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"The Falcon NW Talon is a medium-sized tower worthy of AMD's ultra-high performance new silicon."

• Supports a full ATX motherboard

• Very solid build quality

• Impeccable cable management

• Excellent 4K gaming

• Endless configuration options

• Too expensive

• Nvidia graphics offer better value

In a sense, it doesn't matter how fast AMD's Ryzen 9 5950X and Radeon RX 6900 XT are. You also can't buy one right now and may not be able to do so for some time.

Unless you buy it in a hidden, pre-built system like the Falcon Northwest Talon. That PC costs you many thousands of dollars – my device costs $ 5,593 – but let's not forget that the GPU alone costs $ 1,000.

But if you get your hands on something like this, I have no hesitation in saying that you will not be disappointed.

design

The goodness begins with the Talon case, the 20th anniversary edition. Falcon Northwest approaches the aesthetic in a subtle way with a sleek, matte black exterior with simple lines and edges. Nor is it voracious to use lighting. The tasteful lighting comes mainly from the components inside, such as the glowing G.Skill TridentZ RAM sticks and the fans illuminated by ARGB.

But as Falcon Northwest would say, the case itself is just a "blank canvas". You can have it finished in a custom paint job like we did, from a simple logo on the glass to colored artwork or designs that stretch across the top and side walls. The customizations you can make to a boutique gaming PC help brands like Falcon Northwest stand out from other out-of-the-box systems manufacturers.

In addition to the custom graphics, you can choose to have the logo glow in different colors, swap out the aluminum side panels for tinted glass, add different case fans, and so on.

Regardless of what you choose in terms of the finer details, you get an extremely well-built and well-configured gaming PC. The case is made of a 4mm aluminum layer to ensure that there is no hint of flex.

The Talon has a few accessible ports on the top, including a headphone jack, two USB-A 3.0 and one USB-C 3.1 ports, and a glowing power button. This is a preferred place if you want to keep your tower on the floor under your desk. On the back, the Talon offers a standard set of inputs and outputs provided by the motherboard and the graphics card.

With a medium-sized tower like this, you'll be impressed with everything Falcon Northwest can squeeze in without the setup ever feeling cramped. It's only 17 "by 9" and feels compact when coming from a full size tower. That makes it a bit bigger than the Origin Neuron, for example, which is only 16.3 "by 6.8". The Neuron is one of the few other system manufacturers currently supporting these new AMD processors and GPUs.

Unlike the Neuron, however, the Falcon Northwest Talon is a bit more comprehensive and future-proof. It uses the Asus ROG Crosshair VII Dark Hero motherboard, which offers six SATA ports, two M.2 slots, integrated Wi-Fi 6 and two PCIe 4.0 expansion slots with 16 lanes each. Putting a full ATX motherboard into a midsize tower can be tricky, but Falcon Northwest does it great. The Origin Neuron, on the other hand, only offers Micro-ATX options, which have fewer PCIe lanes and less overclocking potential. The situation is similar with the Alienware Aurora R11.

That's not as big a deal as you might think – especially since the Neuron also supports up to 128GB of RAM. The advantage of the Micro ATX board is both a smaller case and a little more space for cooling and tooling.

However, thanks to the flawless cable management that makes upgrading easy in the future, the tight setup of Falcon Northwest works wonderfully. The only limitation is the graphics card, which requires a separate bracket to attach. You have to remove some screws to loosen it and it's a bit of a pain.

But honestly, if you are serious about spending your money on a desktop like this, you want to make sure that you pump it up with the latest components right from the start. And that is exactly what you can do with the talon.

performance

It would be easy to think of the Falcon Northwest Talon as nothing more than a vehicle for the latest AMD parts. That's fair considering how quickly these processors and graphics cards sell out. With the Z490 chipset you can of course also build the Talon around Intel parts. But let's face it, these AMD components are the hot new components everyone is talking about.

Choose from high-end Ryzen 5000 chips, including Ryzen 7 5800X, Ryzen 9 5900X, and Ryzen 9 5950X. If you're just playing, the Ryzen 7 is a perfect fit for you, saving you up to $ 520. But hey, we all want to know what a 16-core Zen 3 processor can do. So that's what we loaded into our configuration.

Ideally, I'd like to compare the Talon to similar configurations on the Origin Neuron and the Alienware Aurora R11, both of which can be configured similarly with the Ryzen 9 5950X. The way these various systems create and cool their components will affect performance. However, you shouldn't expect huge differences in frame rates or render times.

Falcon Northwest combines the CPU with an all-in-one liquid cooling system from Asetek that includes a fairly large cooler with a pair of 140mm fans mounted. In all of my tests, neither the GPU nor the CPU ever climbed above 73 degrees Celsius, and the system remained surprisingly quiet, too.

As can be expected, the Ryzen 9 5950X dominates the benchmarks absolutely. It scored an insane 23,539 in multi-core and 1,537 in single-core. Intel's scant 10-core chips are being hurt by multi-core performance, and the upcoming move to 8-cores in the 11th generation Rocket Lake S chips won't improve the situation.

Again, I haven't tested this chip on other systems, but as the only 16-core mainstream CPU you can buy, you shouldn't expect any other chip to outperform it in multi-core scores.

