Falcon Northwest Mach V Evaluation @ [H]

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Why we are on the topic of typo's the Mach V is listed as having DDR2 not DDR.


Other then that it is an excellent and complete review.
 
Good review. I think you maybe should have given them a little more crap about the front audio ports and restore software but it seem like they were very good about the recovery software and the audio port thing seems like they did the right thing by sending it with the unmodifed ports insted of waiting. They should have put some rubber covers over the sound ports though on the front.
 
swatbat said:
Yea good point. Also Chris I would prob crop out your phone number and address(since it looks like your home address is there too). You don't want some of the people around here to get that info.
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Thanks, I've uploaded a fixed image with black boxes over the addresses. All else is the same pic.
 
OK, got the skinny from Falcon Northwest.

Because this system was purchased under my account with Falcon - the same one we used to purchase our Fragbox, it had been tagged with a Net 90 refund after we returned the Fragbox since it was past 90 days. That is a leftover.

Recently we have made more changes to how we purchase systems. Our next PC from Falcon will be under a different account for sure.
 
If you purchase systems using your name I bet that companies have your name flagged and make sure that the system that Chris Morley receives is top notch. And yes you definately want to get that personal info off that picture.

EDIT: You got your post in before I finished mine. Just checked and on the second page in the first binder pic your info still shows up.
 
I just checked. the image is now blacked out. Yet another great review of an OEM. I'ts nice to see a company that takes your input to heart. It sounds like they've cleaned up a lot of the issues you had before. granted, this new one is on a much more mature motherboard chipset, so that probably had a lot to do with it.
 
There are a lot of things you just can't fake that Falcon does, but to continue the integrity of how we do things I can assure you that future purchases from FNW will be under a different account.
 
Chris_Morley said:
OK, got the skinny from Falcon Northwest.

Because this system was purchased under my account with Falcon - the same one we used to purchase our Fragbox, it had been tagged with a Net 90 refund after we returned the Fragbox since it was past 90 days. That is a leftover.

Recently we have made more changes to how we purchase systems. Our next PC from Falcon will be under a different account for sure.
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With that being said do you know if the techs on the phone would have been able to see this when you called them? Although we would hope they gave you the support anyone would have gotten that may have been used to bring up some red flags for some major ass kissing. Sounds like this could be really bad. The good news is they got you the system fast and you didn't seem to have any major issues so it is not like they did a burn in tests a few weeks.
 
I get queasy each time I read a Falcon review - except for the custom laser-cut case just about anyone here could build this $4200 system for $1800 buying parts at retail prices online. It surely is a nice system, I think they could get away with $2200-2400 for it, but $2400+ profit on a system like this is insane, and it's really not all that special other than SLI - XP Home, single Raptor.

I question the "value" rating of 9/10 especially since if they had to eat it on this system for a catastophic failure and make no profit they could afford to build two more systems (accounting for Falcon being able to purchase the parts themselves for less than the $1800 I stated above) at their rates. I realize that great tech support has value, but come on!
 
Ugh, fixed the RMA images. My apologies, guys, the onus is on me to make sure that all i's are dotted and all t's are crossed. You guys shouldn't have to point these errors out to me. I appreciate your patience, though.
 
swatbat said:
With that being said do you know if the techs on the phone would have been able to see this when you called them? Although we would hope they gave you the support anyone would have gotten that may have been used to bring up some red flags for some major ass kissing. Sounds like this could be really bad. The good news is they got you the system fast and you didn't seem to have any major issues so it is not like they did a burn in tests a few weeks.
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The invoice isn't printed out until the day the system ships, and our credit card was definitely charged, so I leave that interpretation up to you. Those NET terms I would venture to guess have more to do with accounting than production.

Actually, our experience with tech support, while warranting the 10/10 we gave them, wasn't the "11/10" we had last time due to a new tech that we delt with.
 
[LYL]Homer said:
I get queasy each time I read a Falcon review - except for the custom laser-cut case just about anyone here could build this $4200 system for $1800 buying parts at retail prices online. It surely is a nice system, I think they could get away with $2200-2400 for it, but $2400+ profit on a system like this is insane, and it's really not all that special other than SLI - XP Home, single Raptor.

I question the "value" rating of 9/10 especially since if they had to eat it on this system for a catastophic failure and make no profit they could afford to build two more systems (accounting for Falcon being able to purchase the parts themselves for less than the $1800 I stated above) at their rates. I realize that great tech support has value, but come on!
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Value, when based solely on price, can be a very subjective score. Certainly the Mach V is a "luxury good" with an inflexible demand curve, which is why Falcon is able to sell the systems that they do. (There's also more to profit than subtracting COGS, but that's another discussion)

Many people may find the price hard to swallow. That is definitely up to you to decide whether or not our experience was worth it - we try to give you all of our experiences and while we do assign final scores ourselves, we hope that the meat of our evaluation will give you all the info you need to make your own decisions.
 
When I looked at this review and saw the list of components something just looked wrong. Either I missed the secret magic component that costs an arm and a leg or they have completely redefined "Value-Added Reseller". Below are the retail prices for the parts listed below as found on Newegg.com. I realize that when the system was built that prices probably varied a little bit so this is not meant to be dead on accurate. It also doesn't reflect shipping costs and assembly costs, but WTF here? I don't care how much value you think you're adding or how great your service is I can't see how they can justify the prices when it's over $1600 beyond the retail prices of the component parts. Keeping in mind that Faclon is not paying retail prices since they should get a volume discount or wholesale pricing then it makes things look even further skewed. What gives? Nobody's assembly prowess is worth $1600 no matter how good the support it. Am I missing something here or what? Is there some magic component not listed that equates to the WAY over inflated price? I kept looking to see if the machine had a few 500GB hard drives hidden in it or 512MB 7800GTXs installed, but nothing made sense between the price listed and the parts inside.

