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System:
Our sample of the Falcon Predator was supplied with Windows 7 pre-installed, however you can select from a variety of different Windows operating systems.
Falcon overclocks the i7-4770K to 4.2 GHz, which should yield a noticeable performance boost. There are a number of pre-built systems on the market which ship with higher overclocks although Haswell is known to run hot so playing it a little safe might not be such a bad thing.
Looking at CPU-Z we can see that the motherboard is feeding the Intel Core i7-4770K with around 1.21V (under load) to sustain the 4.2 GHz overclock. The memory is configured to run at 1866MHz with timings of 10-11-10-30.
The inbuilt Windows benchmarks rates the system at 7.7, which is actually limited by the CPU performance of the system! This is hardly a definitive measure of performance but it gives us a vague idea of the system’s capabilities.
GPU-Z confirms that the Predator boasts a nVidia GTX 770 with 2 GB of GDDR5 memory.
We are using a Viewsonic VX2260WM 1080P monitor for testing.
Software:
PCMark 8
PCMark 7
3DMark
3DMark 11
3DMark Vantage
SiSoft Sandra 2013
Cinebench R11.5
CrystalDiskMark
Cyberlink MediaEspresso 6.7
VLC Media Player
Performance Monitor
Unigine Heaven Benchmark
Super Pi 1.5 Mod
CPUID Hardware Monitor
CPU-Z
DiRT Showdown
Battlefield 3
Call of Duty: Black Ops 2
never heard of these guys, but I do like that case, its pretty cool looking.
the price isn’t bad really considering they have to build it. can’t be much money in system building today to cover staff, heating, premises etc.
the only systems that someone could build better than me would be the 8pack ones at OverclockersUK. but they are much too expensive for my tastes. ill continue to build my own, but this one isn’t too bad. at least they didnt use a chinese PSU in it, like mesh. that was shocking 🙁
I’m quite concerned…
On page two you have an image of the system internals (http://www.kitguru.net/wp-content/uploads/2013/09/IMG_2991.jpg): that Graphics card seems like it is twisting horribly, or are all the cool kids using curved Graphics cards now?
I can see that there is a back-plate but I suspect shipping the system with a Graphics card that is that heavy could damage the PCI-e Port if not damaging the card itself? Is the back-plate made from a plastic, it looks like it flexes a lot more than it should?
Arrangements should be made to support the card in the configuration, maybe the chassis should be swapped for one that supports a Graphics card support bracket?
This would have to be the case if the system was configured to ship with a SLi configuration.
I’m sorry for my rant, I’m sure that if the fault lies with anyone it would be ASUS (The vendor for the supplied GPU). However, arrangements should be made by the system builder if they choose to offer the card.
On the whole, a well balanced system by The Falcon Computers, well done gents.
Well written as always Henry!