![]() ![]() We used the company’s UV printing service to emblazon Windows Central’s logo on the Talon’s glass doors, which is stunning. While we loved the minimalist black finish, if the Tiki’s design is too plain for you, Falcon Northwest also offers optional custom UV printing on the sides, front, and top for an entirely custom touch. For gamers who don't have experience with Falcon Northwest's luxurious desktop builds and are stepping up from cheaper rigs, handling the Tiki is like upgrading from a Hyundai to a Mercedes G-Wagon. This means that Tiki weight is slightly more than half of its larger sibling, but it's just roughly a quarter of Talon's size. With its 11.6-liter size, the Tiki comes in at 25 pounds, of which a solid 6 pounds is dedicated to the solid base. It’s designed to outlast you.įor comparison, the Talon, a mid-size tower that clocks in shy of 40 liters, weighs about 44 pounds. Simply put, the Tiki isn’t built to last. Given the thicker metal construction, Tiki’s compact size, and the densely packed internal components, there’s no flex. Tiki’s metal plates appear thicker than the thin sheet metal used on many competing desktops. To get things down to a more compact footprint, Falcon Northwest swapped out the Talon’s thick, extruded aluminum plates in favor of thinner metal sheets for the bulk of Tiki’s case. Like the bigger Talon desktop, Tiki benefits from Falcon Northwest’s industrial engineering expertise. Still, the advantages - whisper-quiet fans, discrete black finish, powerful performance, and tank-like durability - negate any drawbacks, provided you have space for a compact tower.ĭespite its small stature, Tiki’s build quality is, as expected, exceptional. The only downside with using Tiki as an HTPC is that you can’t set the Tiki down horizontally on its side, as this would block the vents. Home theater PC (HTPC) enthusiasts can set up this desktop in the living room to stream photos, music, movies, and TV shows and keep all their files on hand. Tiki’s compact size allows it to also serve as a powerful home entertainment PC. On Tiki, this means you’re getting a performance-packed gaming PC in the form of a living room console. Corsair’s One series tops out with an RTX 3080 Ti. Those desktops come in a squircle-shaped tower - rather than Tiki’s more traditional rectangular compact tower form factor - making it more similar to Apple’s now discontinued “trash can”-styled Mac Pro. If you want, you can also sign up for my diabolical newsletter on Substack and subscribe to my YouTube channel.The closest size rival to the Tiki would be Corsair’s One gaming PCs and One Pro workstations. ![]() You can also follow me on Twitter and Facebook and support my work on Patreon. And it just looks good sitting there next to my ASUS Ultra-Wide monitor. It ran flawlessly for every application and remained cool and quiet for the duration. I used this unit for two months, playing games, rendering videos and doing day-to-day computing in order to get a full sense of how the machine performs over time. If you want a PC that’s stylish but not flashy, that has a small footprint but leaves a big impression, you can’t beat the Falcon Northwest Tiki.Ĭonfigure yours at Falcon Northwest’s homepage, where you can choose from CPU and GPU options, custom exterior UV prints and much more.Ī loaner unit was provided for the purposes of this review. I have to agree with my colleague Jason Evangelho’s review of the Tiki from way back in 2013: This is the perfect PC. If you’re gaming on a Falcon Northwest machine, you have the disposable income to pay for the best of the best without compromising. A quality boutique, luxury gaming PC is expensive, but you pay for what you get. My test unit, fit with the newer Intel i9-12900 and air-cooling will set you back around $5,300. You also pay a premium, with Tikis starting in the $3,000 - $4,000 range but easily topping off thousands higher depending on which options you select. So yes, you trade upgradability for a smaller form factor. 2TB of super-fast M.2 SSD storage is great, but it’s easy to fill that up with games and other files. ![]() There’s room inside to add two more SSD drives so you can pack in a lot more storage. There are only two memory slots, so if I wanted to upgrade RAM I’d need to replace the two 16GB units I have with two 32GB units, which is obviously costlier (though Falcon Northwest is now offering 32GB x2 configurations so you can start with 64GB). Such are the limitations of the form factor. While it’s nice to have such a compact gaming PC sitting on my desk not taking up too much space, it does mean that upgrades-while not impossible-are going to be far more limited than in an ATX tower with ample room to work. There always are-especially when you’re making a size tradeoff.
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