HP’s annual product showcase in New York City last month put the electronics manufacturer’s slim and sexy laptops and mobile devices in the limelight, but the product that stole the show was the Blackbird 002—a massive, 80-pound desktop PC.

The first official product borne out of HP’s acquisition of Calgary-based luxury computer manufacturer Voodoo PC—a company known for premium gear priced in the tens of thousands of dollars—Blackbird is a stunningly advanced, powerful and elegant piece of machinery.

HP’s chief technology officer Phil McKinney and Voodoo founder/head of HP gaming Rahul Sood stood over the machine, manufactured and assembled in Alberta, like proud parents as they showed it to journalists for the first time just hours prior to its official unveiling.

“A proprietary liquid cooling system keeps the machine dead silent even while running the most resource hungry software.”

The Blackbird’s chassis is a single cast piece of aluminium painted matte black on its front and top grills and polished to a mirror shine along its interior side edges. The entire unit is suspended on a metal pedestal, allowing air to enter the box from beneath the tower to cool its high powered innards—what Sood calls “a sixth side of air cooling—an industry first.”

The machine is loaded with the sort of plush extras that Voodoo is renowned for, including an LED light on the back of the box that illuminates the machine’s jack pack for easy cable alterations, a hydraulic powered pop up panel on top of the machine that houses a bevy of quick access ports and a swinging VESA mount on the right side of the tower to which users can attach a variety of peripherals, such as LCD screens and game controllers.

Pop off the stylishly-designed side door and a gleaming interior loaded with the most decadent of PC components is exposed, including a proprietary liquid cooling system keeps the machine dead silent even while running the most resource hungry software, and a monstrous 1.1 kilowatt power supply designed to ensure that the computer’s power hungry hardware is well fed (a green machine the Blackbird is not).

Users have the ability to order the machine to precise specifications, choosing between factory over-clocked AMD and Intel quad-core processors and the latest graphics boards from either Intel or Nvidia. Users can also select whether they’d like to add a Blu-ray, HD-DVD or dual format high definition optical drive next to the two slot loading high-speed DVD burners on the front of the machine. All components, including an ATX motherboard, are industry standard, allowing for virtually unlimited modifications.

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