The veterans of PCWorld know a thing or two about computers. The design and design firm of Falcon Northwest did this. What happens when you pit them against each other to make the best small screen gaming PC possible? You can see the latest, must-see video on the PCWorld YouTube channel, of course.

Falcon Northwest sent the latest version of its long-running Tiki mini-tower design, rocking the latest Core i9-12900 processor and the RTX 3080 Ti GPU. We pitted this all-air-cooled design from the pros who have a decade’s experience in a small PC building, against Adam Patrick Murray’s a hand-built SFF machine. An Adams PC has a dual-shelf-relief, but a larger Lian Li case with more capacious NZXT liquid cooling system, plus the Ryzen 5 5600X. The Adams machine has the same GPU, an RTX 3080 Ti.

Despite the differences in CPUs, couldn’t compare Tiki and Adams SFF in a direct horsepower match. The most complex part of the SFF design was comparing heat management systems with heavy workloads. The comparison between the two systems is really interesting: it’s a matter of the difference between the ultra-swivel and all-air-cooled Tiki and the more flexible but, more, less rigidly chambered Lian Li case with liquid cooling.

The results were surprisingly close. In a series of experiments and tests, the Adams custom-tuned machine ran a little more hot on the CPU side, with better variation due to the stable heat dissipation of the water cooling system. He noted that he also believed that the single-chamber design of the Lian Li Q58 makes the proximity of the GPU actually slow down the CPU time.

The graphics card runs a few degrees cooler on the SFF of Adams. That partly due to the fewer airflows, partly due to a custom undervolt. For an exhaustive breakdown of the comparison and to learn the history lesson on miniature and tiki design, make sure to watch the full video as the Falcon Northwest Tiki and the Adams homebrew rig continue to perform spectacular, and resemble the Tikis craftmanship. If you want more nerdy comparisons, subscribe to PCWorld’s YouTube channel.

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