Friday 7th September 2007

HP Blackbird ‘kicks the living crap out of Dell XPS’ – read the HP interview

Posted at: 11:38am 7th September 2007 by Ben Hardwidge

We talk to Rahul Sood and Mark Solomon from HP about the company's new water-cooled gaming PC

Rahul: It won’t be restricted, but it won’t cover everything either – we’re not going to put crap inside it. We’re not going to take some low-end ATi or Nvidia card and put it in this machine, because we want it to deliver a certain level of gaming. We’re not going to use some crap motherboard either. We currently believe that the Asus motherboard is the best, but that might change in the future.

What’s the minimum and maximum spec of CPU that you can specify in the machine?

Rahul: The configurator’s not online yet, but I can tell you that the minimum price point is $2,500 US.

One of the key features of the Blackbird is what you’re calling the ‘open BIOS.’ What’s exactly does this mean?

Rahul: What we’re offering that’s different from Dell is an Asus Striker motherboard with an open BIOS. You can go in and do whatever you can on the Asus Striker motherboard, whereas Dell just has a Dell BTX motherboard – if you want to upgrade that then you’ll have to get Dell to do it. We’re using all industry-standard components, we’re not limiting our customers and we’re certainly not trying to control what they do with their PC.

Let’s talk about the water-cooling system, which was designed in conjunction with Asetek. HP says this is maintenance-free, so how does it work exactly?

Rahul: It was actually designed by HP and Asetek, but yes it is maintenance-free. It’s basically a pre-sealed unit. In order for HP to approve it and give us the HP brand, it has to pass the shock test and extreme temperature test and go under the worst torture that any piece of technology goes through. And then it has to be mounted in the PC and go through the HP house of horrors.

In my 15 years of doing this, I’ve never seen this level of engineering go into a product before. It has to be shaken, baked, extreme-cooled and run under extreme stress and it has to be able to do this without leaking - and it works. The whole system has to do this, so it has retention cards that hold the video cards in place, because they can fall out in a shipped machine. There’s actually five retention points on just the video card.

What are you water-cooling inside the machine then?

Rahul: There’s an option for CPU-only water-cooling, or you can cool both the CPU and GPU. We’ve also separated the GPU from the memory on the video card, so we’re air-cooling the memory. The reason we did that is because most companies are trying to cool the entire video card with liquid, but that brings too much heat into the liquid cooling system and reduces the efficiency. What this allows us to do is air-cool the memory, and we can actually overclock the memory too. On the ATi card, for example, when you overclock the memory you get a much bigger difference in performance than when you overclock the GPU.

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Comments

Rahul Sood & Voodoo DNA

Agree on the last comment. WTF? Voodoo is simply a small company that had great marketing people behind it (definitely not Rahul) allowing the sale of the company to the big boys. The real movers and shakers behind Voodoo and HP Gaming are the guys you don't hear about. This punk needs to stop promoting himself and prove his abilities, if he has any at all.

Comment by jnelson at 1:19am 3rd October 2007

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Voodoo DNA ...what the

Whats all this talk about Voodoo DNA inside the box? What revolutionary technology or design did Voodoo actually bring to the party? The reality distortion generator is in full gear here. Voodoo was a small company from Calgary that built high end custom machines aimed at the gaming market. They were/are successful at creating a brand in that market space as a niche player with a strong and loyal customer base. Kind of like a microbrewery with its crafted beer and loyal drinkers. We all know what happens when the big boys buy them out. Something changes .. its not the same any more. Not saying this is the situation here however Voodoo DNA? - give me a break - your customers are smarter than this spin.

Comment by fastman at 12:44pm 11th September 2007

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enthusiasts

cant see any major enthusiasts buying these as you cant beat the feeling of building a monster box but for off the shelf hi end gaming pc's i could see hp doing very well.

Comment by MDK_UK at 11:52am 11th September 2007

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specs are online

http://h20435.www2.hp.com/#

Comment by faceplant at 11:38am 9th September 2007

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One of the key features of the Blackbird is

You can go in and do whatever you can on the Asus Striker motherboard. My god! how revolutionary just another pre built company trying to justify why you should buy a machine that is worse, than you could build for less money

Comment by russspez at 6:38am 8th September 2007

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There are plenty of people who are prepared to pay for these types of machines, I know cos I've sold a few of them! Watercooling especially creates the kind of mental block that totally puts people off building their own PC's, as does sifting through all the hardware etc to make sure the thing works. Must be a nightmare for those who know as much about PC's as I do about cars. They won't sell many but companies like Alienware, Vadim and HP have clearly shown there is a market.

Comment by combatus at 1:34pm 7th September 2007

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hmmm

I think it is a good idea, but won't the people who want a wicked gaming pc (and care about all that stuff) buy the components themselves? it'll be cheaper and mroe satisfying; the way i see it is pepole who buy things like Dell XPS are mostly people who want to play computer games and have the dollar to just buy a mega PC without making it themselves. There's a gap between enthusiasts, want to probably totally customise and buy their own components, and average slightly interested but wealthy people who want a gaming PC, and this gap isn't a gap to be filled...

Comment by wegreenall at 12:57pm 7th September 2007

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Are there any jobs going at HP?

Looks awesome and very well thought-out from the sounds of things. I might have opted for one of the Asus Blitz boards to get rid of the heatpipe fan and add to the look good factor (which I'm glad to see they're using with watercooling) as the chipsets+ mosfets are watercooled too, but then having SLI and Crossfire compatibility is a major boon.