Well, she got here!
First, I have to mention just how freaking small this thing is! The image below has a FragBox like mine next to the Talon case from Falcon NW. The Talon is a few inches shorter and a bit narrower than the case I had. You really have to trust me when I say that it's tiny.
She's very quiet, but I guess that should be expected. She has the same 280mm cooler that I had in my previous system and two small (thin) fans right next to the graphics card. My old one had the 280mm cooler with it's two fans, an exhaust fan, and three intake fans. Plus the graphic card with it's three fans was right next to the bottom of the case without much air to move around so it's fans always seemed to be spinning more than needed.
It's not as pretty as my old case was. My old case was designed to look good first and be a good case second. The three intake fans all had ring lights on them and were right next to a big glass panel. One whole side of the old case was tempered glass and that let you see the ring lights on the cooler, the RGB lights on the RAM and the little bit of lights on the motherboard and the graphics card (the card actually had fan lights too, but again they were facing the bottom of the case and couldn't be seen directly. As you can see in the above image, the FragBox has a lit Falcon NW log. It's RGB, but it's from an LED strip so it's hard to get any pattern or anything other than solid colors. There's no glass on this case, but there are vents on both sides and the top. Now, I have this case sitting down to my lower right so I can peek over and see the light on the graphics card as well as hints of the RGB lights on the RAM, but it's certainly not showcasing them.
I mentioned that one of the driving reasons to get the new computer was boot speed. Well, that's solved! I am now booting from hitting the power button to the windows login screen in seven seconds. It's exactly what I wanted.
The day to day speed isn't noticeable. Sure, it's snappy and fast but the Ryzen 7 7700X was snappy and fast too. I'm only going to notice a difference in synthetic tests. I should only notice a tiny bump in gaming since I game in 4K and that's going to be far more reliant on the graphics card. Seeing as I'm going from a Gigabyte 4090 overclocked card to a Nvidia Founders Edition non overclocked card, there won't be a big bump.
But here is the purely CPU synthetic test from Cinebench and 3D Mark:
Ryzen 7 5800X
Ryzen 7 7700X
Intel Core i9 14900K
Umm... yeah, that's quite the kick in the pants when it comes to speed bumps. Even when you account for the same number of threads (8) it's a big jump.
I ran two synthetic graphic tests. Port Royal which mainly focuses on RTX factors and Time Spy Extreme that utilizes both CPU and graphics computing.
Port Royal should show almost no difference as it's almost entirely reliant on the graphics card.
Ryzen 5800X with EVGA RTX 3080
Ryzen 7700X with Gigabyte RTX 4090
Intel 14900K with Nvidia RTX 4090
Yeah, that's a bigger increase than I expected. I was thinking it would be from 22,296 to something along 23,200 or less. I guess the telling thing here is the purple line on the graph. That's the CPU frequency. The 14900 doesn't even break a sweat or dip in the least while 5800X keeps bouncing around and the 7700X bounces a bit. But Dayum!
Time Spy extreme shows a similar difference, but it's even more 'extreme' because it specifically includes a CPU test.
5800/3080
7700/4090
14900/4090
That's about the gap that I thought I'd get. Not quite as big of a jump as from the 5800X and the 3080, but still a big jump. And again, you can see the CPU made quite the difference.
Out of curiosity I ran the SSD test. The 5800X came with a FireCuda drive while the 7700X system came with a Samsung PRO 980. I was a little disapointed as the FragBox couldn't be speced out with the Samsung as they're normally the fastest out there. And in fact, the motherboard didn't even support Gen5 drives, so the Samsung 980 should be about as fast as it gets.
Firecuda 520
Samsung 980 PRO
Kingston Fury Renegade
All the drives are 2TB so the size won't make a difference. Again, my expectation was for this score to go down, not up. If it stayed the same, I'd have been happy but to have it increase by 1200? Yay!
I hadn't planned on benchmarking any games, but as both Port Royal and Timespy Extreme gave me such increases, I figured it was worth a try. I benchmarked both Far Cry 6 and Assassin's Creed Valhalla. I'll only show the most recent comparisons:
AC Valhalla on 7700X and 4090
AC Valhalla on 14900K and 4090
FC6 on 14900K and 4090
Now, there might be something wrong with the Far Cry test. It shows a huge difference, but it's also showing the test not using as much video RAM. That just doesn't make sense. Regardless, the Valhalla difference shows it's not all fluke. I should see a noticeable difference in gaming even though I didn't increase the video card. That makes me VERY happy as it means I likely bought myself extra time before I need to replace this.
Now, one thing my brother asked and joked about is when I'd be replacing this. I mean, I make the same jokes here as I've bought a lot of computers of the past few years. But if I'd had a 3090, I wouldn't have upgrade my 5800X computer when I did. I was hitting a ceiling on gaming not because of the video card, but because of the video card RAM. The 3080 only had 10 Gigs of RAM where the 3090 had 24 Gigs. Now, did the 4090 have a gaming bump over the 3090? Yes, but not a big enough one to warrant it's $1600, let alone a $5000 computer.
It's a similar story when it comes to the processor. I've heard so many reviewers say that if you have a 10th gen or 11th gen processor, it's not worth upgrading to the 13th/14th gen (remember, the 14th gen intels are just a minor update).
I even upped my RAM. Used to be happy with 16 GB by last time got 32. This time, even though I don't utilize 32 Gigs, upped it to 64. There shouldn't be anything out in the next few years that I do that will need a jump over 64 Gigs. Unless there's some big push, I shouldn't need to upgrade to the 5000 series graphics cards, nor the 15th gen processors. I probably won't need to upgrade to a very theoretical 6000 series graphics card nor a 16th or 17th gen processor.
That alone should buy me four years, if not five.
And if I'm thinking that I'd want something nicer.... well, why? Falcon Northwestern is considered one of the best boutique manufacturers. Just like I was very happy with my Origin PC (before Origin got bought out by Corsair), I'm very happy with my Falcon.
I akin it to Tiffany. I've now had her for over two years. She's the oldest car I've owned since Fiona (Fiona was 3 years old when I traded her in and Tiffany is now 4 years old... the rest of my cars got traded in at 2 years old). I DO have an itch to get a new car, but what am I going to get? I have a freaking beautiful and wonderfully driving Lincoln that still has a factory warranty for another 60,000 miles or 4 years. I guess, once I'm working again, I could get another Lincoln (or Caddy or Lexus...) but why? The only new tech that I'd like is the self driving and even at it's best, they say it's only good in some very particular circumstances. Until I am IN those particular circumstances all the time, it won't be worth going from no car payment to a six hundred a month car payment.
The same is true of the computer. Yeah, it's able to fit on a credit card, but I still see the value of $5000. And for the foreseeable future, I don't have a reason to upgrade.
I'm sure over time I'll talk about new keyboards and mice and headsets and speakers and stuff like that, but I think my FragBox is here to stay.
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