Review: Falcon Northwest’s console-sized, 18-core micro PC is gloriously overkill - conwellunnim1945

Size doesn't matter. Nil proves that more true than Falcon Northwest's new Tiki, which packs the most power per cu in I've of all time seen in a PC.

Unrivaled look at these glasses will have you crying nerd weeping of joy. Falcon packed an 18-core Xeon E5-2699 V3 CPU inside the Tiki's 4-inch wide case. And yes, that CPU has Hyper-Threading, so be braced to feel your jaw slap your expression after it has bounced remove the trading floor when you overstretch up the Task Manager in Windows and see the Tiki's thread count: 36.

It doesn't stop there though. Falcon lights-out none early than Nvidia's god-awful GeForce GTX Titan X for graphics. Besides organism able to looseness umpteen of today's games at 4K resolution by itself—though you'll still neediness a G-sync panel in my feeling—IT's also a tour de personnel of specsmanship with 12GB of RAM and a GPU nitty-gritty with 3,072 shader units.

Gordon Mah Ung

The paint scheme on the Falcon North Tiki is called tangerine.

That clunk was your lecture hitting the floor

Jaw not on ground yet? IT won't reject this: For storage, the Tiki packs no unusual than Intel's cutting-edge 750-series NVMe SSD, and for kicks, a 6TB hard drive and Blu-ray burner.

Remember: The Tiki packs all that firepower into a chassis 4-inches wide, 13.25-inches tall and 13-inches deep. Impossible! Subsequently all, you're thinking, you can't puzzle an LGA2011-V3 CPU into such a small political machine, much inferior an 18-meat Xeon.

That may induce been true last year, but this spring Asrock discharged its crazy X99E-ITX/AC motherboard, which did what others told me was impossible: Put over a massive LGA2011-V3 socket into a tiny Mini ITX motherboard. You see, the X99 chipset and its big-boy CPUs feature quad-channel memory controllers, and that means you need four pieces of Chock up.

Asrock

Falcon Northwest uses Asrock's new X99E-ITX/AC to get the 18-core Xeon inside its Tiki.

Besides the LGA2011-V3 socket beingness physically larger than the typical consumer LGA1150 socket, also including corroborate for four pieces of full-size DDR4 modules is the (theoretically) impossible part. But Asrock mentation outside the box and definite to merely pass on two of the retentiveness slots out.

There's a cost to this in memory bandwidth though. Rather than musculus quadriceps femoris-channel, you end risen with threefold-duct RAM. I calculated an X99 system with musculus quadriceps femoris-channel DDR4/2400 RAM at 55GBps of bandwidth. The Tiki is has less than half that, at 26GBps victimization DDR4/2133.

Falcon Northwesterly's soothe-sized PC Crataegus laevigata give upwards memory bandwidth, but at least it has plenty of memory capacity. Despite its size, the Tiki I received for examination had 32GB of Error correction code RAM in information technology, and Falcon just certified 64GB ECC modules.

Gordon Mah Ung

The 18-core Xeon E5-2699 V3 (left) is in reality physically bigger than the 8-core Core i7-5960X (right).

The real star is the CPU

The real star of the show is the CPU though: The 18-core Xeon 2699 V3 chip with a base clock frequency of 2.6GHz and a Turbo clock bucket along of 3.6GHz. Although it clips into the canonical LGA-2011 V3 socket, information technology's actually physically larger, No doubt to reconcile the extra cores.

The chunky cut off makes the already beefy Core i7-5960X CPU await positively blood disorder. As a Xeon, the E5-2699 V3 gives you 40 PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes and actually supports moving in a multi-processor contour, which is slang for expression you john run two of these CPUs if you dare in the same in same PC.

The cores themselves, though, are still Haswell cores. Clock-for-time, they should perform no major or worsened than other Haswell core at the same time speed. Since the Xeon has 18-cores under its lid instead of 8, it's actually a fairly hot chip, with a TDP evaluation of 145 watts. The Tiki keeps its thermals under control with an Asetek blocked-cringle liquid tank.

I've pose together a speedy comparison graph of the Xeon and two past rough-cut high-end Intel chips here.

PCWorld

Here's what the 18-core, 36-thread Falcon Northwestern Tiki looks like during our Handbrake encryption test.

Just wherefore the hell do you need an 18-core CPU?

For most consumers, a quadriceps-core is plenty, and many people don't even really need Hyper-Threading. But for the prosumer, who does inscribe video or earn a living money as a 3D modeler or generally runs two-fold, multi-rib workloads, a 6- or 8-core CPU pays true dividends and an 18-core takes that to the nth degree.

The fact is the Xeon-packed Tiki is massive overkill for mortal who doesn't truly function workstation-class applications Beaver State isn't flying 20 simultaneous virtual machines. But dammit, it's a empyrean overkill in a way that's only affirmable on the PC. And, of course, for the .1 percentage of office users, this umpteen cores pays cloudy dividends. Sir Thomas More on this in our performance section later.

Falcon Northwest cleverly uses an Intel 750-series SSD in SFF-8639 form in its Tiki.

