The BFG Phobos Is A Hefty HTPC, But Its Sequels Sound Even Better
I stopped by BFG yesterday, makers of the Phobos—a mega performance/home theatre PC aimed at the rich and the lazy. Their touchscreen-wielding Phobos is an understated best of a PC, but I’m more interested in what they’re planning next.
Starting at $US3,000 (and easily reaching $US10,000+), the Phobos features a single-pieced aluminium body tastefully coated in black car paint. The DVD drives are slot-loading, the USB/SD card reader pops up from the case and everything is so simple and tucked away that I’d have missed the iPhone doc on top of the case had they not pointed it out.
Its touchscreen LCD, mounted to the front of the monolith, can do everything from boot the system to one-touch tweak its performance settings thanks to the fact that it runs its own processor and custom Linux OS.
The machine, packed standard with luxuries like dual video cards and SSD boot drives—is actually not meant to be opened by the user. Instead, BFG includes a full professional installation and 6-month on-site tune-up in their pricing for the system. They’ll also send pros out to install new components like video cards—upgrades they fairly offer for the difference between the price of your old card and the price of the new card. But the Phobos is still very easy to open (the case slides right up).
Looking under the hood, it becomes obvious that BFG has designed a normal tower PC and flipped the whole thing 90-degrees so that its sits on its own ports. The design allows the machine to pull in air from the top and expel air out the bottom. It’s a smart idea that apparently cuts down on dust and pet hair inhalation.
The processor is water cooled and the cords neatly arranged. But it’s all for bragging rights since BFG doesn’t want you hassled with cracking the case anyway.
So the Phobos is nice, but I had two ideas for improvements. If the touchscreen popped out of the case, the system would work far better as an HTPC since you could take the remote to the couch.
BFG’s next model will have that.
And the size. The Phobos is huge, easily the biggest tower I’ve seen in some time.
BFG is working on a lower tier Phobos model with a smaller footprint.
The company is realistic. BFG knows that most hardcore PC gamers prefer to build their own PCs and that many HTPC users would prefer something small. But they’re happy in their service-oriented niche, even if it means selling 500 uber PCs a month. Still, shrink the thing and offer me an innovative PC remote…and maybe we’ll talk. [BFG Systems]
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Comments (AU Comments | US Comments)
@oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...:
A non melted 4870 in a normal shuttle?
good luck with that.
I love the idea of this, I hope all PC companies get on board with what these guys are doing.
MaaseyRacer
the whitish thing under the telly looks like a phantom, its alive!
@oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...: It's not the storage or the processor that are the problem. It's the tiny graphics cards.
Xeno
@600Followers_GitEmSteveDave: Possibly.
Xeno
I'd rather spend 3k on a custon scratch case embedded into the wall than something this size.
And then I could attach a screen to a chair or something for on/off general control.
@★_red3001: No.
Stupid. If it's not in a HTPC case, it will look retarded in my living room.
davekaybsc
@NotSoSiniSter:
HTPC isn't just video playback. You haven't lived until you've played REAL 1080P gaming with real filtering and anti-aliasing on a nice TV. It makes the 360 and PS3 look like the original NES. Their low res low poly upscaling nonsense becomes immediately apparent by comparison.
Bluesk1d
Whats the point of that??? HTPC??? A good and reasonable HTPC is one that has an ION board in side it with a sound card. THATS IT!! You dont need all this extra shit. Maybe the touch screen is useful but the power is not needed. Playing 1080p video doesnt require dual graphics...
NotSoSiniSter
@32ndnote: its just gaudy, I appreciate the design, but come on you can fit a quad core and a ati 4870 into a shuttle with a TB of HD space.
@oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...: I initially thought it was a subwoofer. Lots of people have big hunks of plastic for their sound system. Why not have a big hunk of shiny plastic for something useful?
@Eruanno: It's name means "Big Friendly Giant," right? Great book.
I remember go-l.com promising things like this way back in 2003. But theirs were total vaporware and completely hilarious.
This looks neat, but there's no way I'd lay down the money for one.
@J_Frank_Parnell:
I lol'ed
farker
@Area51Alien: Basically, the main difference is dependant upon whether the HTPC will be used as a DVR, as well. If so, including a tuner card is a necessity, and also the software and drivers. MythTV is popular amongst the do-it-yourselfers, but Windows Media Center is looking up. The other difference is size. Standard ATX boards are much larger than even mini-ATX, not to mention mini-ITX based boards that are just now getting good HTPC hardware integrated. I think we'll see more and more of these smaller boards being used as they continue to develop ways to include higher-end features on the small design.
I recently built a computer using a mini-itx board from zotac with an Intel e6300, 2GB of DDR2, 500GB SATA. It has a DVDRW, integrated geforce 9300 and onboard 802.11g. The board has an empty 16x PCI-X slot, yet is truly mini-itx in size. Cost was less than $500 in parts, including the damned cable to convert the slimline DVD to regular SATA.
Here are a couple of pictures of the machine I just built for my brother's home theater system. As you can see in the second image, that is a normal-sized DVD case leaning against it.
[home.comcast.net]
[home.comcast.net]
zenneth
The desktop PC is dead. LONG LIVE THE SERVER TOWER!
Wow, that's a big fucking gadget.
J_Frank_Parnell
@Area51Alien: Hardware wise, usually just a IR receiver, TV tuner, BluRay Drive, lots of storage, etc. Software wise they can be running Windows Media Center, XBox media center, Boxee, or any number of other software packages oriented towards media presentation and organization.
I use a WMC setup with 3 digital cable tuners, 1.5 TB of media storage, and BluRay. I streaming video and audio via XBox 360 extenders.
Xeno
@SeniorPonzologist_GitEmSteveDave: Yes
@oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...: But shuttle PC's don't have enough POWER! That's why the PC should be elsewhere and controlled with a RF remote with just the Video and Audio outputs coming to the living room..
Xeno
@F_munk: Both!
Xeno
What are the hardware and software
differences between a regular PC
and an HTPC?
Thanks ahead for any replies....
Area51Alien
@Franklin Comes Alive!: In low wattage mode it's pretty quiet. Performance mode is somewhat jet-like.
@Nintenboy01: Compared to Alienware stuff, they said their design was slimmer but taller because it leaves room for under venting.
@oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...: True, but this is big and looks like it blends in if you design it surrounding right.
@assassinmunky: BFG and Phobos, I'm pretty certain someone was thinking doom when he did this.
WAY to big to sit in my living room. HTPC boxes should be tiny, think shuttle pc's
@Nintenboy01: seems like a full tower, so about the same, all towers about the same, give or take a few centimeters.
How loud is this thing?
Franklin Comes Alive!
How big is this compared to a Dell XPS 730?
I can think of so many things beginning with BIG FUCK*N G....
assassinmunky
Wait, they can sell 500 of those a month??
I should really get into this business.
It certainly looks like a Big Friendly Giant...
"Turn Phobos On"? More like "Phobos Turn Me On?" Yes - No
...It's kinda big...
I like the idea, but we all know you can build your own better one for much less, though this caters to rich lazy asshat who won't bother doing that. Never heard of a water-cooled HTPC though, so that's pretty cool.
....... WANT.
"Best" of a PC or "beast"?
F_munk