High-End Meets Small Form Factor: GeForce Titan in Falcon Northwest's Tiki
by Anand Lal Shimpi on February 19, 2013 9:00 AM ESTPrice and Final Words
I like the Tiki chassis. It's big enough to accommodate the type of parts I'd want to integrate, yet it's small enough to feel more like a console than a huge gaming PC. The styling is simple and understated, allowing the system's size to be the main thing on display.
I've personally never been a fan of multi-GPU setups, I much prefer the simplicity of a single, high performance GPU. For a user like me, the GeForce Titan in Falcon's Tiki is pretty much as good as it gets. I was pleasantly surprised by the amount of performance that could be squeezed into a fairly small chassis, without being overly loud. The Tiki wasn't silent, but the days of having to make a trade off between something annoying and something fast are over. It's sort of absurd that between the Core i7 and Titan there are 8.5 billion transistors switching at ridiculous speeds inside this tiny chassis.
Personally I don't know that I'd ever build or buy something as insane as this setup, but that's not to say that I don't appreciate it. A 4.6GHz Core i7 paired with an single, speedy GPU is just a great combination for a gaming system. The fact that it comes in a sleek form factor is icing on the cake.
Kelt was always hesitant to send a Tiki over for review at AnandTech. The system isn't cheap. In its default configuration with a Core i5-3470 with 8GB of RAM and a 128GB Crucial m4 SSD you're looking at a price of around $1713. You can definitely build something faster for a lot cheaper. When you're spending a clean $1K just on your GPU however, a more expensive overall system cost isn't all that unreasonable. While I didn't have final pricing for the review system, the Tiki system I tested without Titan would retail for $2263. I'd expect the final price with Titan to be somewhere around $3200.
In a world where Apple sells $2000 - $3000 Macs based around their experience, I don't see why the same sort of logic can't apply here as well. What has traditionally kept PC vendors from being able to sell on an experience has really been an issue with the software side of the story. With Steam and Big Picture, Valve is helping to address some of those weaknesses.
Falcon built a system that you wouldn't mind having in your living room, much like you would a gaming console, but I do see a lot of potential in the usage model NVIDIA outlined at CES. With your gaming PC in your office streaming content to your TV when you want more of that console experience.
The quest for more power efficient hardware has done wonderful things for the mobile industry, but I believe the PC gaming market stands to benefit as well. Although we asked NVIDIA for both a 3-way SLI system and small form factor box based on GeForce Titan, we did so out of necessity. When faced with the choice of what we'd rather have personally, both Ryan and I agreed that a single Titan in a small form factor chassis is the way to go.
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gandergray - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Impressive engineering from Falcon NW.xenol - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Part of me thinks manufacturers should start selling those PCI-Express riser cards so people can build thin mini-ITX builds.NIGHTSCOUT - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Yes, you can buy PCIe risers on ebay. For a few years now.Death666Angel - Wednesday, February 20, 2013 - link
Pretty much this. Although, mainstream case support isn't there yet. There are many more mITX cases that have a small cube like footprint than there are small tower like footprints. And if they go the narrow tower route, often they offer the riser card as part of the case. :)IanCutress - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Would be interesting to compare the weight of the Tiki against the consoles. I'm never too keen on putting my CDs, DVDs or games into a sideways mounted drive, so I wonder if the granite base is detachable (or optional) so you can put it on its side.piroroadkill - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
One side would block the exhaust for the CPU, the other would block the intake for the GPU, so I don't think that's a good idea.Maybe if you put it on blocks. But then you've ruined the look of the setup.
IanCutress - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
Very good point. I'm just always wary of scratching disks when putting them in sideways if they don't have a slot loader.Guspaz - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
If you're loading a blu-ray disc, you're extremely unlikely to scratch it in that manner, since they're all coated (with stuff like TDK Durabis or the like).wolrah - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
I'd just wonder really how important loading discs actually is to the modern PC market.Games? I'm pretty sure the original World of Warcraft was the last one I installed from CD.
OS? Microsoft has an official tool for loading Vista or newer ISOs or CDs to USB drives, and it installs MUCH faster from even a slow USB drive in my experience.
Media? If you insist on sticking with disc-based systems a standalone Blu-ray player is cheaper than a game most days and will play anything that matters. Otherwise digital libraries are the way to go. The discs I own for the most part get opened once, to rip them to my media server, at which point they are shelved forever because why would I ever want to use discs when I can just click my remote?
freedom4556 - Tuesday, February 19, 2013 - link
All the optical medial hate. So far 2x dvd read speed (22.16 Mbit/s) is still faster than the average broadband speed in the States (15.91 Mbps). Fully half of all the games I have on Steam were bought on Amazon or in the store and then I activated the keys in steam to have backups. It takes forever to install games from scratch. Hell, the initial patching alone can take hours. Personally I scorn digital distribution and love things like redbox and Hastings. What can I say, I'm a sucker for instant gratification.Sources:
http://www.netindex.com/download/2,1/United-States...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DVD#Technology