HP Blackbird 002 Revisited

More on Blackbird Pricing

Because Blackbird 002 production is still ramping up, HP is delaying the full release of their online configurator. That should be available in November, at which point additional components and options might become available. At present, we talked with one of the sales team to find out exactly how low we could go in terms of price. Obviously, prices are subject to change over time, but a basic Blackbird 002 can be had for as little as $2561. What exactly do you get for that price? Unfortunately, not nearly as much performance as you get with the Dedication Edition.

HP Blackbird 002 Minimum Configuration
	Component	Price
CPU	Core 2 Extreme E6750 (Dual-core 4MB Shared cache 2.66GHz)	$197
Motherboard	ASUS Striker 680i SLI - Customized (CrossFire support enabled)	$300
RAM	2x1GB PC2-5400	$75
GPU(s)	1x GeForce 8600 GTS 256MB	$138
Hard Drive 1	(Seagate) 320GB 7200 RPM	$78
Optical Drive 1	20X DVDR with LightScribe	$40
Power Supply	TOPOWER 900W Modular	$290
Case	HP Blackbird 002 Custom	???
Cooling	Asetek CPU Cooling Kit	$250
Keyboard	Logitech G11	$53
Mouse	Logitech G5	$40
Operating System	Windows Vista Ultimate (32-bit)	$180
Warranty	HP 1-year limited hardware and technical support	$0
Assembly	HP gaming division assembly and tuning	???
Total Estimate	(Not counting case and assembly)	$1,641
Actual Price	(Without shipping and tax)	$2,562

As you can see, a lot of compromises were made in order to get the price this low. Assuming $750 for the case and system assembly, which seems reasonable, there's still an additional 10% markup. Compared to the boutique computer vendors, the price is still very competitive, but now you're basically paying for a top-quality case coupled to a midrange computer. At the very least, we think bumping up to 8800 GTS SLI would make sense for anyone considering this sort of prebuilt computer, which pushes the price up to $3,121. CrossFire 2900 XT 512MB is available for $50 more ($3,171) while the higher-end graphics options (CrossFire 1GB 2900 cards or GeForce 8800 GTX/Ultra) range from around $3,500 up to $3,750.

Once you start talking about high-end dual graphics card solutions, we would definitely look at upgrading the memory to at least DDR2-800 (another $30), and we would give serious thought to doubling the amount of system memory and moving to the 64-bit version of Windows Vista... if we could. Right now, HP Gaming is still only shipping with Vista 32-bit as they have still not validated Vista 64-bit works properly on their hardware. That's unfortunate, as we are definitely reaching the point where moving to a 64-bit OS on the high-end makes a lot of sense. Still, Vista 32-bit will allow you to utilize more than 2GB of RAM, and with the OS footprint it might not be a bad idea to have more memory. If you start adding hard drive space, then why not go ahead and do liquid cooled graphics cards? Pretty soon, you're right back to the Dedication Edition, only you would be spending more money.

As a final pricing alternative, we decided to put together our own high-end enthusiast system to see what we would be paying for similar performance. A few of the components could be debated, and we're not necessarily giving this as a high-end recommendation at this time, but most of the parts we would put in a modern high-end overclocking setup would be very similar to the following.

DIY Overclocking Alternative
	Component	Price
CPU	Core 2 Quad Q6600 (Quad-core 2x4MB Shared cache 2.40GHz)	$278
Motherboard	ASUS P5N32-E SLI (680i SLI)	$205
RAM	2x1GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer PC2-8500	$160
GPU(s)	2x MSI NX8800GTX-T2D768E-HD OC (610/1000)	$1,000
Hard Drive 1	Western Digital Raptor 150GB 10k RPM	$180
Hard Drive 2	Seagate 7200.10 500GB 7200 RPM	$100
Optical Drive 1	20X SATA DVDR with LightScribe	$40
Optical Drive 2	20X SATA DVDR with LightScribe	$40
Power Supply	OCZ GameXStream 1010W	$280
Case	Silverstone SST-TJ07-BW	$330
Cooling	Thermalright Ultra-120 eXtreme + Fan	$70
Keyboard	Voodoo Razer Gaming Keyboard (Tarantula)	$75
Mouse	Voodoo Razer Gaming Mouse (Deathadder)	$47
Operating System	Windows Vista Ultimate Retail (32 or 64-bit)	$320
Total Price	(Without shipping and tax)	$3,125

We decided to simply skip out on water cooling, as our own testing has been less than stellar and we're finding that top-quality air cooling is still more than sufficient for the vast majority of people. We didn't bother with GeForce 8800 Ultra, but the MSI cards we selected come factory overclocked and are nearly as fast as the Ultra while costing significantly less. For the processor, we of course decided to skip out on the Core 2 Extreme and stick with the far more affordable Core 2 Quad Q6600 (which should overclock nicely). You get all of this for a much lower price while still achieving similar performance to the Blackbird 002 Dedication Edition. We did upgrade to a retail version of Windows Vista, on the assumption that swapping out components is probably going to be a more frequent occurrence on a DIY setup, so getting the single install OEM version is likely a bad idea. You can also choose whether or not to make the leap to Vista 64-bit, which is good, and considering the price you can add another 2GB of RAM and still pay significantly than a similarly equipped Blackbird 002.

You still have to put everything together yourself, and of course you'll probably be stuck dealing with various companies directly when it comes to hardware warranty/support. You also miss out on the Blackbird case, though the Silverstone we selected is by no means a poor man's alternative. Finally, you lose CrossFire support on the motherboard side (or SLI support should you choose a CrossFire compatible board). If you know your way around computer hardware, it shouldn't be too hard to easily match the 3.3-3.5GHz CPU clock speed with this particular configuration. You can also purchase all of these parts today, get them in the mail later this week, and be up and running with your new PC by the weekend.

None of this means that the Blackbird 002 is a bad choice of hardware. However, as usual users will be able to customize things a lot more on their own and end up with lower overall costs. Depending on how much your time is worth - and how much you might be lusting after the Blackbird chassis - taking the easy route and letting the folks at HP Gaming do the hard work isn't a bad alternative. If you add in a complete water cooling system, we would count on spending at least a couple hours getting all of that prepped and installed. Lucky for us enthusiasts, most of us tend to have a lot more time than we have money.