A compact gaming rig that does everything right

Mafia: the old country demands to be played on a giant screen. As much as I love my 32-inch Alienware OLED gaming monitor, it doesn’t do justice to the cinematic views of Mafia’s Sicily. ButI also wanted to play this game in all its 4K glory, without any of the compromises of today’s gaming consoles. So why not just place a small gaming computer under my home theater? Enter the Fragbox, Falcon Northwest’s revamped small form factor gaming PC. Although it’s very expensive, starting at $3,997, it’s incredibly powerful and gives you the freedom to easily upgrade hardware down the line.

I know what you’re thinking: “A $4,000 desktop in this economy?” That price also doesn’t include NVIDIA’s RTX 5070 GPU upgrade, as well as the addition of more RAM and larger SSDs, which could push the price up by thousands more. I had originally planned to review the FragBox in early December 2025, before AI-induced RAMaggedon made memory, storage, and other components significantly more expensive. Falcon Northwest is primarily known as a boutique, high-end system builder, so its wealthier customer base can probably weather the pricing storm. If you’re looking for a deal, you won’t find it here.

Northwest Falcon

The FragBox packs all the power of a massive gaming rig into a small box. The only drawback is its enormous cost.

Benefits

• Incredibly fast
• Elegant hardware layout
• Relatively portable
• Quiet and cool performance

Disadvantages

• Dear
• So so expensive

So, what exactly is a FragBox? Imagine a typical mid-sized desktop PC scaled down to a system measuring just 10.2 inches tall, 10.5 inches wide, and 15.9 inches deep. When Falcon first released the FragBox in 2003, it was notable for being a truly small PC using full-sized parts. That’s still a main selling point today: it can still fit large NVIDIA GPUs, including the beefy RTX 5090, as well as Intel’s latest Core Ultra chips or AMD’s Ryzen 9000 processors. A massive 280mm radiator sits at the top, exhausting hot air, and also serves as an all-in-one (AIO) liquid cooler for the CPU.

Weighing 25 pounds, the FragBox isn’t exactly lightweight, but its sturdy metal handle makes it easy to move. Most mid-sized desktop computers typically weigh between 20 and 35 pounds, depending on their case material. But they are also much larger and more difficult to fit into tight spaces. The FragBox’s relatively chunky size makes it easy to slide into a home entertainment center or simply sit on the corner of your desk. If you need a little more headroom, you can also remove the handle from the top panel. Just make sure there’s enough room for some air circulation: all that heat has to go somewhere, right?

Despite its density, the elegant design of the FragBox facilitates access to all system components. Simply unscrew the side and top panels and you can easily remove the GPU, RAM, storage, and other major components. There are three M.2 SSD slots, as well as two 2.5-inch drive slots and one slot for a large 3.5-inch hard drive. The system comes with a 1200W power supply, which should be more than enough to handle future GPUs and CPUs.

Ports are plentiful, too: there are two USB-A connections and one USB-C right on the front, as well as a headphone jack. Around the back, you have your typical assortment of mid-sized connections, including four USB-A 2.0 connections, seven USB-A 3 ports, one USB-C 3.2 20G port, 2.5G Ethernet, HDMI, and DisplayPort. Our RTX 5090 review unit also included three DisplayPort jacks and an HDMI connection (which you’ll see on most GPUs). Wi-Fi 6E also made it into our unit, but Falcon says Wi-Fi 7 is now standard in newer versions.

Luckily, the FragBox doesn’t have the garish LEDs and cheesy thermal glass found on more ostentatious gaming rigs. The Falcon Northwest’s aluminum body looks majestic, like an old-fashioned luxury car. If you want something flashier, you can shell out $400 more for a custom UV printed case or $149 for a UV printed front panel.

Our review unit was equipped with AMD’s Ryzen 9950X3D processor, NVIDIA’s RTX 5090, 96GB of DDR5 RAM, and a 2TB SSD, which came to a whopping $7,995. Five months ago, it would have cost $7,047 – you can thank the lack of RAM for the price hike.

Even before comparing or running a game, I expected it to be a beast. In PCMark 10, the FragBox scored a whopping 13,810, about 500 points higher than my mid-tower system with the same CPU and GPU. It also achieved the highest 3DMark Speedway and Port Royal ray tracing scores I’ve ever seen. Even more impressive, the FragBox’s fans were barely audible under load, and the CPU and GPU remained at 52°C and 65°C, respectively.

To return to my original point, it worked Mafia: the old country in 4K perfectly, with all graphics settings pushed to the maximum. Playing on my 120-inch projector home theater setup, the game hit 62fps natively, and enabling DLSS scaling and frame generation increased that to 120fps. Not that you need a very high framerate for a slow-paced, mostly cinematic action game. I was just happy to play without any compromises: even the PS5 Pro can’t achieve the same level of graphical fidelity as the monstrously powerful RTX 5090.

I’m no stranger to PC gaming on a big screen, but previously I had to run a ridiculously long HDMI cable from my desk to make it work. I’m just too old for this mess now. And it also doesn’t perform consistently, especially at higher frame rates, due to the massive bandwidth required to stream 4K at high refresh rates. Home game streaming is also an option, but it’s not great when you’re streaming games to a huge TV or projector screen. It’s just too hard to ignore the imperfections of streaming compression. (Admittedly, I need to test some new high-bandwidth options, especially after being impressed with NVIDIA’s GeForce Now upgrade last year.)

The FragBox also gave me easy access to all my recent Steam titles, including Mewgeneics And Arc Raiders on the big screen. Unfortunately, Windows itself remains a major stumbling block for home theater PC gaming. You will still need to keep a keyboard and PC to handle the initial setup of the operating system. And even once I enabled Steam’s Big Picture mode, which offers great controller options, I still occasionally had to deal with Windows updates and other annoyances.

Microsoft is currently trying to optimize Windows for gaming handhelds, and it would do even more to make the future PC-powered Xbox feel more like a console. For now, though, using a Windows PC in your home theater doesn’t seem much different than it did a decade ago. Steam is your savior, Windows is your enemy. Or you could just save thousands of dollars and buy a $500 PlayStation 5 or a $700 PS5 Pro instead. The latter will still give you smooth frame rates and a healthy dose of ray tracing, without the hassle of Windows, keyboards and mice.

But if you just want a compact, incredibly powerful gaming computer, and don’t mind spending a premium, it’s hard to deny that the FragBox does everything right.

Updated 02/23, 1:48 p.m.: Added updated information on Wi-Fi 7, removability management and pricing.