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

The Blackbird has Voodoo stickers inside but seems to be branded as an HP product. Is the Blackbird going to be branded HP or Voodoo?

Rahul: Firstly let me explain that it’s actually designed by HP Gaming in general. So after Voodoo came together with HP, we created a new business unit called HP Gaming, and collectively we designed this machine. We are designing a portfolio of products under both the Voodoo brand and the HP brand. We wanted to make our first product an HP-branded product that could compete against the mass manufacturers out there. From a price point you’ll see that it competes head-on with the XPS, the 700 or whatever it is. From a technology standpoint there’s no comparison, right? This kicks the living crap out of the XPS and pretty much everything in its class.

The other thing that you should know is that we realise that yes it’s an HP branded product with Voodoo on the inside, and that also goes right into Voodoo territory. If you like Blackbird and what we’re doing with it then you’re really going to like what we’ll be doing with Voodoo in the future, although we can’t really talk about that yet.

What was Voodoo’s role in the design of the Blackbird?

Rahul: Blackbird started off as Blackbird 001, and Blackbird 001 was about to be released during the Voodoo acquisition at that time. The Voodoo acquisition took about six months, but then we were approached by HP during the time of the acquisition, and they asked for our feedback on it. We thought it was good, but we didn’t think it was game-changing enough, and apparently other people in HP also followed along and didn’t believe it was game-changing enough.

The funny thing is that during the time of the acquisition, right when we were about to sign the papers, we were in a room speaking with Paul Campbell, one of the lead marketing guys on the gaming team, and Paul had to leave the room briefly to interview Mark Solomon in the next room. Mark Solomon’s the lead ID guy who came from Compaq. So we were in the one room and Sullivan was in the other room, and Mark couldn’t know about the Voodoo acquisition at the time, but we knew that HP Gaming was hiring Mark as our ID guy.

It was really neat because Blackbird was underway during the time of the acquisition, and when we came in our role was really just to inject the much needed DNA of gamers into the project. So when we looked at Blackbird, we asked what the gaming customer wants inside the system. You know, the kind of flexibility options they want, how it should be laid out internally, and the how we should get the cables out of the way. We made a lot of detailed changes to it that seemed a little trivial to most people at HP, but the core gamers at HP really got what we were doing and appreciated it. The bottom line is that we came together as a team and we all moulded very quickly – we’re all gamers, we all know what the customer wants, and we designed it for the customer instead of designing it for the sake of design.

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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.