HP Blackbird 002:Extreme Computing
The chassis is clearly the most intriguing aspect of the Blackbird, so let’s discuss it first. The chassis is a custom-made tower that is gigantic and extremely heavy. We don’t have a scale on hand, but it almost requires two people to carry it. It’s quite heavy, around 80lbs to be exact, so it won’t be seeing a lot of LAN party action, that’s for sure.
The case has a wedge shape and stands on a silver “foot” that elevates the chassis up about four inches from the ground to allow for air to enter from below. It looks rather menacing in person, as the back of the case narrows to a slimmer front, and there’s also a V-cut in the top of the chassis as well. The entire case is made from cast aluminum and reeks of quality, strength and bad-assedness.The chassis is completely tool-less. A small lever on the front slides open with minimal effort, revealing the interior of the PC. From there, another easy-to-open latch releases the plastic covering the PCI expansion cards. There is one more piece of plastic hiding the PSU cables at the bottom of the chassis, and it too slides out with ease. The door itself even comes off just by lifting it out of its hinges.On top of the case there is a pop-out bay that holds a media reader, USB and FireWire ports, and headphone/mic jacks. When you’re not using the media reader bay, you can just press it down and it rests flush inside the chassis.
The case has lights too, but they are very soft and subtle. When running, a light blue glow emanates from the top of the chassis, there is white light behind the front panel where the power button resides, and there is a soft white light coming from underneath the chassis as well. There is also a light above the rear I/O ports, which makes plugging in devices much easier.
The front of the case features five hot-swappable hard drive bays that are pre-wired to the motherboard, so you just put a drive in the cage and pop it into a bay. We hate fussing with hard drive cables and are huge fans of this approach. In fact, we think it’s probably the most useful feature of the chassis.
Extreme Computing
A machine this gnarly should have a burly CPU, and the Blackbird does not disappoint. This model features Intel’s new QX6850 CPU, which is a quad-core CPU that has been overclocked from 3.0GHz to 3.3GHz. If you’ve read reviews of the quad-core CPUs, you’ll know that they can run extremely hot, even at stock speeds, but HP has addressed the heat problem with a custom water-cooling setup that is made by Asetek. It features a large internal radiator and is cooled by two 120mm fans. The unit is totally self-contained and requires no maintenance. In this configuration, just the CPU is water-cooled, but there’s an option to water-cool the GPU as well.
Price:$5000.00
