The 2014 Falcon Northwest Tiki ($4,395, as tested) is a small-form-factor (SFF) gaming desktop with a premium price tag and the performance to justify the expense. Kitted out with an overclocked Intel Core i7 quad-core processor and a potent EVGA GeForce GTX Titan Black graphics card, the pint-sized Tiki packs a punch, and gets a slightly updated look with one of Falcon’s custom paint jobs.

Editors’ Note: This version of the Falcon Northwest Tiki has been replaced. Read the review of the current Falcon Northwest Tiki.

Design and Features
Our review unit came with a bright cobalt-blue, auto-style paint job. There are several colors to choose from—any color of car paint is fair game—and you can even get it customized to match the side of your van, though it costs a pretty penny. And be extra careful with that paint job, as it will scratch just like a car door when banged against something, and even small abrasions can royally screw up the clear coat during the first few weeks you have it, since it takes a few weeks to cure.

Like the previous Tiki iteration—the
Falcon Northwest Tiki (2012)—the small system is meant to stand upright, and has a heavy granite base to provide sure footing. Measuring just 14 by 4 by 14 inches (HWD), the compact chassis is unchanged from the design used in the last Tiki model we reviewed in 2012. Instead of placing the power button, optical drive, and a small selection of ports on the front of the tower, as they normally would be located, the Tiki has these features installed on the top of the tower. Located toward the front of the machine, the ports and slot-loading optical drive are easily accessible to the user, and even more convenient if the PC is set in a lower position, such as under a desk.

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The side panel of the chassis is secured with thumb screws, giving you tool-free access to the internal components. Be careful opening that panel, however, because there is a radiator mounted to it, connected to an Asetek 120MM sealed liquid cooling system for the CPU. The cooler is hooked up to an Asus Z78I Deluxe motherboard, outfitted with an overclocked Intel Core i7-4770K processor and 16GB of RAM—two slots filled with 8GB each of 1866MHz DDR3 memory. There’s not a lot of interior room to add much in the way of upgrades, but there are three unused SATA ports, if you can find space for a drive or two. On a riser card above the motherboard is an EVGA GeForce GTX Titan Black GPU. Artfully crammed into the small case is an 8x DVD+-RW drive, along with two 1TB Corsair M550 SSDs, striped in RAID 0. It’s all powered by a 450W power supply.

Because this system is made with overclocking in mind, there’s one thing to watch out for. There are two small buttons on the back of the tower for resetting the BIOS. You’ll need to be careful not to bump one of these when unpacking the tower, as we learned from hard experience that the complementary metal–oxide–semiconductor (CMOS) reset button works even when the system isn’t powered on, leaving us temporarily without an operating system. A call to tech support got us straightened out, but we’ve seen button covers on other PCs to prevent this very thing, and we wish the Tiki had the same.

The two 1TB solid-state drives (SSDs) offer plenty of storage space, and promise faster performance than standard spinning hard drives can offer. Falcon Northwest doesn’t bog them down with unnecessary software either, preinstalling only Windows 8.1, Nvidia GeForce Experience, and a few utilities for overclocking. Nvidia’s GeForce Experience is all new, however, doing far more than simply updating drivers and offering settings profiles for specific games. In addition to being your central control panel for the GPU, it also offers new features, like ShadowPlay, which gives you DVR-like recording of your game as it happens, letting you save and share highlights for posting to YouTube or streaming to Twitch.TV, and Game Stream, for streaming your games to an Nvidia Shield handheld.

Falcon Northwest covers the Tiki with a three-year warranty for parts and labor, plus free servicing and free two-way shipping for service during the first year.

Performance
The Intel Core i7-4770K inside the Tiki is unlocked for overclocking, letting you crank up the clock speed from the standard 3.5GHz to a maximum of 3.9GHz. The 16GB of G.Skill 1866MHz memory (two 8GB sticks) are also built for overclocking performance, and the processor and memory combined to provide very good numbers across all of our benchmark tests. In PCMark 7, the Tiki scored 6,740 points, and in Cinebench it scored 10.08 points, both formidable results. Unfortunately, in this price range, envelope-pushing performance isn’t enough to ensure top marks—the Tiki was neck-and-neck with the Editors’ Choice Origin Chronos($1,224.00 at ORIGIN PC)(Opens in a new window) and the previous top pick, the Falcon Northwest Mach V (Triple Titan). Multimedia performance for the Tiki was actually the best of the bunch, pulling ahead by mere seconds to finish Photoshop in 2 minutes 23 seconds, and Handbrake in 23 seconds.

The Tiki also boasts an EVGA GeForce GTX Titan Black graphics card, built to push Nvidia’s Titan specs to the very limits. The result is impressive gameplay and visuals, cranking out 291 frames per second (fps) in Alien vs. Predator on mid-quality settings and lower (1,366-by-768) resolution; and 102fps with the resolution cranked up (1,920-by-1,080), and the detail settings dialed way up. Similar performance was seen in Heaven—231fps at basic settings and 93fps at full resolution and detail—making it clear that the Tiki will run any current game with buttery-smooth rendering and no dropped frames. But while the overclocked processor offers top performance, and the overpowered Titan Black graphics card offers extremely capable performance in gaming, it can’t match the raw power offered by multiple high-end GPUs. The Origin Chronos, which boasts two Nvidia graphics cards, nearly doubled the frame rates across the board, and the Falcon Northwest Mach V (Triple Titan) took things even further, thanks to its three GPUs.

Conclusion
The Falcon Northwest Tiki (2014) is a compact gaming powerhouse, offering high-end parts and overclocking capability in its small custom-painted chassis. The combination makes it a safe bet for any gamer. But while the performance is enough to satisfy most, it isn’t the very best at the price—for that, you’ll want the Origin Chronos, which remains our Editors’ Choice based solely upon its superior graphics performance. Awards aside, the Falcon Northwest Tiki is still one of the best boutique gaming PCs we’ve seen in this category.