Verdict: Is the HP Blackbird 002 more Turdus merula or SR-71?
What is it about the blackbird that induces people to name expensive hardware after it? A member of the thrush family, Turdus merula is notable only for its orange beak and slightly rude-sounding Latin name. So why name a spyplane capable of cruising at Mach 3.2 at altitudes of 16 miles after such a plain bird? And why a high-performance PC?
Perhaps the HP Blackbird 002 LC is named after the Lockheed plane though -'Blackbird' was only an unofficial nickname of the Lockheed SR-71 once it began service in the US Air Force in spring 1968 (due to its black, radar-signal absorbing paint). What is undeniable is that, just as the SR-71 has a unique and striking appearance, so does the HP Blackbird 002. This PC is HP's answer to the Dell XPS 720 H2C of last year's Dream PC Labs and it's the first PC that HP has designed and built with the help of Voodoo PC, which it acquired in September 2006. Before the acquisition, Voodoo PC frequently wowed us with one gorgeous PC after another, so we were eager to see what it could do with the extra buying power and resources of HP.
Following this acquisition, Voodoo PC created the 'Voodoo DNA' department to collaborate with HP on flagship gaming products such as the Blackbird, much like the secretive Skunk Works division of Lockheed that designed the SR-71.HP already had a gaming PC, the Blackbird 001, in the works - and it was binned shortly after Voodoo came on board. Let's hope that the Blackbird 002 does better.
That case
The case was developed specifically for the Blackbird 002. A single foot raises the PC of the floor, which HP tells us can safely support 600lb (about 270kg) - probably far more than the PC and the person using it combined. However, knock the Blackbird and it rocks a little, making it look silly.
The lighting scheme is also slightly off - the white lights on the front, rear and foot look grey and dingy, while the turquoise of the upper light is odd, as if HP ran out of white LEDs when putting the PC together.
The black, ribbed exterior is made from thick, cast aluminium (unlike the SR-71, which uses a titanium alloy outer airframe, as aluminium would melt under the air friction created at Mach 3.2) and is incredibly sturdy. We like the flip-up ports and media card slots (the usual pair of USB 2, FireWire and headset ports are there, and the various slots will accommodate any card), as they mean that the PC is usable whether you place it on the floor or on your desk. The Blackbird tapers from a relatively thin front to a more typically fat rear for purely aesthetic reasons.
However, this also means that the optical drives at the front have to be mounted sideways. There's a thin, slot-loading laptop DVD writer as standard, with a second laptop drive and a Blu-ray writer/HD-DVD reader as further options. Our PC boasted the latter; this is a nice addition on paper, but as it's a conventional desktop drive (and tray-loading), it has to be housed behind the front door. When this door is open, it's ugly.
However, the Blackbird has plenty of pleasant surprises. There's a VESA-compatible screen mount on the right side panel, for example, while the art panels inset into the sides pop off to be replaced by other designs. HP has also confirmed that it will be 'seeding [releasing] add-ons soon', including a silencer kit. The hard disks are mounted in hot-swap caddies - once the disk is in a caddy, you only have to slide it into its berth and Windows will detect it. All the disk berths are live by default, so adding extra storage is easy.
When the Blackbird is first opened, it doesn't look as though there's much going on inside - the PC has been compartmentalised into cooling zones, with slide-out panels and doors obscuring most of the hardware inside.
The 1.1kW PSU is situated at the bottom of the case, and sucks air from the gap between the main chassis and the foot, before exhausting it directly out through the back. This is a great idea, as it isolates the heat of the PSU from the rest of the system.
The main chamber of the Blackbird is for the expansion slots, and has its own airflow to help cool the graphics card (or cards, as we discuss on the opposite page). A 120mm fan is housed between the hard disk cage and the main chamber, making it inaccessible. This is a shame, as it's loud and we'd want to change it.
The door into the main chamber also has a metal spring-style clamp mechanism to hold the expansion cards in place, despite HP also using retainers at the end of the cards to secure them. However, this means a standard GeForce 8800 Ultra (or any future card of unusual width) doesn't fit - to include the Ultra in our system, HP has had to use a GTX cooler on it. We didn't, however, experience any instability when testing.
Just like the Lockheed SR-71, there are three types of HP Blackbird 002: purely air-cooled (no suffix); with the CPU liquid-cooled (LC); or with the CPU and graphics card(s) liquid-cooled (LCi). The liquid-cooling system is an Asetek LCLC, which stands for 'low-cost liquid cooling'. However, Rahul Sood (chief technologist, HP Gaming Worldwide) assuaged our fears, saying that he was after simplicity rather than low costs when giving Asetek the design brief.
