Boutique system builder Falcon Northwest has unveiled what it claims to be the world's most powerful micro-tower PC. Measuring only four inches wide and just over a foot tall, the Tiki is similarly sized to the Alienware x51, but offers considerably more options, with the highest configuration packing today's best hardware.
The base machine starts at $1,826.97 with a Core i5-3450, GeForce GTX 560 Ti 1GB, 8GB of 1866MHz DDR3 RAM, a 2TB Western Digital Caviar Green, a slot-loading DVD drive, a 450W power supply, as well as integrated audio and plenty of other connectivity courtesy of the Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe mini-ITX motherboard.
Pricing can hit over $5,000 with items such as the Core i7-3770K, GTX 680 2GB, 16GB of RAM, SSDs (up to three 512GB Crucial M4s), a slot-loading Blu-ray drive as well as customized options like a $938 "hematite" paint job. Regardless of your build choices, the Tiki ships with CPU liquid cooling, Windows 7 64-bit, a three-year warranty and a six-pound polished granite base to help prevent the top-heavy system from tipping over.
By comparison, the Alienware x51's highest hardware configuration runs approximately $1,449 for a Core i7-3770, a GTX 555 1GB, 16GB of RAM, a 2TB hard drive and a slot-loading Blu-ray drive. Folks seeking even more power than the Tiki offers should consider the Maingear F131, which isn't quite as compact but offers up to dual Radeon HD 7970s or GeForce GTX 680s, an i7-3930K hexa-core CPU as well as 32GB of RAM.
