MaximumPC 2004 09

Reviews

W

e thought we sensed the

coming of a PC revolution.

Now Falcon Northwest’s

FragBox II confirms it: Small form-

factor (SFF) PCs are starting to match

the power of bigger tower machines.

Want PCI Express graphics, DDR2,

an nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra, and

a 3.6GHz Prescott Pentium 4? The

FragBox II has it—and then some.

What gives this system an advan-

tage over all the prebuilt SFF designs

we’ve previously reviewed (including

the Hornet Pro 64 we reviewed in the

July issue) is the 520W power supply

Falcon Northwest managed to stuff

into the FragBox II. This allows you to

install damn near any piece of hot new

hardware you want.

Falcon also tapped case vendor

Silverstone to custom design and fab

the FragBox II’s solid-aluminum enclo-

sure. Silverstone’s influence is readily

apparent in the fit and finish, which

closely matches other high-end case

offerings from the

company. One

design touch

intended to

remind folks that

this PC shares a

lineage with the

original FragBox

is the integrated

handle. This solid

billet of alu-

minum will make

even the most

paranoid PC

transporters feel

secure that

the handle won’t

break off.

Internally, the

FragBox II packs all the

latest technology. The MicroATX

motherboard is a new Intel Black

Canyon model based on the hot

new 925X chipset. A pair of 512MB

Corsair Micro DDR2 533 modules

fills two of the four RAM slots. Two

10,000rpm Western Digital Raptors

handle storage duties, and a Plextor

DVD-R burner handles optical chores.

Falcon only included an 8x Plextor in

our review unit, but says it has since

switched all units to 12x (our price

reflects the 12x unit).

The PCI Express graphics card

is nVidia’s latest and greatest: the

GeForce 6800 Ultra. Falcon over-

clocks the videocard slightly from its

stock core of 400MHz to 440MHz. To

prove how utterly capable this box

is of handling an extra thermal load,

Falcon even delivered the unit with

the 3.6GHz P4 Prescott CPU over-

clocked to 3.8GHz for kicks. While we

conducted our review at the standard

3.6GHz clock speed, Falcon says it is

perfectly willing to ship the FragBox

II overclocked if that’s what the cus-

tomer wants.

Not surprisingly, the FragBox II per-

forms extremely well. It easily smoked

our zero-point Athlon 64 FX-51 in

benchmark tests. That’s no mean feat

considering our reference machine

was state of the art just six months

ago. The astonishing delta in gaming

performance came as no surprise,

though—our zero-point box uses an

outdated Radeon 9800 Pro card. The

FragBox II really struts its stuff in appli-

cations tests; its performance gains

range from 8 percent to 48 percent

faster than our reference system.

The real contest, however, is

between the FragBox II and the

Athlon 64 3700+, GeForce 6800

Ultra-equipped Hornet Pro 64 we

reviewed in July. Here the results were

mixed. In Halo , the FragBox II and

its clocked-up Ultra won, but in Jedi

Academy , the Hornet Pro 64 pulled

ahead. Why? It’s a CPU thing. One

game works better with Intel, and the

other favors AMD CPUs.

The FragBox II dominated the

Hornet in application testing, pulling

ahead by 8.6 percent in SYSmark

2004 and by a whopping 43 percent

in Premiere Pro. Photoshop 7 also saw

the FragBox II faster by some 11

percent. This makes the FragBox II a

very good gaming machine and an

excellent portable workstation. It’s

a close contest, but the application

performance, aesthetics, and sturdier

handle give the FragBox II a leg up

over the Hornet in our book.

We have to admit that we didn’t

expect the FragBox II to be much of a

match for this year’s Dream Machine,

but when Falcon showed up with this

monster, we started sweating bullets.

Its performance is even more amazing

when you consider the size of the

FragBox II. (Our Dream Machine is

still faster, though.)

— GORDON MAH UNG

Falcon Northwest FragBox II

Falcon’s new PC shocks us with dazzling looks and performance

 MA XIMUMPC SEPTEMBER 2004

This mini-PC is worthy

of the Falcon Northwest name.

520 watt power supply in a small formfactor.

MAGLITE

Noisy under full load.

$3,995, http://www.falcon-nw.com

MA XIMUMPCVERDICT 9

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Our zero-point system includes: a 2.2GHz Athlon 64 FX-51, an Asus SK8N mother-

board, 1GB of Corsair Registered TwinX DDR400 RAM, an ATI Radeon 9800 XT, a

250GB Western Digital WD2500JB hard drive, Plextor PX-708A DVD burner and a

PC Power and Cooling TurboCool 510 Deluxe power supply.

UNDER THE HOOD

DISPLAY

Videocard nVidia GeForce 6800 Ultra (440

MHz core, 550 MHz DDR)

STORAGE

Hard drives 2 x 74GB Western Digital Raptors

(10,000RPM, SATA) in RAID 0

Optical Plextor PX-712A (8x DVD+R, 40x

CD-R)

Other Mitsumi 1.44 floppy with inte-

grated media reader

THE BRAINS

AUDIO

Soundcard Integrated Realtek ALC880 8

Channel Audio 24-bit audio

Case Custom aluminum case

Power Silverstone 520 watt

supply

Fans/extras Two fans, front bezel light and fan

lights

FINE DETAILS

BOOT: 59 sec. DOWN: 18 sec.

CPU Intel Pentium 4 560 (3.6GHz

Prescott with 1MB L2)

Mobo Intel D925XBC (LGA775, Intel 925X

chipset)

RAM 1GB Corsair XMS DDR2 533

I/O ports Six USB 2.0 (two front, four rear),

one parallel, one serial, two IEEE

1394, SPDIF out/in

LAN Integrated Gigabit Ethernet