Falcon Northwest FragBox 2 Review

[tmeacham]

Article by Rob Wright.

Falcon Northwest revamps its small form factor desktop PC with the FragBox 2, a portable gaming system with a bargain price that's less than $1,500. But does the Fragbox 2's performance stand up?

http://www.tomsgames.com/us/2008/04/10/fragbox2_review/

 

[baddad]

I have to ask who makes a Micro ATX SLI board, I can't think of one, so putting two 9800's in it can't be done anyway.

 

[spuddyt]

i wonder how hot that 8800 gets....

 

[Luscious]

$1500 for a falcon is a good price indeed.

Am I just blind or did they miss the Crysis benchie?

Shuttle supposedly has a flame-red SDXi model with SLI, or so they claim.

 

[dirian]

The commant about the video card being a glaring weakness i think shows one of the objectives of this computer was missed by the reviewer. if you are going to haul this thing out to a lan party you likely arent going to take that 21" CRT monitor that weighs 50lbs. you probably are going to take an LCD monitor. And for most LCD monitors a single video card of the caliber thats in this system will push its resolution just fine. Its just a matter of targeting the likely customer and their likely uses of the system.

 

[tabarin]

What are the system specs for the iBuyPower 1500 that you're testing against? I did a google search and I couldn't find any system by that name. Also, how tolerable is the system noise level? Thanks

 

[robwright]

What are the system specs for the iBuyPower 1500 that you're testing against? I did a google search and I couldn't find any system by that name. Also, how tolerable is the system noise level? Thanks

I think there's a link to the iBuyPower specs from the original review on Tom's Guide, but here it is just in case:

http://www.tomsguide.com/us/ibuypower-gaming-pc,review-1069-3.html

Also, the FragBox noise level was lower than I expected. I personally did not find it intrusive at all.

 

[roger smith]

I have been told that micro-atx motherboards are inferior to standard-atx motherboards as far as performance goes. What i was told is that micro-atx has an on-board gpu that even when disabled and a video card is added, a performance hit is still encored; is this true? The idea of getting a micro-atx motherboard is greatly appealing to me; both for the price and for my love of minimalism. I am a one disc drive, two hard drive kinda guy. I was also planning on getting the cheaper DDR-II ram so the fact that there really isn't DDR-III in m-atx isn't a huge problem. The last consideration is heat, but i am sure that if i get the right case, heat will not be an issue. I want to get the most power for the money, is micro-atx something i should consider?

PS: i suppose the inability to over-clock may also be a problem for best performance/cost ratio.

 

[tabarin]

Thanks Rob, I think what was throwing me off is that its a Gamer Mage 855 and not an iBuyPower 1500

 

[drunkgamer]

Anyone happen to know if Tom's has done a review of their recent switch to Penryn/790i/DDR3 Mach V offering desktop in addition to this fragbox?

Or if anyone has one, I'd love to hear about your experiences in addition to the comments about the fragbox.