The good news:
 - my Falcons arrived
 - upon plugging in the falcon to the zenminer that I had registered a few days ago, it detected and starting hashing (clevermining)
 - the pool-side hashrate is the advertised 27 MH/s

The bad news:
 - one Falcon is louder than three Gridseed Blades

The really bad news:
 - 1137 W (9.87 A) at the wall
 - the PSU is working hard and getting pretty hot
 - the PCI-E wires are very warm and the insulation is starting to get soft after about 10 mins

As much as I hate to do it, I've taken it down already. I can live with the noise, but if the power consumption doesn't decrease *significantly* with the promised firmware update, it's going to be a big issue.