Gizmodo: hp firebird 803

More Hands-On Photos of the Gorgeous HP Firebird's Gross Innards

Mark Wilson — Thu, 08 Jan 2009 00:11:07 EST

I'm usually not into that liquid cooling glowy PC mod stuff, but the HP Firebird 803 really is a nice looking machine...in a clinical circuitry kind of way.

As we've mentioned before, slight modifications to the traditional gaming PC rubric allow the machine to run a 2.83 GHz Core 2 Quad processor, 640 GB of 2.5-inch drive storage, Blu-ray, 4 GB RAM, dual SLI graphics cards and liquid cooling for a scant 350W. It's surprisingly small when you take all of those features into account, even if it's not quite a Shuttle PC.

Gallery: Check Out the HP Firebird 803's Liquid-cooled Innards

Adrian Covert — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:02:00 EST

News of HP's Firebird 803 may have leaked out over the holidays, but now that its been officially announced, we have a batch of photos, including the freakishly tidy insides, as well as pricing details.

As you can see, HP put some work in getting the internal layout of the Firebird to be as simple and clean as possible. A couple of interesting details not revealed in the leak are that the Firebird actually has 3 GPUs—two discrete Nvidia cards in SLI configuration for performance needs only, and one integrated GPU for Windows to run on. The external power supply is a big reason why the machine is 80% less power hungry than most gaming PCs, while the hot-swappable drive bays and sub-30db noise level are also nice touches.

But even more impressive is the price. Considering you're getting a 2.83 GHz Core 2 Quad, 640 GB of storage, Blu-ray, 4 GB RAM dual SLI graphics cards and liquid cooling, it's not bad that the Firebird 803 will only run around $2100 when it becomes available. There will also be a Firebird 802 available which will lack the Blu-ray and only have 500 GB of storage for $1800.

Voodoo-Designed HP Firebird 803 Is Tiny, Still Has Space for Too Many Lights

matt buchanan — Tue, 23 Dec 2008 12:50:00 EST

I loved Voodoo Omen's steely, austere looks, so the design of HP's pint-sized Firebird 803 gaming tower with VoodooDNA is kind of disappointing. Oddly, it reminds me of Linkin Park.

The shrink ray they blasted the Blackbird 02 with works much of its magic by dumping the power supply outside of the system and killing expandability, kind of like a game console—very PC gamer un-friendly. But the specs, as Engadget has 'em, are fairly respectable, the somewhat piddly GeForce 9800S cards aside. (Why no GeForce 9800 GTs?)

* NVIDIA nForce 760i SLI chipset
* Core 2 Quad Q9550 2.83GHz processor
* 4GB of RAM
* Dual NVIDIA GeForce 9800S cards
* Two 320GB SATA drives
* Blu-ray
* 5-in-1 card reader
* 6 USB, 1 FireWire, 2 eSATA, 1 S/PDIF and 1 DVI dual-link
* Bluetooth
* 802.11n WiFi

Obviously, we'll reserve full judgments until we get our hands on it (likely at CES), but given all the compromises needed to get that firefly form factor, we're not holding our Crysis-coated breath. [Engadget]