Voodoo PC/HP to launch cheaper Firebird gaming PC Jan. 9

Aol | Mail | You might also like GameDaily, Games.com, PlaySavvy, and Joystiq

BIGdownload

Send Feedback

Main Downloads Games News MMO Hub

Breaking Stories

Voodoo PC/HP to launch cheaper Firebird gaming PC Jan. 9

Posted Dec 31st 2008 11:00AM by John Callaham
Filed under: Hardware

The gaming PC hardware industry has been reeling from Voodoo PC head Rahul Sood's recent remarks that declared the era of the super powerful and super expensive gaming PC is "dead". Next week Sood and Voodoo PC's owners HP plan to put their PCs where their mouths are with the launch of the HP Firebird.

Our sister site Engadget reports that the Firebird will be much smaller and more compact than the huge Blackbird gaming PC (the first product created after HP bought Voodoo PC in 2006). Inside the Firebird will have quad-core 2.83 Ghz Intel Core 2 processors, 4 GB of RAM, and dual Nvidia Geforce 9800S video cards. However the power supply for the PC is placed outside the case and only uses 350 watts of energy, far less than the typical high-powered gaming PC. The catch? The Firebird is not designed to be easily upgradable. PC World reports that the Firebird will go on sale online at voodoopc.com on Jan. 9 for $1,799.

Tags: hp-blackbird, hp-firebird, rahul-sood, voodoo-pc, voodoopc

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

Only using 350w? For a gaming PC, with those spec's, that PS doesn't seem to be enough. One step further, SLI 9800S? What the heck is a 9800S? I vaquely remember hearing about that card, oh 7 or 6 months ago, but that's it. Is it a scaled down version of the 9800? 9800GT?

I don't know. You can't upgrade it, that's a huge minus, at least for me.Posted at 2:26PM on Dec 31st 2008 by Shadowhaxor

In this economy $1799 is anything BUT cheap. I'll stick with the computer I have now and my 360 thank you very much.Posted at 1:22PM on Dec 31st 2008 by John Fredericks

They're considering $1800 cheap?!?!? This is exactly why there is this negative perception that PC gaming costs thousands of dollars! You can build a more than adequate machine that will crunch through all the latest games for a few hundred if your smart about it. On top of that you aren't getting much hardware in this thing compared to such a high asking price. 9800gso SLI? $200. q9550? $300 4gb mem? $50 God, let me loose with $1800 and I'll build you a kicking Core i7 rig with GTX 260 SLI or 4870 Crossfire that would eat this little thing for lunch. If they were selling this for $700, I would say hey, this is good for the PC gaming industry. At well more than twice that it is just another overpriced status symbol to sucker those with too much money and perpetuate the bad image PC gaming has.

...bysmittyPosted at 1:43PM on Dec 31st 2008 by bysmitty

bysmitty is dead on i completely agreePosted at 9:07PM on Jan 1st 2009 by gordonliveshl2