Intel Core i7-equipped Falcon Northwest Mach V gaming desktop hands-on
By Samuel Axon 
posted November 3rd 2008 7:16PM
posted November 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.
holy mama
this worth what it does man
12gb ddr3 1600mhz
and the graphic card on ati 4870 x2 damnnn
HOT DAMN.
12gigs DDR3 = BEAST
8g's deserves an oil bath though.
@Frankenstein Black
You ever heard of sleepers?
For that price it better come with some good memory, that's bottom of the barrel low performance DDR3.
Is that an integrated sound card that i'm seeing on an $8000 pc?
Nope. Thats the lack of a dedicated sound card like X-Fi that you see ;)
Well, is it any wonder that they "only" used a non-flat CRT monitor after the payed $8,238 for this computer? There was simply not enough money! :D
I don't understand today's case designs, I really don't. First, it was 80mm fans in the front and in the back (and possibly on the sides), then 80mm in the front and 120mm in the back, which made sense, since most case didn't offer sufficient space for a 120mm fan behind the drive mounts. But now... it's 120mm in the front and 80mm in the back? What in the dickens? Why not just 120mm for both ends? A single 80mm fan is more noisy than one 120mm spinner, let alone two!
Someone explain.
I'll explain it simple.
The Falcon Northwest Mach V company is just TOO GREEDY to install this PC in Lian Li Armorsuit P80.
http://lian-li.com/v2/en/product/product06.php?pr_index=131&cl_index=1&sc_index=25&ss_index=61
This case totally ROXX. Yeah, I have one. It has 3x140mm intake fans on the front door (not inside the PC) with easy-to-remove-and-wash dust filters. So yeah. A $8000 PC doesn't fit in this case for a simple reason - the company's just stupid or greedy. I really think they're not stupid, but this only means they're greedy bastards.
Because everyone picking a PC case for years knows Lian-Li makes best PC cases. Or among the best ;)
Lian-Li makes overpriced crap*
Does it have a floppy? xD
Drools
Amazing piece of hardware there. Being a cheap mofo I'm still happy with my GeForce8400 PCIe + 3 GB DDR2 Ram on Vista Ultimate. It runs Warhammer Online like a champ.
Hot damn that is one fucking awesome machine!
HOLY SHIT!!!!!! Flabbergasting!!!!!!
could I (theoretically, i dont have the money) get this and transfer all the components to a different case? It looks kinda ugly, but thats just me.
This seems like a poor design:
1. How are the VRM's, memory, etc. supposed to be cooled using the ASETEK LCLC on the CPU? This is a serious oversight.
2. Looks like a $39 Minitower that someone spraypainted. The drives don't even match.
3. GTX280's in Tri-SLI will smoke those dual 4870X2's. And, in those games that don't support multi-gpu, a single GTX280 is far better than a single 4870.
This is my dream computer, too bad it costs $8,238. When the time comes to buy my Windows 7 desktop, I hope the Core i7 processors will come down to a decent price.
Ever heard of lens distortion?