When a system arrives in the PC Pro Labs, we don’t often hear rambling tales about its birth and development - instead, the machine arrives in the back of a large van in a big box and normally leaves the same way. It was refreshing, then, to hear about the protracted development of the Blackbird 002 - the new high-end gaming system from HP.

The Blackbird began life as the brainchild of an HP engineer by the name of Tom Szolyga. A games enthusiast stifled in the more sedate entertainment division after the comparative failure of a range of Compaq gaming machines, he began work on the Blackbird, keeping it in a box under his desk - in much the same way that Google engineers can work on their own products 20% of the time.

Szolyga continued working on the project in private until he took a flight with a couple of HP directors. One of them was late so, in the ensuing small talk, Szolyga enthused about his project - and he’d received funding by the time the plane landed. Development moved ahead when Rahul Sood, founder of VoodooPC, was brought in to lend his expertise to the project after HP bought his boutique manufacturer. The result was shown off in London today and, well, it’s mighty impressive.

The striking chassis, for instance, isn’t just for show. The fins all over the machine work as a giant heatsink, and the stand at the bottom doesn’t just look good, but allows for air to get at the bottom of the case, too. Two optical drives are included - DVD and Blu-ray - and mounted vertically behind a pair of doors in the slatted front, and the usual ports and sockets on the front of the PC are hidden. Push down on the top of the machine, and a neat pop-up caddy has a card reader, pair of USB ports, FireWire and headphone and microphone jacks. There’s no eSATA, though, which we have seen on cheaper machines.

Inside, the VoodooPC heritage is obvious. PSU, GPUs and CPU are kept apart with divided compartments making sure that hot air from one component won’t interfere with another, and each door or barrier snaps out easily - so getting at each part is simple. The only tool required is a small Allen key, and that’s attached to the side of the optical drive compartment.

The modular PSU sits at the bottom of the chassis, with a couple of huge fans - and the water-cooling system - at the top; cables wind their way down to the CPU and pair of graphics cards to keep them chilled.

Five hard disk bays sit towards the front of the case, and it’s incredibly simple to add a new disk: drop it into the plastic caddy and plug it back in. The SATA and power cables are mounted at the end of the bay, so it’s as easy as literally plugging the drive in. They’re hot-swappable, too, depending on how the drives are configured.

The sample we saw came with different hardware to what’ll be in the finished version - it had a pair of 8800-series graphics cards, for a start - but the official retail spec still sounds relatively tempting: an Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 processor, a pair of ATI Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics cards, 4GB of RAM and a 500GB hard disk with a 10,000rpm 160GB for super-quick access. We’d question the choice of graphics cards when 4870 X2 and GTX 280 cards are all the rage, but they’ll still be lightning quick.

You’ll be paying for the fantastic specification and superb design, though. The Blackbird 002 will cost £2,722 excluding VAT - and without a monitor or set of speakers. It’s a fantastic machine with a fascinating backstory, but is that enough to win us over when it costs that much? We’ve been assured by HP that we can have one for review pretty soon, so we’ll deliver our verdict as soon as we get our hands on one.

Tags: Blackbird, gaming, HP, pc

This entry was posted on Friday, October 3rd, 2008 at 2:05 pm and is filed under Hardware, Just in. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.