$273.00 Silverstone Custom Aluminum Laser-cut
$169.00 Silverstone SLI-ready 600W
$282.00 MD Athlon 64 3800+ 2.4GHz 512K L2 Cache
$249.00 Asus A8N32-SLI Deluxe
$236.00 Corsair TwinX 2 x 1024MB PC3200 DDR2-400Mhz
$698.00 2 X NVIDIA BFG GeForce 7800GT OC 256MB DDR2 PCI-E
$185.00 Creative X-Fi Xtreme Music
$155.00 Western Digital 74GB 10,000RPM SATA/150
$148.00 Plextor DVD+/-RW 16X
$15.00 3.5" Floppy
$40.00 Zalman CPU Fan
$94.00 Windows XP Home SP2

$2,544.00 Total
$4209.00 Falcon's Retail Price
$1665.00 Difference in Price (Value Added Profit?)

Don't get me wrong, I do respect that it passed the evaluation very well and does look like a nice machine, but it didn't look like it added up to a +$4000.00 machine by its component parts.
 
Chris_Morley said:
The invoice isn't printed out until the day the system ships, and our credit card was definitely charged, so I leave that interpretation up to you. Those NET terms I would venture to guess have more to do with accounting than production.

Actually, our experience with tech support, while warranting the 10/10 we gave them, wasn't the "11/10" we had last time due to a new tech that we delt with.
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I'm not saying that you all did anything I'm saying that when you called up there tech support would they have seen that the system was a review system. That could have governed better support to you. I'm not saying they did this only questions if they could have.

Chris_Morley said:
Ugh, fixed the RMA images. My apologies, guys, the onus is on me to make sure that all i's are dotted and all t's are crossed. You guys shouldn't have to point these errors out to me. I appreciate your patience, though.
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Hey you gave us a new phone number to prank call when we get drunk. :D
Hell we got 2 different places to send gag gifts too as well. If you get a blow up plastic sheep in a huge box that says Sheep Lovers Anonymous you know where it came from. ;)
 
There's an issue here that deserves an answer - from Kyle or Chris (or both):

It has always been stated that every attempt would be made to do system reviews incognito. This, in turn, would reflect the true "Average Joe" buyer experience.

From the first page:
We start by buying a system anonymously, which eliminates the ability of an OEM to build a custom machine for the purpose of receiving a good score
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Falcon knew about this review the minute they picked up the phone. [H]ardOCP did little to prevent this information from being out there, and someone needs to address this.
  • The system was purchased under a pre-exsisting account under the name "Chris Morley" and shipped to Texas. The same account was used previously to obtain the FragBox review machine.
  • The order began with "NET 90 - REVIEW ONLY" terms.

From: Chris_Morley
Recently we have made more changes to how we purchase systems. Our next PC from Falcon will be under a different account for sure.
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This response contradicts the introduction to the review. In addition, I don't think an issue this serious should be subject to "next time we'll do better" response. If you start by saying every reasonable attempt will be made to buy as an Average Joe - you must do so. If you do make every attempt to withold that information, and they find out anyway, there is nothing you can do. In this case, there wasn't the slightest possiblity the review was conducted incognito.

For this particular process, the System Evaluation Process at [H]ardOCP needs analysis.
 
I must add that I do not personally believe that the system was subject to excessive "extra care" because Falcon knew about the PC being in a [H] review. It's no doubt a good machine, and I can say from personal experience:

It is highly likely that the review listed here does reflect, for the most part, the experience that an average person could expect - in hardware, sales support and technical support.

What I am addressing is the process on [H]ardOCP's end. The minute that starts to generate questions, the value of the review process is diminished. I'm sure Kyle does not want the review process with his name on it to be subject to scrutiny. The focus should be on the vendor, not [H]ardOCP. In this case, however, the evidence is glaring, and it deserves discussion.
 
On the surface, I would suggest that Falcon seems to have circumvented our process and fully devalued it by building a box earmarked as a "review system." I am with Chris today and would appreciate it if you give us a chance to look into this further at this time. An answer will come forward.

I have removed the evaluation till we get to the bottom of what is going on.
 
RedOctober said:
There's an issue here that deserves an answer - from Kyle or Chris (or both):
This response contradicts the introduction to the review. In addition, I don't think an issue this serious should be subject to "next time we'll do better" response. If you start by saying every reasonable attempt will be made to buy as an Average Joe - you must do so. If you do make every attempt to withold that information, and they find out anyway, there is nothing you can do. In this case, there wasn't the slightest possiblity the review was conducted incognito.

For this particular process, the System Evaluation Process at [H]ardOCP needs analysis.
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I think it was an honest mistake. Looks like Chris went through editing this pretty quick as he missed some other mistakes. This would include his home address and his cell phone(I think the office address has been posted before). Hopefully these mistakes now caught will not be repeated. I hope that they do another review of Falcon in the future(which should be done with any builder scoring so high) to make sure that they are keeping up the good work.
 
You cant possibly reach 100% perfection without first making a few mistakes along the way.
 
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