The Falcon Northwest FragBox (starts at $3,881; $7,094 as tested) is a dream gaming desktop, pairing an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D CPU and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card for unprecedented gaming performance. This iconic small-form-factor system challenges much larger towers, proving size doesn't limit power. It even offers decent expansion capability and (in an irresistible touch) a carrying handle. While formidably priced, Falcon's unparalleled warranty and distinctive craftsmanship make the FragBox our Editors' Choice pick for compact, cost-no-object gaming PCs.

Design: Performance First, Everything Else Second

The FragBox maintains the signature boxy chassis, carrying handle, and core mission of the 2004 original: delivering full-tower power in a compact, portable form. This was and still is the ultimate LAN party machine.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Meticulously designed, manufactured, and hand-assembled in Oregon, the FragBox showcases Falcon Northwest's exemplary quality standards. Its vault-like metal chassis remains utterly creak- and flex-free when lifted by its handle, which makes short work of moving the 25-pound system. Even its feet are machined metal.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The FragBox’s versatile configurations leverage AMD Ryzen 9000 series or Intel Core Ultra 2 silicon, including the Core Ultra 9 285K. Customers can specify exact components, such as the Kingston Fury Renegade RAM, Crucial T705 storage drive, and 1,200-watt SilverStone Platinum power supply in our unit. It even doubles as a workstation with professional Nvidia RTX graphics cards available as options. Falcon's impressive three-year parts and labor warranty includes domestic support and first-year overnight shipping.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

While "beautiful" isn't the first adjective I'd use to describe the FragBox, its performance-first design inspires admiration beyond aesthetics. The innumerable—and no doubt precisely placed—airflow perforations and vents clearly indicate that function was the priority. The only touch of visual flair is Falcon's RGB-lit logo on the front, customizable via the Asus Aura Sync app. The company offers high-resolution UV printing for those seeking a case that stands out.

Connectivity and Upgrade Potential: Solid for a Compact PC

At just 16.5 by 10.5 by 10.2 inches, working out to a volume of 24 liters, the FragBox is noticeably more compact than typical mid-towers, which often exceed 35 liters. It nonetheless offers useful expansion, supporting 13.8-inch-long, 3.5-slot-wide graphics cards, two or three M.2 solid-state drives depending on motherboard choice, and one 3.5-inch and two 2.5-inch drives. Its 1,200W power supply stands out not only for its power rating but also its SFX-L format, which uses a quieter 120mm fan compared to the 92mm fan of standard SFX units. Even under gaming loads, this system's fan noise is well-controlled.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Front connections include two USB Type-A 3.2 ports, a USB Type-C port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. Rear ports are motherboard-dependent; on our test unit's Asus TUF Gaming B650M-Plus WiFi MicroATX board, you'll find eight USB ports (one USB-C 3.2 Gen 2x2, two USB-A 3.2 Gen 2, one USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, and four legacy 2.0), five 3.5mm audio jacks, DisplayPort and HDMI monitor outputs, and a 2.5Gbps Ethernet jack. Wi-Fi 6E and Bluetooth 5.2 wireless are supported—the antenna must be connected for optimal range. At review time, AMD configurations did not offer Wi-Fi 7, though it was available on Intel models.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

The FragBox's panel thumbscrews, retainer-style and spring-loaded, are a small reminder of the attention to detail in this system. Inside, the tight component proximity highlights precision engineering. Even though the interior usually remains hidden (the chassis isn't a transparent-sided wonder), Falcon's cable management is flawless. Two slimline 120mm fans behind the right panel provide extra airflow to the GPU. Airflow is vertical, not out the sides, directed away from the user.

(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)

Accessing the RAM is possible without further disassembly. The four DIMM slots of the micro-ATX motherboard are a welcome sight, as small-form-factor systems often utilize mini-ITX boards with just two. A door under the chassis also provides access to under-motherboard M.2 slots. (Our motherboard has none.) Most other component upgrades will require minor disassembly, including removal of the 280mm CPU liquid-cooling radiator, so upgrades aren't quite as simple as with a traditional tower.

