falcon northwest tiki

The granite base on the bottom of the Falcon Northwest Tiki might not be to everyone's aesthetic taste, but there's no denying the technical and design achievement behind this slim tower gaming desktop. Should you spend $2,783 for it? With competing systems out there that offer more-flexible and more-powerful graphics card configurations in a similar price range, it's hard to recommend the Tiki unless you are unwaveringly attached to its slim-tower design.

The Tiki is the boutique PC answer to the mass-market-leaning Alienware X51. Alienware delivered a capable, tidy gaming system when it launched the X51 back in January. The x51's primary innovation is that, thanks to some clever motherboard manipulation, it was the first slim-tower PC with a full-size, dual-slot graphics card.

Falcon Northwest borrows heavily from the Alienware X51 here, adopting a similar slim-tower design in the Tiki, and the same full 3D card connected via a PCI Express daughter card. It also seems to have improved on Alienware's concept.

While the X51 has a massive 330-watt external power brick, the Tiki has an internal 450-watt power supply, as well as liquid cooling hardware. Liquid cooling is important, because it helps Falcon Northwest manage internal temperatures well enough that it can overclock the Tiki's third-generation Core chips. Alienware doesn't overclock. It also doesn't charge over $1,800 for any configuration of the X51. The Tiki starts at $1,870 or so. Our review unit will cost $2,793 when Falcon starts taking orders at the end of June.falcon tiki