Overclockers UK Titan Falcon review

At a Glance

Expert's Rating

Our Verdict

The Overclockers Titan Falcon embraces the spirit of overclocking by boosting the performance of lower-spec components to match their more expensive counterparts, but without the higher price and all backed by a superb 3-year warranty. This overclocked Ryzen 7 1700 system occasionally outperforms those based on the pricier 1700X chip and makes no sacrifices on build quality. You may wish to upgrade to a more powerful graphics card for resolutions above 1080p, but the price will remain highly competitive.

This exciting mid-tower PC from saves money by taking AMD’s new entry-level Ryzen 7 1700 processor and overclocking it to 3.8GHz to deliver performance similar to more expensive Ryzen 7 chips.

OVERCLOCKERS UK TITAN FALCON REVIEW: PRICE

You can buy the Titan Falcon direct from Overclockers UK.

At the time of review it cost £1260 but prices do fluctuate so it may not exactly this price on the day you check.

The website gives you the option to reconfigure the system to your taste – the link above will pre-load the specifications as reviewed. We recommend switching the RX 480 graphics card for the Gigabyte Aorus Radeon RX 580, which is the second generation of the card and costs exactly the same, yet is a bit faster. Find out more about the Radeon RX 580.

If you want an Nvidia graphics card instead of AMD, though, you will have to get that added manually.

Don’t forget to also check out our full roundup of the best gaming PCs.

OVERCLOCKERS UK TITAN FALCON: DESIGN AND BUILD

The Titan Falcon is housed in a Cooler Master MasterBox 5 system case with a matt black finish inside and out, flexible internal mounting options and convenient cable management. Built in 120mm cooling fans are fitted front and rear and a removable dust filter protects the power supply at the bottom.

It’s not the fanciest of cases, but the transparent side panel gives you a good view of the internal components which glow in red and blue, thanks to LEDs built into the motherboard and graphics card as well as a dedicated LED strip light.

Other than that, there’s not much to be seen inside as the 2TB Seagate Barracuda hard drive and 650W Cougar VTX 650W 80 Plus Bronze power supply are hidden from view in their own compartments at the bottom of the case with the cable management concealing any unsightly wires.

The hard drive is supplemented by a super-fast 256GB Samsung SM961 NVMe PCI-Express SSD which holds the operating system and any other data which may need frequent high-speed access.

Powering the system, the Ryzen 7 1700 gives you eight processor cores, delivering a total of 16 processing threads for smooth computing, no-matter how many applications you run at once. Because this particular chip has been overclocked to 3.8GHz, it gives you the performance of a faster Ryzen 7 without the corresponding increase in price.

Sticking with the AMD theme, Overclockers has opted for a Sapphire Radeon RX480 Nitro+ OC graphics card in this PC. It’s a factory overclocked model which offers a little speed boost over the standard RX480 and comes with dual cooling fans and a backplate as well as the LED illuminated logo mentioned earlier.

These components, along with 16GB of 2400MHz RAM, are assembled in an Asus Prime B350-Plus motherboard which comes with comprehensive overclocking and fan control options as well as enhanced gaming audio, 10Gb/s USB 3.1 and built in LED illumination.

The B350 chipset used here is the poor cousin of the X370 chipset found in some more expensive systems, but it’s quite capable of a reasonable amount of overclocking.

If you’re intending on pushing Ryzen 7 right to the very limit though, you may be better off investing a pricier X370-based motherboard. You’ll definitely need one if you’re thinking of going with dual Nvidia graphics cards at any point in the future.

However, the Asus Prime B350-Plus is a perfectly competent selection for this PC, in keeping with the philosophy of delivering top performance without a correspondingly high price tag.

OVERCLOCKERS UK TITAN FALCON: PERFORMANCE

Despite being fitted with the lowest-spec Ryzen 7 chip, the Titan Falcon performs rather well, thanks to its pre-overclocked processor. Being an eight-core CPU it naturally shines when given heavily multi-threaded tasks such as the Cinebench R15 Multiple CPU test where it outperforms PCs based on the Ryzen 7 1700X in some cases and, of course, blows away any Intel-based quad-core system.

However, we’re primarily interested in the PC’s gaming performance, and here the performance of the Ryzen 7 chips can’t match the best that Intel has to offer – for now, at least.

Most of the available gaming performance is down to the graphics card of course. Fitted with the RX480, the Titan Falcon is confidently capable of 60fps Ultra-quality gaming at 1080p, although it does start to struggle a little when confronted with Deus Ex Mankind Divided. Stepping down to High quality brings the benchmark back to 60fps fluidity.

If you want better gaming performance, you can specify the Titan Falcon with a more powerful graphics card. For an extra £250 you could configure the system with a much faster Nvidia GTX 1080. This would give access to 2560×1440 or even 4K resolutions while keeping the overall system price competitive, thanks to the cost savings achieved through the overclocked CPU and B350 chipset motherboard.

The Samsung SM961 NVMe SSD is also a great boost to general performance which helps boost non-gaming benchmark scores above systems based on older SATA technology.

OVERCLOCKERS UK TITAN FALCON: WARRANTY

OCUK offers an excellent three-year collect-and-return warranty which is one of the best available in the industry, covering parts and labour for the whole three year term. This is particularly valuable when investing in an overclocked PC with components pushed to their limits.