A simple liquid-cooling system will lead to less hassle when building the PCs, and hopefully fewer failures when shipping them. The pump is integrated into the CPU waterblock, and the unit uses a quiet dual 120mm-fan radiator fixed to the top of the Blackbird to exhaust the heat. The LCLC can handle up to one overclocked quad-core CPU and two GPUs, so we can't wait to see the retail version, which will be available soon.
Sood also revealed that Voodoo PC's new own-brand project is adopting a different strategy and will have cooling that 'will be anything but low-cost'.
Specifications
For the most part the Blackbird utilises standard off-the-shelf components, which HP claims is better than the proprietary components used by manufacturers such as Dell, since PC enthusiasts will feel more comfortable with replacing CPUs or upgrading graphics cards in hardware they know. To reinforce the ease of changing the components in the Blackbird, HP has made the interior very neat, a lesson Dell could do with learning - the XPS 720 H2C was a mess inside.
However, the absence of a sound card in our Blackbird is a notable disappointment, although you can add an X-Fi in the configurator.
At the heart of the machine is an Asus Striker Extreme motherboard, which is based around the Nvidia nForce 680i SLI chipset. It's around a year old now, but Sood is adamant that the nForce 680i SLI is still the best chipset around. Our system had a quad-core Intel Core 2 Extreme QX6850 multiplier overclocked to 3.33GHz, and 2GB of Corsair Dominator PC2-8500 memory. It also has one EVGA GeForce Ultra, with a GTX cooler, an OEM-only 160GB Western Digital Raptor and a standard 750GB Seagate Barracuda 7200.10. Despite the customised GeForce Ultra and an OEM-only hard disk, the hardware is as the company promised - largely industry-standard.
Performance
While HP uses a slightly faster CPU in the Blackbird than Dell did in the XPS 720 H2C - a 3GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6850 with its 1,333MHz FSB compared to a 2.93GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6800 and its FSB of 1,066MHz - Dell applies a bigger overclock: 266 x 13 for a 3.46GHz CPU compared with HP's 333 x 10 for a 3.33GHz processor. We expected the scores to be tight, and they were. The HP was 14 points faster in the image editing test, 30 points slower in the video encoding test and 76 points slower in the multitasking test. Both PCs are fast, with the Dell scoring 1,272 overall and the Blackbird 1,242. However, the Blackbird scored higher in the Supreme Commander test, with a 10fps minimum and 45fps average compared to the Dell's 7fps minimum and 38fps average. This is surprising considering the Dell used two GeForce 8800 GTXs in SLI, rather than the Blackbird's single Ultra.
Despite the Striker Extreme being capable of big FSBs, we were continually frustrated when trying to elicit extra speed from the Blackbird. It wasn't happy with FSB overclocking at all, despite us chucking loads of extra voltage through the CPU (the Asetek LCLC provides plenty of headroom, as it kept the CPU at 67ûC, only 5ûC hotter than the CPU in the Dell). Rifling through the BIOS, we found evidence that the Striker Extreme has a custom (and possibly restrictive) BIOS - it knew it was in a HP Blackbird system, for example. As the CPU couldn't handle a multiplier of 11 (for 3.66GHz), HP has already applied all the overclocking possible.
Gaming performance is predictably high from the GeForce 8800 Ultra, with Call of Duty 4 and Need for Speed: Pro Street playable at our 1,920 x 1,200 settings. The minimum frame rate in Call of Duty 4 was 29fps, while Need For Speed: Pro Street was even smoother at 38fps. However, Crysis proved to be as obstreperous as ever, with a stuttery minimum of 18fps even at 1,280 x 1,024 with 2x AA. At its peak, the Blackbird drew 348W from the mains, compared to the 502W that the Dell demanded.
Conclusion
The Blackbird looks striking, and showcases some interesting ideas, such as the VESA screen mount on the side, the hot-swappable hard disks and the cooling zones. However, it lacks a certain something. The use of fairly standard hardware contributes to this. Open the exciting case and you see a one-year-old Asus motherboard, open the main cooling compartment and you see a standard-looking graphics card, pull out the hard disks and you don't find an exotic SSD, but a standard mechanical disk.
Then again, not all of the customisation is welcome. The Striker Extreme, for example, won't let you raise its FSB, making further overclocking impossible. HP has had to mod the Ultra with a GTX cooler to accommodate the card, which is also irksome - for example, what if coolers that bulge over the PCB become the norm? This isn't to say that the HP Blackbird is rubbish - far from it. It's an interesting PC, and a machine that everyone will remark on when seeing it. However, we wanted something a little crazier and extravagant that doesn't feel as sanitised as the Blackbird 002, and its tendency to hide its hardware behind slidy panels and doors. As such, it's more for the nervous PC user than a CPC reader.
