Intel Core i7-equipped Falcon Northwest Mach V gaming desktop hands-on
By Samuel Axon 
posted Nov 3rd 2008 7:16PM
posted Nov 3rd 2008 7:16PM
Benchmarks and reviews of Intel's Core i7 processors are pouring in, and while mere mortals must wait till later this month to get their hands on the hardware, we spent much of our weekend working overtime with Crysis, Fallout 3, and Age of Conan on an $8,238 Core i7 965-equipped Mach V gaming desktop from boutique PC manufacturer Falcon Northwest. It's got the works and then some: liquid cooling, dual ATI Radeon 4870X2 graphics cards with 2GB of RAM on-board, 12 GB of DDR3 RAM, Blu-ray, HD-DVD (yes, you read that right), and over a terabyte of storage. Based on our dozen or so hours of grueling, utterly boring hands-on tests, all three games were plenty playable maxed out at 1920 x 1080 resolution with 4x anti-aliasing -- only Crysis ever dipped below 40 frames per second, and we never saw Fallout 3 under 60. We sincerely hope you appreciate the backbreaking, soulcrushingly hard work we do for you -- more photos and benchmarks (including Crysis) in the gallery.
That's a lot of RAM...
Yeah no doubt. 12 GB ram?
Large Intel Collider!
Such awesome power hidden under such a typical, square, cliched PC case. Why aren't case designs keeping up? No one would care if a Hugo had 1000 horse power! At least these guys are trying "something new'ish"
http://www.engadget.com/2008/10/02/acer-aspire-predator-gaming-pc-and-matching-g24-lcd-now-on-sale/
I'd take the silverstone case the FNW computer is in any day over that ugly POS acer
May seem like a lot, but I remember I was in a computer shop with my parents when I was around 5 or so, and some old man computer builder was like "There are some people who get as much as 16mb of RAM, but that's only useful for the most intense gaming systems and games, and even then it's overkill."
and then there's this famous blooper:
"640 K [of ram] ought to be enough for anybody."
-- Bill Gates, 1981
As for the case being typical, square, cliched case:
While it is square (well, a rectangle, but a rectangle is just a type of square, right?? Actually wouldn't it be a box?), I certainly don't think it's typical or cliched. I, who in general don't give a rats ass about a computer's case, have to admit that thing is pretty beautiful, and if not ground breaking design wise, it is pretty hot. While I agree that it's cool the Acer people tried a new design idea, that doesn't change the fact that it looks like a stylized industrial trashcan from "The Fifth Element".
Hooray... we're effectively taking up 3 slots per graphics card now. Soon, we'll have to plug the CPU and memory modules OUTSIDE the machine to make room for these inefficiently designed cards.
@ Valicore
A square is a type of rectangle :p
Valicore, Bill gates never said that.
You dumb shit.
Nah, its just enough RAM. Keep in mind, this computer should even be able to run Vista! NO WAI!
Why that much? Isn't 3GB maximum on Windows?
@Marcus
32-bit versions of Vista can only support upto 4GB of ram
64-bit versions on the other hand can support more:
- Home Basic: 8GB
- Home Premium: 16GB
- Business, Enterprise, Ultimate: 128GB
For a gaming desktop, that much ram is overkill.
Also, if you don't like square cases, feel free to get an Antec Skeleton. It's your ears that will pay the price.
Oh, and I forgot to mention that the cable management in that case is EPIC. I spent hours trying to cable manage in my case, and there are still wires everywhere (they just go behind the mobo now, but they still stick out)
@E71
First of all, the graphics cards DO NOT take up 3 slots. They take up two. Secondly, they are not inefficiently designed, they are about the same size as nVidia's 280 graphics card and they have TWO GPUS on board each.
Yes, so taking up two slots for two GPUs just as high-end single GPU graphics cards take up two, is totally inefficient. Clearly you're running some fucking mainstream, mid-range, Intel integrated piece of shit or something. Either that or you don't understand efficiency.
@Andrew
First off, my bad about the 3 slots. Those tight looking cables looked like they extended the fan outwards and so taking up the far end of the 3rd slot, which is why I said EFFECTIVELY. Most cards (for example my 12-port RAID controller) aren't nice and low profile so they won't be able to squeeze in.