When you are doing this much, it won't have a massive impact on your daily activities. For tasks like word processing, web browsing, and video conferencing, it's only marginally faster than the latest laptops you can buy.

When creating content, these 16 cores and 32 threads show their potential. In applications like Adobe Premiere Pro and Handbrake, tasks like video encoding can be done in lightning speed, especially if you're upgrading from an older quad-core or six-core processor. It encoded a 4K movie trailer to H.265 in just 49 seconds – a new record among the systems we tested. In Premiere, the performance in Premiere is 60% better than the M1 Mac Mini.

As fast as it did in Premiere, the Radeon RX 5900 XT's performance is holding back from being the absolute best. The Nvidia RTX 3080 tested in PugetBench outperforms the Radeon RX 5900 XT, which was also tested in the Falcon Northwest Talon, by 10%. That doesn't look good, especially given the $ 300 difference in price.

I also tested the GPU-based rendering of the RX 5900 XT with the RTX 3080 in the Blender benchmark. Here the two GPUs exchange the various tests. It's not an absolute win for AMD, it should be for the price, but don't count the Radeon RX 5900 XT out just yet. Gaming is the biggest test of any graphics card, and the RX 5900 XT doesn't disappoint here.

Play

Let's start with 3DMark, which strongly emphasizes the gaming potential of the AMD-based Talon. It outperforms the RTX 3080 – retested in the exact same rig. But it's not a lot. It is only 2% faster in the DX12 test called Time Spy and 6% faster in the older DX11 Fire Strike test.

I didn't have access to the RTX 3090 to test it in the system, but a quick look at the benchmarks shows that the $ 1,399 card has a good lead over the RX 6900 XT. In actual games, the RX 6900 XT can handle 1440p and 4K resolutions quite well. Just make sure you have a monitor that can handle such high frame rates.

In the Fortnite at Epic settings, the average was 99 fps (frames per second) in 4K and 202 fps in 1440p. That's 14% faster than the RTX 3080 in 4K and 16% faster in 1440p. Of course, with an Nvidia GPU you can enable the game's impressive ray tracing and DLSS effects, although the frame rate has a tradeoff.

Assassin's Creed Valhalla is a newer title that can really test a system's raw graphics performance, and it turned out to be a worthy challenge for the Talon. The RX 6900 XT was really impressive here with an average of 69 fps in 4K Ultra High. But in 1440p the game really shone, reaching 116 fps with maximum graphics quality. It's not a game that you need jittery frame rates for, but being over 60 fps regardless of resolution is an accomplishment.

Civilization VI was the only game I tested where the RTX 3080 beat the RX 6900 XT. In 1080p Medium and 1440p Medium, the RTX 3080 was even 7% ahead. But for a game that is so easy, it doesn't stand out at all in these lower resolutions. The game still averaged 184 fps at 4K in the Ultra settings. The impressive game results are beneficial to AMD. In the past, systems with Intel and Nvidia were more powerful gaming PCs, but AMD has finally caught up in this regard.

That doesn't mean I would necessarily recommend this particular configuration to everyone. The RX 5900 XT clearly outperforms the RTX 3080 only for games – and by a good amount in some games. In terms of content creation, however, it isn't quite as fast as Nvidia's cheaper offering. It also doesn't offer hardware accelerated ray tracing capabilities. This might not be a deal breaker now, but it could easily become a must-see in a couple of years. This is especially true since the AMD portion comes with a slight markup, which costs $ 381 more than the RTX 3080 (instead of $ 300).

If you're already spending more than $ 5,000 on a gaming PC that landed my configuration on, the added cost may not get you into the phase. More power for you! But for my money, the RTX 3080 offers better overall value. This also applies to the Alienware Aurora R11 and Origin Neuron, both of which can be configured in a similar way for more than $ 1,000 less. That's a lot of money. However, the increase in quality and the additional features make it worth your money, especially if you want to take advantage of the additional expansion slots.

Our opinion

If you want to be a part of the AMD action, the Falcon Northwest Talon is a great way to dive in. It is one of the few systems to support these powerful new components in a highly customizable way. There are cheaper options out there, but the Talon's flawless build and neat setup make it a winner.

Are there alternatives?

Many of my favorite gaming desktops haven't announced support for AMD's Ryzen 5000 platform, such as: B. the HP Omen 30L Desktop.

The Origin Neuron is the closest competitor to the Falcon Northwest Talon. I haven't tested the performance yet, but Origin offers a similar configuration in a smaller and cheaper build. The other brand that offers the Ryzen 9 5950X in a gaming PC is Alienware with its Aurora R11. It's cheaper too, but only has Nvidia graphics options.

Falcon Northwest is also selling its smaller Tiki desktop up to the Ryzen 9 5950X, although configuration options are currently quite limited.

How long it will take?

The Falcon Northwest Talon should last at least five years with its current components and much longer if you are ready to upgrade yourself. That's the beauty of desktop PCs. The Talon also comes with a full three-year warranty that covers both parts and labor.

Should you buy it?

Yes. It's the perfect vehicle for the performance of these new AMD components.

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