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I have a new desktop computer, and it is AWESOME! This week I replaced my AMD Ryzen 9 machine that I’d rebuilt and massively water-cooled only to have it bleed blue coolant and turn my office floor into what appeared to be a surf murder scene with a new Falcon Talon gaming system. I’ve been a Threadripper fan since it was first announced, primarily because it is so over the top in terms of cores and performance that it is the equivalent of a hot rod car in a PC. And since I’m a hot rod car guy—you can find my latest project car here—having a hot rod PC is right up my alley.
Let’s talk about my initial impressions this week.
Falcon Talon
I generally build my systems, but I’m hardly a pro at it, and when I get a system in like this Falcon Talon, I’m kind of embarrassed at the quality of my work (my results tend to be a bit of a wiring and tubing rat’s nest). While my skills need work, Falcon is at the top of their game, and the interior of this box is as pristine as the exterior.
As a side note, it continues to amaze me how fast I can now migrate to a new PC. Within a leisurely 30 minutes, the machine was all hooked up, patched and syncing with the cloud, and I was able to start working on it. And much of that 30 minutes was waiting for update reboots and loading the Chrome browser–thanks to the new Chromium Edge browser I rarely use–but I like having a backup, and the Chrome browser works better with my Android phone.
This Falcon was a special build that has a 1TB Corsair MP600 flash drive, an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT card, an Asetek closed-loop watercooler (processor only), 64GB of memory and that 32 Core 3970X Threadripper. Tons of USB ports, mostly 3.0, and built-in Wi-Fi 6 (I have a Wi-Fi 6 router), twin Ethernet ports–and the only sound I hear apparently is from the fans on the graphics card.
The case has the prominent Falcon logo lighted on the front and the AMD graphics on the side for what is an elegant-looking desktop.
In Use
For systems like this, I rarely run benchmarks, because the system is so over the top that most folks who buy it will want a benchmark on the game they play. My favorite game remains “Ashes of the Singularity,” which is a strategy game that can generate thousands of game elements. I crank the performance options up to “crazy” and then see if the system can handle the load.
My last system tended to overheat, which is why I aggressively water-cooled it, including a water block for the GPU. But the case didn’t adequately vent the heat, which leads to that dead Smurf-looking puddle of coolant on my office floor and an emergency shutdown. (It strikes me that a meltdown alarm would be handy for times like this.) The new Talon Falcon handled this load like a champ, and while the fans on the graphics card did get a bit louder, the sound from the game easily covered the sound up, and during normal operation, the system is relatively quiet. I’ve had it running non-stop for several days now, and except for a software update that caused a reboot, it has been running without issue since I finished the first set of patches.
Wrapping Up: How Do You Spell AWESOME?
I now spell it Falcon Talon, and this has instantly become my favorite PC. I have several great laptops, but when I want to get work done, having a big monitor (I use the 49-inch Dell monster monitor, which is amazing) and a powerful desktop is my ticket to happiness. Falcon makes an impressive box, and, as I’ve noted, I’ve been a huge fan of Threadripper since launch. I just noticed I can’t even hear the fans now, suggesting that it is time to stop writing, load a game and blow some stuff up.
It is all about priorities.
Rob Enderle is a principal at Enderle Group. He is a nationally recognized analyst and a longtime contributor to QuinStreet publications and Pund-IT.