Performance Testing: Low-Rise Tower, Excessive Power

Our FragBox is the ultimate gaming PC, featuring an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D processor (16 cores, up to 5.7GHz), an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 GPU, 96GB of DDR5-6400 RAM, and a 2TB PCI Express 5.0 solid-state drive.

Although the FragBox is loftily priced at $7,094 thanks in part to its outsized memory allocation, it is competitive. The Velocity Micro Raptor Z55, used in the comparison tests below, calls for $5,799, while the mainstream Alienware Area-51 costs $6,109—both with "only" 64GB of RAM. A three-year warranty upgrade had to be factored into both of these competing configurations to match the FragBox’s standard coverage.

As desktops sporting RTX 50-series GPUs are just coming in, we filled the remaining spots in our benchmark charts with two previous-generation towers, the MSI Elite Vision RS and the Dell XPS Desktop (8960). Let the titans clash.

Productivity and Content Creation Tests

We run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL's PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and also includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.

The next few such benchmarks stress the CPU, using all available cores and threads to rate a PC's suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon's Cinebench 2024 uses the company's Redshift engine to render a complex image using the CPU or GPU. We run the multi-core CPU benchmark that works across all of a processor's cores and threads—the more powerful the chip, the higher the score—and its single-core variant.

Geekbench 6.3 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. We record its Multi-Core and Single-Core scores; higher numbers are better. Our last CPU stress test is the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.8, which converts a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution; lower times are better.

Next, we run a cross-platform content creation benchmark on all systems: Adobe Photoshop 2024 using the 1.2.20 version of PugetBench for Creators by Puget Systems. This test rates a PC's performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It's an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.

For the uninitiated, these desktops produce shockingly high numbers in all tests. The Falcon scored within a tick of the MSI and Velocity Micro towers in PCMark, tying the latter for one of the highest storage scores we've ever recorded. This system will make short work of any conceivable task.

The FragBox was unmatched in the CPU tests, with the Alienware close behind with its Core Ultra 9 285K. The Velocity Micro outperformed the FragBox in Photoshop likely because the test doesn't fully utilize the Falcon's 16 cores.

Gaming and Graphics Tests

We test the graphics inside all laptops and desktops with three cross-platform gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark: Steel Nomad (and its Light variant), Wild Life (and its Extreme variant), and Solar Bay.

The Steel Nomad tests use the DirectX 12, Vulkan, or Metal graphics APIs, depending on the processor in play. Both are non-ray-traced benchmarks. Steel Nomad is built for high-end gaming systems and runs at 4K resolution, while the Light version runs at 1440p with less detail. Wild Life and Wild Life Extreme are less demanding than Steel Nomad; the two run at 1440p and 4K resolution, respectively. And we turn to Solar Bay to measure ray tracing performance in a synthetic environment. This benchmark works with Vulkan 1.1 for Windows and Android and Metal for Apple devices, subjecting 3D scenes to increasingly intense ray-traced workloads at 1440p.

The FragBox and the Velocity Micro battled it out in 3DMark, the latter often producing a slightly higher score probably because its Ryzen 7 9800X3D might be boosting differently.

Also in the charts above are tests of three real-world games: F1 2024, Cyberpunk 2027, and Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3. The FragBox generally produced slightly better numbers in all of these. (We don't have our usual numbers for Call of Duty for the Falcon because of an issue with the game itself.) Both systems made the GeForce RTX 40 GPUs in the Dell and MSI systems look a little pokey by comparison (though those systems are definitely no slouches, in a bigger-picture sense).

Impressive as the FragBox is, we'll note that this is a massively overpowered configuration for just gaming, as the RTX 5090 is really geared toward AI and deep learning. We recommend a GeForce RTX 5080 for most buyers, which will play any game at 4K with ease.