Computers

This innovative, superbly designed power PC delivers admirable performance, but it doesn't come cheap

HP's Blackbird 002 is the first product from the collaborative design and production minds of HP and its year-old boutique acquisition, Voodoo PC. The result is a system that makes an unexpectedly large dent in what we expect from high-end gaming PCs.

The Blackbird 002 will satisfy any well-off gamer looking for a unique, expensive showpiece desktop. For the rest of us, let's hope that future, more affordable products from the HP/Voodoo team-up show so much polish and creativity.

The angled lines of Dell's XPS 700 series systems tweaked the idea of the typical desktop case. HP's Blackbird 002 takes that reinvention even further, with its design that looks like an accordion floating on a cantilevered base. Two slot-loading DVD burners and a spare 5.25-inch bay hide between the ridges that run down the front of the Blackbird, and a row of ports and a media card reader pop up from a cleverly concealed, spring-loaded mechanism on the top.

As unique as we find the exterior, the inside is where the Blackbird 002 truly separates itself, starting with the latch. Rather than requiring you to turn the massive case around to remove its side panel screws, HP and Voodoo installed a latch on the side panel's front side edge. You simply pull the latch and the side panel swings open on a set of hinges. Once you get a look inside the case, the Voodoo influence becomes instantly apparent--and not just because of the "Voodoo DNA" label.

The first thing that becomes apparent about the inside of the Blackbird 002 is how clean it is. The graphics cards, power supply, hard drives, and their attendant cables are for the most part concealed behind a series of removable plastic walls (the graphics cards sit behind their own secondary hinged door). This segmenting, which we've seen before from Voodoo systems, benefits overall heat management, and because the internal partitions are removable--including the graphics card door--you can clear the way when you want to add more memory or another expansion card.

As the Blackbird 002 looks as tidy inside as the Mac Pro, it also incorporates the modularity we like so much in Apple's desktop. Each of the five, outward-facing hard drive sleds glide in and out with ease, and they're aligned so that the hard drives match up perfectly with the data and power supply connections. That means you don't ever see or need to deal with those cables. Similarly, the spare 5.25-inch drive cage is locked in place by a plastic pull tab. Pull on the tab, and the entire cage slides out the front of the system. The Blackbird 002 couldn't be easier to expand or upgrade, and it out distances every other high-end gaming PC in this regard.