Falcon Northwest Goes Nuts With Tiki-Z Battlebox

News
By Niels Broekhuijsen
published

Falcon Northwest's Tiki-Z may be the most interesting Battlebox yet.

We've seen a few Battlebox systems already, and now Falcon Northwest has joined the fray with its own entry. Being Falcon Northwest, they decided to do this rather unconventionally by building the Tiki-Z. Remember the original Tiki from 2012? Well, I’m sure you can see where this is going.

In case you don’t remember the Tiki, let me remind you: The Tiki is a tiny prebuilt desktop from Falcon Northwest. It's about four inches wide and stands thirteen inches tall, and it has a Mini-ITX motherboard and an SFX power supply. The leftover space is filled up with a 3.5” hard drive, an SSD and a full-size graphics card. To top it all off, the case itself is custom-made with your choice of (automotive) paint, and the base of the system could be made of a granite slab. All things considered, this is hands down the coolest prebuilt Mini-ITX system you’ll find.

Custom laser-etched air intakes

Now, with Nvidia’s Battlebox program, Falcon Northwest has decided to build a Tiki with a GTX Titan Z inside -- hence the name "Tiki-Z". Inside the system you’ll find a liquid-cooled Intel Core i7-4790K processor, up to 16 GB of memory, whatever SSD storage you choose, and up to 6 TB of hard drive storage. All of this hardware is powered by the new 600 W Silverstone SFX power supply. While it might sound like a tight squeeze to power a system with a Titan Z off of "just" 600 W, we assure you that the chosen PSU is perfectly capable of doing so.

If you're wondering what such a system costs, we regret to inform you that it is anything but cheap. Pricing starts at $5,614, although for a limited time you’ll get a free Asus PB287Q 28” 4K monitor with your purchase. To put things into perspective, you might be able to justify this price tag if you consider that the cost of a single GTX Titan Z through retail is about $3000, and you're also getting a personally customized case and a 4K monitor. It is still a lot of money, but you'll have yourself the best Mini-ITX system money can buy.

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Niels Broekhuijsen
Niels Broekhuijsen

Niels Broekhuijsen is a Contributing Writer for Tom's Hardware US. He reviews cases, water cooling and pc builds.

8 Comments Comment from the forums
  • Bean007
    LoL, good luck selling at that price.

    Oh look, if it isn't the Downvote police. A ien2222, someguynamedmatt, thee prisoner, Chef Boyardee, hoofhearted, WithoutWeakness, and jasonpwns has joined in as well. They only gave upvotes to 1 person. Hmmm. Making more then one account so you can downvote people? How sad. Why don't you make more accounts and just downvote like crazy.

    I still don't think you made enough dummy accounts to downvote other people while upvoting yourself or your friends.
    Reply
  • quangluu96
    I don't know if this is true, but at that price, I expect people know how to build and mod by themselves, so I don't think many will buy this unless they just have money to burn.
    Reply
  • joecole1572
    I don't know if this is true, but at that price, I expect people know how to build and mod by themselves, so I don't think many will buy this unless they just have money to burn.

    If I remember correctly, the Tiki is a pretty sophisticated engineering feat. The cases are custom built for the purpose of shoving all of those hot components into a very tight space. I'm sure that the market for these PCs are very limited, but Falcon is a boutique outlet. Their PCs are made to order and I doubt they keep any stocked up in a warehouse.
    Reply
  • apone
    Falcon Northwest is still around?
    Reply
  • helper800
    It would "be the best Mini-ITX system money can buy" if it had a R9 295 X2.
    Reply
  • Leamon
    The 4k monitor it comes with nearly justifies that price!
    Reply
  • Bean007
    13959302 said:
    The 4k monitor it comes with nearly justifies that price!

    And 4k gaming is really working out, not really and yet there willing to sell it to you. Just like 4k TV's. Also if you waited till 4k gaming was actually viable and cost effective I'm sure you could do much better then what they want.
    Reply
  • TechyInAZ
    Nice. But how heavy is it? Since most peeps want a portable mini itx system aswell.
    Reply