Secondly, graphics cards are the only cards getting bigger and are now producing more and more heat.
It's obvious that somewhere along the line, the more powerful the chips became, the more heat they started to produce. Instead of dedicating time to coming up with an innovative way to ensure a normal future for video cards (i.e. without slapping on a mega-sized fan) they decided rivalry to get faster cards out into the market first was more important.
Even if multiple GPUs were necessary, I highly doubt that sticking a 2-slot card on a motherboard and rendering one of them useless is any better than getting to use any two slots OF YOUR OWN CHOICE for Crossfire/SLI mode. I lost two single lane PCI-E slots on my last motherboard because of two dual-slot cards and left with one PCI -- NOT COOL, because I needed one PCI-E single lane slot and not PCI.
The only reason I have mid-range graphics (HD4850 single slot) is because of SCUM LIKE YOU that give manufacturers a nod and the impression it's okay to make over-sized, overheating junk like the HD4870 X2 or the GeForce 280 series.
It's...BEAUTIFUL!!!
Yeah, beautiful and hard to clean after it gets dusty... ha, who cares?!
Now i can play awesome games on a 40" Full HDTV!!!
If only I had the money :(
@Peste: Uh, your 40" HDTV only has a resolution of 1920 x 1080. A 8800 GTS can handle that no problem.
3d mark tests without AA are silly. Its like turning the resolution to 640x480 to try and eek out better numbers. If you are going to buy a system like that you sure as hell are gunna run AA and probably a lot higher resolution that that as well. But its all about the big numbers i suppose.
no, they turn down the resolution when testing CPU's to take the GPU out of the equation.
now i hope you guys are planning on some sort of contest to give this godly system to us "mere mortals" since most of us probably cant afford something like this.
you know you want to :D
That thing is a beast
I know this might be getting old, but ...
that's what she said
nope, it's not old yet. at least it made me laugh.
on a slightly related note, great fu**ing scott!!!
muther ****er!
TITS!!!
Thanks Engadget!!!,
I love the 9 GB of RAM. Some people are still dumbfounded by my whole 2.5GB of RAM
it says 12.
you fail at... ramming
ahh... I got a lil excited with all the RAM i saw today, with YoYotechs 9GB of RAM
Ramming speed, Go!
my envy of you guys if palpable.
Damn you Engadget! You guys get to play with all the shiny new toys! =P
I just cant wait for their next "toy" giveaway!!
I got chubs for that system
I really hope you used a Velociraptor hard drive
or better yet some MTron Pro SSD's in RAID - just for programs and the OS, of course.
Otherwise it's like having a cockroach places on your ridiculously expensive birthday cake
AND also a 64-bit OS
Haha
Read some tomshardware reports. They tested the new VeloRaptor thingie and found out its almost the same fast as any other 750gb drive so no need in it. Its a 2.5in drive for the corporate market.
As for SSDs - you want the price to become $2000+ higher? That would be totally awesome.
Wow. Everyday you never stop reminding me that i need a new computer.
Be grateful. This time they didn't remind you that it needs to be from Apple.
I second that.
Holy S#*T!
but....
Utterly Boring?
is my sarcasm meter off or something...
$8,238
Oh God. That's a lot. I mean, I always presumed gaming desktops saved more money than highest-end gaming laptops.... But that's like 2X the new "overpriced" Alienware highest end gaming laptop with Core 2 Quad Extreme, Dual 512 ATI..... 4GB.... etc.
And in the end of the day, developers are steering away from PC game developing because of piracy.
No doubt.
If only Fallout 3, Dead Space, Left4Dead, COD6 were coming out for the PC.
RIP PC Gaming. You will be missed!
PC gaming isn't dead. What is dead is the freedom you had with the software you purchased.
To be honest, i cant blame them.
PC gaming will never die, because there are way too many big players like Nvidia, ATI/AMD, and Intel who have way too much invested in this field to just have PC game makers back out of this field.
Without games, no one will buy high end cards. And high end cards/processors help pay the bills.
Falcon Northwest is an ultra high-end PC manufacturer. Their computers have excellent build quality, but that build quality comes at a very, very high price. You could build a similar computer yourself for probably around $3,000. But this kind of computer is only needed if you wanted to play at 2560x1600. A computer powerful enough to play all the latest games at high settings at a "modest" resolution of 1680x1050 would run you around $700.
