Pros & Cons
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- Unsurpassed performance, in 96-core test model
- Hallmark quality
- Liquid-cooled Threadripper Pro CPU
- Quiet operation
- Excellent warranty, with overnight service
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- Second-mortgage pricing
- No flex bays
Falcon Northwest Talon (2025, Threadripper Pro) Specs
| Boot Drive Capacity (as Tested) | 16 |
| Boot Drive Type | SSD |
| Desktop Class | Workstation |
| Graphics Card | Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 |
| Operating System | Windows 11 Pro |
| Processor | AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX |
| Processor Speed | 2.5 |
| RAM (as Tested) | 256 |
Falcon Northwest is renowned for its custom gaming desktop PCs, but its flagship Talon mid-tower proves just as formidable when configured as a high-end workstation. The desktop starts at $10,488 with AMD’s Ryzen Threadripper Pro, but our review unit is a tech enthusiast’s dream: a 96-core Threadripper Pro 9995WX, 256GB of error-correcting DDR5 memory, and Nvidia’s RTX Pro 6000 professional GPU with a staggering 96GB of VRAM. (And did we mention 16TB of PCI Express 5.0 storage?) Priced at $30,137 as tested, this Talon configuration is competitive for its top-end class, but Falcon’s mastery of liquid cooling gives it a decisive edge over mass-market rivals. In short, this is the fastest desktop workstation we’ve tested, earning our Editors' Choice award for high-end models.
Configurations: Five Figures to Start With No Limit
Falcon’s Talon mid-tower can be tailored for high-performance gaming with the latest AMD or Intel silicon, scaled up to a high-end desktop (HEDT) configuration using AMD Ryzen Threadripper, or loaded out as a true workstation powered by Threadripper Pro, as reviewed here. Every build is hand-assembled in Falcon’s custom-designed case, including 280mm liquid CPU cooling. It’s covered by a standout three-year warranty with overnight service in the first year.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Workstation-class Talons are built around a Seasonic Prime TX 1,600-watt power supply and a formidable Asus Pro WS WRX90E-SAGE SE motherboard, a $1,299 aftermarket behemoth that tips the scales at 12 pounds for the board alone. The board supports eight-channel Error Correcting Code (ECC) memory across eight DIMM slots, offers four M.2 PCI Express (PCIe) 5.0 slots, and boasts seven PCIe 5.0 x16 lanes, fully leveraging the Threadripper Pro’s 144 PCIe lane architecture. It also includes IPMI remote management and an onboard AST2600 board management controller (BMC) for enterprise-grade oversight.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)The "entry level" Talon workstation—and it’s anything but that—comes with a 24-core Threadripper Pro 9965WX, 128GB of RAM, a 2TB SSD, and a Radeon RX 9070 XT. Configurations scale dramatically from there; our review unit showcases the flagship Threadripper Pro 9995WX paired with Nvidia’s RTX Pro 6000 professional GPU. Multi-GPU setups are supported, memory can expand to 2TB, and storage options include dozens of terabytes of solid-state capacity, including enterprise flash. Our unit runs four 4TB PCIe 5.0 drives in RAID 0, showing up as a single 16TB drive. Falcon also offers add-in cards and other accessories not featured in its online configurator—all you need to do is ask.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Competing systems include other Threadripper Pro workstations like the HP Z6 G5 A, the Dell Precision 7875, and Lenovo’s ThinkStation P8 (see our earlier review of the ThinkStation P620). Workstations featuring Intel Xeon W-series chips offer an alternative, though typically with lower core counts. Only dual-CPU systems like the Lenovo ThinkStation PX (which will not be produced much longer) approach the scalability of the Falcon’s 64-core-and-beyond Threadripper Pro builds. I configured several of these systems to approximate our Talon’s specs, and their pricing landed in a similar range. That said, workstation pricing is difficult to compare meaningfully due to the wide variability in configurations and intended use cases.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Design: Precision-Engineered for Performance
Falcon prides itself on designing and manufacturing its cases. Built from thick aluminum, the 19-by-8.8-by-17-inch Talon is a testament to that ethos. It shows off tank-like solidity, flawless machining, and a precise fit that speaks to Falcon’s attention to detail.
Tinted tempered-glass panels provide a shadowy view of the interior. While the system has no RGB lighting—this workstation is all about function—Falcon tells us that RGB support is coming to the motherboards in Threadripper HEDT models. For a more industrial aesthetic, Falcon also sells solid aluminum side panels (see our previous review for visuals), or you can opt for both and swap them as desired.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)The top panel's front I/O includes two USB 3.2 Type-A ports, one USB 3.2 Type-C port, and a 3.5mm audio jack. The power button has an appropriately authoritative feel.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Around back, connectivity is generous: two USB4 ports, seven USB-A connections (six at 10Gbps, one legacy 2.0), and dual audio jacks. Networking is enterprise-grade, with two 10Gbps Ethernet ports. The BMC adds its own VGA output and dedicated Ethernet jack for remote management. BIOS flashback and clear CMOS buttons are thoughtful inclusions for power users. As for display output, the RTX Pro 6000 delivers four DisplayPort connectors, as expected.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)The Talon’s side panels silently swing rearward for seamless interior access. The main compartment is meticulously arranged, dominated by the austere Asus workstation board. Eight DIMM slots flank the massive sTR5 socket CPU waterblock, linked with two hoses to the front-mounted 280mm radiator. The Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 sits discreetly below, its subdued design belying its status as the most powerful professional GPU available, with aftermarket pricing around $11,000.
