the system delivers cool air over the hard drives. Ventilation slots on the back left side of the system help keep the processor cool. The handle of the top of the system is very sturdy, and it definitely supports the weight of the FragBox. The front panel houses a power and reset button; USB and Firewire connectivity; and jacks for headphones and a microphone.
In addition to manufacturing the chassis, Silverstone was contracted by Falcon Northwest to create a powerful, modular PSU for the FragBox 2. Accordingly, Silverstone delivered a capable 520w ATX solution that did not seem to stress under the weight of a 3800+ CPU, GeForce 7800GTX, and two hard drives.
Falcon chose an MSI motherboard with the ATI Radeon XPRESS 200 chipset, which provides PCI-Express graphics and dual channel DDR400. However, we found this motherboard to be a very limiting choice as it comes with very weak onboard sound powered by a Realtek ALC650 codec, and only 10/100 Ethernet. Furthermore, this board will suffer from the low USB 2.0 bandwidth issues that are inherent in the XPRESS 200 chipset. Falcon Northwest was forced to use this board, as performance mATX AMD motherboards are very scarce. However, this doesn't excuse some of the performance issues we found, and we will delve into them further in our Support section.
Falcon did, however, include quality components in the choice of BFG's GeForce 7800GTX 256MB PCI-E -- which comes overclocked from the manufacturer -- and their choice of Corsair XMS memory. Lite-On provides the DVD burning drive, which is a rather loud solution when it spins up compared to a Pioneer drive, but it gets the job done.
Boot Up
Our FragBox 2 booted up in under a minute, which is about average for the desktops we've seen. When Windows finished loading, we were greeted by a very clean desktop, and there was absolutely no bloatware installed.
Falcon Northwest did not include the MSI motherboard utilities that allowed us to change the audio jacks from 2.0 to 5.1 surround sound. However, you can find this on the MSI drivers disk that accompanies the system, along with other utilities.