I love that cooling system, watercooling? does it run to a tank?
No there is a small man chained to the computer that pours water over the components.
Yeah, one cooler do the job of cooling the liquid that goes back to the processor...
"cool"... hehe :D
ROFL!! toxicpianos got it!!!
LOL, that was pretty epic toxicpiano lol. I can just imagine some evil rich gamer opening the case and yelling at some poor little man "FASTER! FASTER I SAY! I'm getting ready to play CRYSIS!"
i got a bowl of chocolate pudding in my underpants.
Woah.........(0_o)
that looks fast/strong....
any body care to explain what all that means? lmao.....
dual ATI Radeon 4870X2 graphics cards with 2GB of RAM------????
12 GB of DDR3 RAM------?????
it basically means: "Teh BOMB!!"
It basically means that if you have spare $8,000 you can either buy yourself this PC or donate it to a hungry programmer (me). if you buy this PC, you'll be super-happy about game performance and super-unhappy about noise and heat this stuff generates. If you donate it to me, I'll be eternally grateful xD
haha.... if i had 8000 dollars i'd invest in colledge or get a car.....
but once im 30 and a millionaire.... thats a diffrent story.... =P
Nice Engadet..........see my reply to the wrong person above.
Anyone care to Kill-A-Watt it?
2Gb of RAM only but using 6 slots? What the configuration - 2 x 512, 4 x 256? Trying to get rid of their low end crap?
12 GB of RAM dumbass.
Each 4870x2 has 1 GB of onboard RAM, so with two we get...2 GB.
So 6 slots of....2 GB of RAM, along with 2 GB of V-RAM from the GFX Cards.
2gb for the GPUs.... Otherwise 12gb... readdddddddd
Sigh, 12, ok it's early for me in this part of the world. I've low ranked myself. :P
Do I see an IDE ribbon cable in that picture?
Yes, you do. At least it's a ribbon cable which is in spec and can be folded rather than the round cable which is out of spec and cannot be folded. I prefer the ribbon cables since it's possible to fold them cleanly.
What's the mobo on that thing? 6 slots for RAM is quite cool...
X58 uses 3-way DDR3 ram so almost every motherboard supporting this CPU has 6 ram slots. Its not a feature, its a requirement.
WUT!? College!? Car!? How about a nice new Mitsubishi laser TV!
Yah, you know how much I want to criticize this but I won't. It has HD-DVD xD
Excuse me please! Is that IDE cable in the lower right cormer? The black thingie...
IN A $8,000 PC?!
Oh and this toy ain't shiny. Its HOT. Like a room heater :) if you ever tried to run 2 x2 cards in one PC without water cooling, you know what I'm talking about.
Yes thats an IDE cable, and yes it's in an $8000 PC.
You find them in $200 PCs also.
To be honest, since all PC's (at least for the next year or two) include IDE connections anyways, and there isn't an optical drive that pushes the bandwidth of it, i would rather use the useless IDE on a drive anyways than waste a SATA port on a drive that doesn't need it. At least they kept it clean.
hmm mac gotta desktop that comes close thats not a work station and can play the same games? dident think so. why do i always attack the mac ... to watch fan boys cringe and sqweem
Don't feed the troll
Anyway, solid looking system, if you don't feel like eating or paying rent ;-)
I dont know what you guys are fussing abou......
*for once, reads article.
HOLY F*CKING SHIT!
And it plays Crysis?!
That = win right there.
HOW THE F**K DOES CRYSIS FALL BELOW 40 FPS??!?!?!?!!?
Crysis should be BEGGIN to play on this beautiful machine.....
I think Crysis stays above 40FPS with triple SLI GTX 280. The 4870X2 X 2 isn't enough (especially in Crysis) to handle it at 1920x1200 above 40fps.
http://www.guru3d.com/article/core-i7-multigpu-sli-crossfire-game-performance-review/18
I refuse to play Crysis because of people like you. Just the sound of the name makes me rage.
It's occurred to me that maybe, just maybe, Crysis isn't the most well-optimized game ever. :)
SICK BALLS computer, but...
I'm a little disappointed - all the friggin' cameras and gadget that you guys get to test out ----- and your picture gallery looks like it was taken from an iphone?!
