Falcon Northwest this week introduced probably the world's most powerful mini-ITX personal computer. The Tiki PC packs quad-core Intel microprocessor, Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 graphics card, up to 16GB of DDR3 memory as well as several hard drives and an optical disc drive in a system which size is akin to a video game console: only 4" wide and 13" tall.

Falcon Northwest Tiki is based on Asus P8Z77-I Deluxe mainboard that supports LGA1155 microprocessors up to the Intel Core i7-3770K. The system can be configured to include such high-end components as Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 graphics card, 16GB of DDR3 memory (at up to 1866MHz), three hard disk drives (one 3.5" and two 2.5"), Blu-ray disc drive and so on. To speed it up and provide exceptional stability, Tiki is equipped with a liquid cooling system.

Making a desktop PC this thin presented a new design challenge: it is fairly easy to knock over with a stray elbow or by a pet. So Falcon custom cut Tiki's base out of solid granite. Tiki is the first PC ever to ship with 6 pounds of natural stone as standard equipment. The polished granite base gives Tiki both stability and a uniquely high-end style.

"Tiki is a showcase of how far the PC industry has come in just the past year. CPUs and graphics cards have taken massive leaps in performance and power efficiency. Tiny solid-state storage has become affordable, and the miniaturization of motherboards all mean that your average tower PC is now much bigger than it really needs to be. With Tiki, we solved the heat and noise challenges involved in getting rid of all that excess space," said Kelt Reeves, president of Falcon Northwest.

Available today, Tikis will be custom built to order and begin shipping in early July. Pricing starts at under $1900 for basic configurations and ranges to almost $5000 for custom painted, fully-loaded builds.

Tags: Tiki, Falcon Northwest, Intel, Core, Ivy Bridge, Nvidia, Geforce, Kepler