Falcon Northwest Mach V review (Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700)

Only 300GB of hard drive space?
Aside from performance, the Mach V that Falcon sent us had a near-typical configuration for a high-end gaming PC, although it's a little short on hard drive space, which could explain its somewhat lower price tag than its competition. Our configuration had only two 150GB 10,000rpm hard drives. The other PCs in this class come with at least 500GB of storage space, if not 1TB in various drive combinations. The Mach V also has an adequate 2GB of 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM, but if Dell is able to include 4GB of 667MHz RAM in its significantly less expensive XPS 710 H2C, it looks a little weak for Falcon Northwest (or any of the other vendors) to offer only half as much, even if the Mach V has faster memory and the more up-to-date Nforce 680i SLI motherboard chipset. You can add memory and expand the hard drive storage on the Mach V's configurator, but bringing them on a par with the Dell will add another $1,100 to the price tag.

Similar to the others, the Mach V comes with a dual-layer DVD burner and a second DVD-ROM drive. We're surprised, though, that none of these cutting-edge desktops comes with an HD optical drive. We'll give Falcon credit, though, because it's the only vendor of Dell, Velocity Micro, or Widow PC to even offer Blu-ray as an option (for an extra $950). Both this system and the others are up to date on audio cards, however, in the Mach V's case by way of the Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi Fatal1ty model.

Simple but polished
Finally, the design. Falcon Northwest sent us its brushed-aluminum case, sans the $1,000 paint job. It's a clean, if perhaps plain, look in a box that takes up lots of space. We couldn't really put our finger on why, but there's something about Falcon's wiring inside the box that makes it look cleaner than even the Velocity Micro. We also hate the Mach V's hard drive cage, similar to the Velocity Micro's case. By facing the drives toward the rear of the system, it makes it much harder to swap or add drives later. Dell, Widow PC, and the Apple Mac Pro have the best designs in that area, with the drives facing out. We will give the Falcon Northwest credit for its noise level, though. The Velocity Micro sounded like a rocket ship, and while the Dell was nearly silent, it needed a cumbersome, customized cooling unit to achieve its silence--and the Dell is overclocked to only 3.2GHz. The Mach V might be a little louder than the Dell, but the judicious application of sound dampening foam goes a long way toward keep its noise levels low.

The support story on the Mach V is the same as always. Blessedly, Falcon Northwest gives you three years of parts-and-labor coverage. We wish every other vendor made this the baseline support option. And while its phone support might not be open at all hours, you can reach Falcon's in-house techs seven days a week from 9 a.m. to 6 p.m. PT. There's an extensive list of FAQs and driver and other software downloads on Falcon's Web site.

System configurations:

Alienware Area-51 7500
Windows XP Media Center Edition 2005 SP2; 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 (overclocked to 3.2GHz); 2,048MB DDR2 SDRAM 800MHz; 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX; (2) 150GB Western Digital 10,000rpm Serial ATA hard drives (RAID 0); 250GB Samsung 7,200rpm Serial ATA hard drive

Apple Mac Pro
OS X 10.4.7; 2x 2.66GHz Xeon 5150; 1,024MB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM; 256MB Nvidia GeForce 7300GT; 250GB Western Digital 7,200rpm Serial ATA hard drive

Dell XPS 710 H2C
Windows XP Professional SP2; 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 overclocked to 3.2GHz; 4,096MB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM; (2) 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX; (2) 150GB Western Digital 10,000rpm Serial ATA/150 hard drives (RAID 0); 750GB Seagate 7,200rpm hard drive

Velocity Micro Raptor Signature Edition (Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700)
Windows XP Professional SP2; 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 overclocked to 3.2GHz; 4,096MB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; (2) 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX; (4) 150GB Western Digital 10,000rpm serial ATA/150 hard drives (RAID 0)

Widow PC IX2 SLI
Windows XP Professional SP2; 2.66GHz Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 overclocked to 3.34GHz; 2,048MB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM; (2) 768MB Nvidia GeForce 8800 GTX; (2) 150GB Western Digital 10,000rpm Serial ATA/150 hard drives (RAID 0); 750GB Seagate 7,200rpm hard drive