Opening the opposite panel reveals the Seasonic modular power supply, where Falcon’s immaculate custom cabling underscores its build quality. Two 2.5-inch drives can be mounted on the motherboard tray. The Talon's only mark against it is that its case doesn’t permit greater storage expansion via flexbays, which some competitors provide.
The Talon is impressively quiet. The fan curves are well-behaved, not surging or spiking for briefly CPU-intensive applications, even though the unit generates substantial heat (easily enough to warm a small room under benchmark load).
Performance Testing: Ultimate Workstation Horsepower
To recap, this is an exceptionally potent system. Our Talon test unit features a 96-core Ryzen Threadripper Pro 9995WX processor, Nvidia RTX Pro 6000 professional graphics, and 256GB of eight-channel DDR5 memory (eight 32GB DIMMs) running at 6,000MHz. Storage comes via a 16TB SSD array composed of four 4TB PCIe Gen 5 drives—specifically, Kingston’s Fury Renegade G5. (We don’t typically name component brands, but Falcon allows buyers to specify their exact configuration.)
Since few workstations this pumped-up have gone through our latest testing regimen, our comparison pool is limited to the Dell Precision 3680, the compact Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Ultra, and the dual-CPU Lenovo ThinkStation PX, the most powerful of the bunch. Of these, only the PX qualifies as a true rival, though its configuration differs significantly from our Talon. In effect, the Talon is racing solo—and trust us, it’s blistering fast.
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Productivity and Content Creation Tests
Our primary overall benchmark, UL's PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC's storage throughput.
Three more tests are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon's Cinebench 2024 uses that company's Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs' Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video transcoder HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.
Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems' PugetBench for Creators rates a PC's image editing prowess with a variety of automated operations in the well-known editor Adobe Photoshop 25.
Despite its formidable specs, the Talon was slightly edged out by the Precision 3680 in PCMark 10, but this isn’t surprising—the test doesn’t tap into its 96 cores, 256GB of RAM, or other specialized hardware, so the score reflects limitations of the benchmark rather than the system.
Cinebench, however, tells a different story. The Talon delivered a staggering 7,291 points in multi-core, more than doubling the ThinkStation PX's score (which packs 56 cores across two CPUs). It also performed impressively in single-core mode, showing that it can effectively leverage its 5.4GHz boost clock, a feat many high-core-count CPUs struggle to achieve.
The Talon also led in Geekbench multi-core and HandBrake, though again, these tests don’t fully scale to 96 cores, so the disparity between it and the other systems is narrower than in Cinebench. It’s a reminder that raw hardware only shines when the software can harness it.
As for PCMark Storage, the test didn’t run, likely because the Talon’s quad SSDs in RAID 0 are well outside the norm for systems typically evaluated by that benchmark. Finally, our Photoshop test saw the Talon and Precision effectively tie within the margin of error. However, considering how a system half as potent could easily complete any of these tasks, albeit not quite as quickly, these results don't reflect on the Talon's performance in its core competency: high-output rendering tasks.
Graphics Tests
We challenge all systems’ graphics with a quintet of animations or gaming simulations from UL's 3DMark test suite. The first two, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The next two, Steel Nomad's regular and Light subtests, focus on APIs more commonly used for game development to assess gaming geometry and particle effects. Last, we turn to 3DMark Solar Bay to measure ray tracing performance.
Synthetic 3D graphics benchmarks aren’t typically meaningful for workstation-class systems but provide a rough gauge of raw horsepower. In most tests, the Talon decisively outperformed the Dell, which features the previous-generation flagship RTX 6000 Ada, often nearly doubling its scores. One exception was the Wild Life benchmark, where CPU limitations likely constrained the Talon; the Dell’s Core i9 is far more gaming-optimized than the Talon’s 96-core workstation processor.
Workstation Tests
First, we measure workstation performance with SPECviewperf 2020 (version 3.1), which renders, rotates, and zooms in and out of solid and wireframe models at 1080p resolution. The three subtests represent PTC's Creo CAD platform, Autodesk's Maya modeling and simulation software for film, TV, and games, and Dassault Systemes' SolidWorks 3D rendering package.
Next up is Blender, an open-source 3D content creation suite for modeling, animation, simulation, and compositing. We record the time it takes for Blender 4.2 to render three distinct scenes to measure CPU and GPU rendering performance.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)Then, we run an automated PugetBench extension in Adobe Premiere Pro that tests real-world video editing tasks like live playback, file export, and high-res encoding with different codecs, processing and decoding different types of source media, and applying GPU-accelerated special effects.
Finally, we also use PugetBench for Creators to test DaVinci Resolve Studio 18 video editor performance on systems suitable for that challenging app. As with Adobe Premiere, these automated tasks and features push the CPU and GPU, letting us gauge real-world media creation speeds.
The Talon could not complete the Adobe Premiere Pro and DaVinci Resolve Studio benchmarks, not due to any system fault, but because of issues with the tests themselves. Likewise, some of the compared systems could not complete the SPECviewperf benchmark; in that, the Talon dominated the ThinkStation PX. In Blender, the Talon also made its domineering presence known, handily outperforming the other systems, often by multiples. As we've said before, this machine is ferociously fast.
Final Thoughts
Falcon Northwest Talon (2025, Threadripper Pro)
Precision engineered to the nines, Falcon Northwest’s Talon offers epic workstation performance with a liquid-cooled AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro flagship CPU and Nvidia's elite RTX Pro 6000.