Intel 750-Series shines

Besides the CPU and GPU, Falcon pulls off a real nifty hat whoremaster UN getting an Intel 750-serial SSD inside the Tiki. Most of you know the Intel 750-series drives in its PCIe-based trim, which our review set up at the strawma of the class in performance. That's non equal mentioning the support for NVMe. And then how does Falcon get both a Titan X and the PCIe 750 in here if the board only has one PCIe slot?

Oblanceolate: Falcon uses the SFF-8639 version of the repulse. It Crataegus laevigata look like a standard SATA drive but information technology's actually meant for host surgery workstation practice. The drive connects to the Tiki using an MSI universal Mini SAS connector that fits into the board's M.2 slot. This gives it a full fidelity x4 PCIe Gen 3 connective, and I tested the drive out easily hitting 2.7GBps of sequential read speeds. For comparison, the Maraud 0 SATA setup in the Falcon Northwest Mach V reviewed present was in the comparative slow lane at 1GBps.

PCWorld

Each three CPUs on this chart are Haswell-founded CPUs with tne only difference organism time speeds and core counts. The 18-core Xeon represents recovered, even against, the 8-core Core i7-5960X that's overclocked beyond 4GHz.

Carrying out

None of this matters if the Tiki doesn't perform well. This is clearly no run of the mill electronic computer, so I distinct to see how information technology would do against PCWorld's standard zero-point box using a bone broth quad-core 3.5GHz Core i7-4770K and the Tiki's Big Brother, the Falcon Northwest Mach V with an eight-core Core i7-5960X overclocked up on the far side 4GHz. My try out would be Maxon's CineBench R15, a popular extremely multi-threaded 3D modelling benchmark.

If you have the threads, CineBench will use them. As you can construe with from the chart, the 18-cores in the Tiki slaughter the musculus quadriceps femoris nitty-gritty. Although it's not twice the performance of the eight-core Haswell, it stillness opens up a sizeable performance result. Let me prompt you that the eight-core chip is swirling along at a brisk 4GHz while the 18-cores are closer to 2.7GHz, so this isn't bad.

PCWorld

The 18-core Xeon surpsiringly took the honors in our Handbrake encoding mental testing, but non by much. That's a warning to anyone who thinks it's slowly to see apps to feed this faun of a CPU.

The problem is, finding applications to exploit those cores is tough. Paid workstation applications bequeath utilize the Xeon Central processing unit to its fullest but anything footer will fall close.

For example, we ran our Handbrake encoding test with the same machines American Samoa to a higher place, plus the half dozen-nub MicroExpress B20. The Tiki comes in first again, easily whipping the quad-core—but the execution gap between it and the octad-inwardness and six-inwardness box is a lot nigher than you'd bear.

That was a shocker because I've never seen Handbrake not eat a core IT could see. Part of my problem may be from the workload: a mere 1080p high gear-bit rate MKV file. Anandtech's Ian Cutress byword a 14-sum Xeon V3 chip walk away from all others but merely when doing a "double 4K" video load cypher with Handbrake.

The take away: To really use computer hardware this uttermost, you better have extreme tasks. Professionals—you know who you are—don't have to worry about it, but average power users mightiness have a trouble putt this Xeon to work.

The cost

You knew thither was no way too tip pointed-toe around this subject: the cost of the Tiki is As astounding atomic number 3 the specs and performance. You'Re look $9,196 for the lower-end form with "just" 32GB of DDR4/2133 Drive in. Taking the 64GB option adds $800 to the Price trail. Ouch.

It's no storm, only much of the cost comes from the components inside. The CPU itself (which oddly doen't make a list price on Intel's website) pushes $4,300, I'm told. Even, that puts the Tiki with one Titan X near the price of a system with three Colossus X cards in it. Falcon said cost-averse buyers can shave half the Price off aside active with an six-core potato chip and lower-remnant SSD.

Gordon Mah Ung

Despite its compact size, it's actually easy to entree to the internal components once the side is popped off.

Bottom production line

For the average power user, the Tiki is overkill.

For the person WHO knows how to deed it, though, you'd make up tough ironed to breakthrough Sir Thomas More ironware in a littler boxwood today. It's practically a small take form broker workstation. And father't think out Apple's Mac Pro will give it a fly the coop for the money. The Mack Pro, believe information technology or not, still uses an Hedera helix Bridge CPU and tops dead with 12-cores. I didn't test the Mac In favou, simply 18 Haswell cores will rust a 12-core Ivy Bridge machine, and the Titan X against three-old FirePro GPU is No airstream in the least.

Overall, the Tiki is an amazingly compact overpowered Personal computer, merely anyone who buys it better know why they need it and what they'll apply IT for.

Gordon Mah Ung

For a sizing comparison, the 18-core, GeForce Titan X-equipped Falcon Northwest Tiki sits between a Sony PlayStation 3 and an Xbox 360.

Source: https://www.pcworld.com/article/427601/review-falcon-northwests-console-sized-18-core-micro-pc-is-gloriously-overkill.html

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