The journalist in me wishes I was at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas, but, after four consecutive years of attending this ridiculously oversized, highly disorganized, and utterly frustrating event, I have to admit that the rest of me is pretty happy to be sitting this one out.
In fact, the only really interesting CES-themed press release to filter into my inbox so far came from HP/Voodoo and concerns a new gaming rig dubbed the Firebird. It's the little brother of the critically acclaimed and extremely pricey Blackbird luxury desktop, which came out in 2007 and had a price tag starting around $5,000.
Surprisingly, the Firebird, which looks to be only about a third of the size of its monstrous sibling, will retail for just US$1,799, but still offer many of the same attractive design perks, including tool-less hard drive installation and removal, quiet operation (under 30 dB at full speed), and a stylish exterior case.
According to a post on Rahul Sood's (HP/Voodoo's gaming guru) blog, the machine features several components that have been customized to fit within the confines of its smallish case, including a pair of nVidia GeForce 9800S graphics cards running in SLI that have been stripped of their fans and heat sinks and are instead chilled by Voodoo's patented liquid cooling system. It also has a custom Core 2 Quad processor from Intel.
Of course, custom components bring up the question of upgradability. Will users be able to swap out anything aside from hard drives? It seems unlikely. Still, at under two grand, a person can plan on and afford to just upgrade to a new machine in a few years.
That's assuming the Firebird's performance is impressive enough to satisfy you for that long. I've yet to see any benchmark numbers. But we shouldn't have to wait too long to find out how quick the Firebird is; it's slated to be available as early as February, and Rahul writes that you'll be able to start ordering them this Saturday.
Watch the video below to learn more.
