Falcon Northwest FragBox SLI: Dare to Dream

Noise and Power

The last area we would like to look at is the noise levels and power requirements of the systems. We did not include results from the custom desktop system, as it has completely different options. Results for the Monarch Hornet Pro Revenge are taken from the previous review - note that eight uses a slightly different graphics card configuration.

Noise Levels

Noise testing was conducted using an SPL meter with A-weighting at a distance of 1 foot and 4 feet. The ambient noise level was under 30 dB during testing -- the limit of our meter.









It is unreasonable to expect any system this powerful in a case this small to be anything near silent. Due to the differences in parts used, you should also not read too much into differences of one or 2 dB. During testing, the FragBox never got any louder or quieter. The cooling is adequate to keep the system stable -- we didn't have a single crash that we would attribute to overheating (flaky applications on the other hand...). At 51 dB, the FragBox is about as loud as a typical enthusiast desktop system, though there are plenty of water-cooled systems that are far quieter. While it would be nice to have something a bit quieter, the reality is that performance and stability are far more important for systems like this.

System Power Draw

As usual, we measured system power draw at the outlet using a Kill-A-Watt device. Idle power draw was measured at the Windows desktop, while 100% load was generated by running two instances of Folding@Home while looping 3DMark05.





Far more impressive than the actual system power use is the fact that the FragBox SLI matches the Monarch Hornet Revenge while offering substantially more performance. That is not say that the Monarch system couldn't equal the performance level, but rather that technology has progressed in just the last few months to the point where you can get more performance without needing any more electricity. We're looking at dual core Athlon FX-60 compared to single core Athlon FX-57, as well as the changing graphics cards. The chief reason that the FragBox is able to match the maximum power draw of the Hornet Pro Revenge is largely due to the process shrink from 110nm to 90nm that occurred with NVIDIA's release of the 7900 series.

If anyone would really like to see numbers from the SN26P, let me know and I can put the system back together. Basically, due to the lesser graphics cards used, it should be about 40-80W lower in terms of power draw. The important thing is that the Shuttle system was able to handle an FX-60 processor as well as two 7900 GT cards with its standard 350W power supply. The SN26P was completely stable throughout all testing.