Falcon Northwest Talon Review: A 12-Core Ryzen Powered Battle Station
Falcon Northwest Talon 20th Anniversary Review: Software And BIOS
The 20th Anniversary Falcon Northwest Talon comes standard with Windows 10 Pro 64-bit. You could opt for Windows Home 64-bit, for a $32 dollar discount, but $32 is just a drop in the bucket, when you're spending over $3,000 on a desktop PC.
One thing we really love about boutique computer manufactures is their lack of bloatware. If you go to one of the big brand computer manufactures, like the ones you'd find at Best Buy, you often end up with a ton of bloatware, anti-virus software and pop-up advertising. Falcon Northwest keeps things short and sweet. All they've loaded is a fresh copy of Windows 10 with a link to their costumer service and ASUS' AURA software for RGB lighting control.
ASUS AURA is the software suite included with the Talon to change all the RGB settings. The software is easy to use and works extremely well. Aura RGB provides a nearly endless spectrum of colors, patterns and even the ability to link lighting to music, in-game action, or CPU/GPU temperatures. This is all done in their user-friendly software interface, which syncs the motherboard, DRAM and case RGB strips.
Since Falcon is using an ASUS motherboard is makes perfect sense for them to use ASUS software. Since the hardware and software are synced everything will just work, end of story. This means even if you add additional lighting strips, more fans, or even a disco ball to the motherboard's open headers, you can control it via the AURA software. Software varies from company to company, but for the sake of simplicity, most RGB software is similar, and AURA is no different. There are a ton of preset color patterns you can chose from that range from static colors to rainbow, and everything in between.
The 20th anniversary Talon comes with ASUS' latest UEFI BIOS as well, of course -- nothing has been removed or disabled. This means you can tweak more advanced settings such as the processors clock speeds, and memory settings, or chose simple settings such as which device to boot from. However, you really don't need to deep dive into the BIOS if you don't want to, as Falcon has you covered with presets.
During the build process, Falcon NW tweaks the BIOS for you to ensure the best performance out-of-the-box. The memory you order will be running at its optimal timings, all the storage devices will be setup, and the cooling / fan profile will be pre-tweaked. All you have to do is plug in the power, keyboard and monitor cables, and boot the system. The BIOS is of course pre-configured. System driver updates are ready to go as well; everything is done for you so all you have to do is connect a power source and peripherals and you're ready to get in the game. That said, its always advisable to run Windows Update and check for the latest graphics drivers, since these tend to change so quickly.
The machine we tested is a beast, and we don't use that term lightly. It has dual GeForce RTX 2080 Super graphics cards, 64GB of DDR4 memory and 24-threaed AMD 3rd Gen Ryzen processor. We already know it's going to kick some serious butt, but it's going to take some testing to see if it dominates like Khabib does in the UFC. Regardless of the outcome, we've found the 20th Anniversary Falcon Northwest Talon to be a serious competitor in the geek octagon. Let's take a look...
The machine we tested is a beast, and we don't use that term lightly. It has dual GeForce RTX 2080 Super graphics cards, 64GB of DDR4 memory and 24-threaed AMD 3rd Gen Ryzen processor. We already know it's going to kick some serious butt, but it's going to take some testing to see if it dominates like Khabib does in the UFC. Regardless of the outcome, we've found the 20th Anniversary Falcon Northwest Talon to be a serious competitor in the geek octagon. Let's take a look...