Mr. Blurry Photo strikes again.
It probably actually was. Anybody daring enough to take the EXIF data out and see?
I love how they _took a picture_ of the screen. Christ. Fuck.
Here is the info from falconcorei7_8.jpg, which is a blurry shot.
Canon PowerShot A590 IS
Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows
I didn't read the article and just went through the pictures:
"AWESOME! *click*
SICK! *click*
BOSS! *click*
WICKED! *click*
BOSSOME! *click*
HD-DVD?! Ew. *alt-F4*"
Well that was stupid, you need to learn Ctrl+W :P
I won't buy core i7 until it goes mainstream with mATX motherboards. Now is the time to go AMD if you' re on the cheap. Which is where I'm going. I mean AMD 9950 at £140. Sux to be AMD but its great to be a consumer. But core i7 looks pretty impressive. mATX is my weapon of choice even if they're not as good as ATX. I've only seen one mATX i7 motherboard and that's from DFI. From what I understand 2.6 ghx deneb competes with the 2.8ghz core i7 so should be a good battle.
i was just wondering did you guys try to overclock the processor and the graphic card ? what limit that this machine can achieve?
Since its already OCed, I don't think you can push it any further without overvoltaging (read using up a 10-year resource in 3 years, so you'll have to buy a new PC much sooner).
But thats about CPU. As for video cards - I don't recommend OCing them, too little space, too much heat. If you install water cooling (a proper solution - you pick the components and build it) you can push video cards a bit further and eliminate part of the noise. And, I guess, you can get a cool 4ghz cpu as well. Wouldn't make much sense though...
damn, talk about overkill
12gb of RAM? The OS can't address that much RAM. Fucktard.
Ever heard of a 64-bit OS? You stupid fuck. LOL.
*shakes fist at Adobe*
Jesus Fucking Christ, no wonder there were almost ZERO fucking new stories over the weekend, you were too busy fapping/worshiping that machine.
Where are the benchmarks you were running? Or is "it ran crysis over 40 fps and Fallout 3 over 60" all you mustered? ::tsk tsk::
Plus, FUCK, you took a picture of the screen to show the CPUs? Is this engadget? Do they not teach you to use PrintScreen?
SHIT.
For this Price over 8000 Bucks i can buy 7x
q6600 systems and build a Cluster Compter System with 28 Core´s@ 3000mhz
Sure...but could it play Crisis?
So, this thing has two 4870 x2? Each one has 2 GB ram, right? so 4GB video ram total? I bet that they could have jumped to a 30" Dell monitor sporting twice the resolution and not seen but a few frames drop.
12 GB ram? I'd actually be interested in seeing how performance changed going from 6 to 12, in all aspects of computing.
I was anxious to see a spread shot of the motherboard so I clicked photo 8. Nice focusing camera ya got there
I would like to price out how much the components would cost if you bought them all from newegg and assembled the pc yourself, but I am kind of lazy.
Newegg doesn't seem to have either the i7 cpu or a supporting motherboard as of yet.
But they had this: http://cfsservices.net/img/Partial_i7.jpg
For a $2,152.96 price, I found everything _EXCEPT_ :
-Motherboard (approx $200-$300 )
-CPU (Go big or go home baby, that's another $1,000)
-Case (one's preferences may vary, so figure about another $100+ for something to fit it in with breathing room)
-Cooling solution (another $100 or so...at least)
-HD-DVD ....are you joking!? good luck finding one of those to purchase :P
All told, that's about $3,500 for the parts...at least.
Gotta love it being tax-free though, if I had to pay local sales tax (9.75%) I'm looking at closer to $4,000!
...so if I sell my kidneys....
:-)
I would have to agree. based on the photographs, cooling system alone looked as though it would blow me away.
(really bad pun)
Damn nerdtalker, take a deep breath, have an alcoholic beverage of your choice and chill for a sec. I do think though that it is kinda weird one of the pics was a screenshot and the other was a picture of what appeared to be a non-flat CRT monitor. Hrmmmm.
this has to be the best comments i've read on any story ever..i've lol'd at least six times. the comments have been HILARIOUS.
this thing is sweet - can't wait til we all have one of these. just watch, give it 3 or 4 years and it'll be the spec for sam's club. crazy how fast we move.