I just got off the phone with Rahul Sood, founder of VoodooPC, who confirmed that the rumours of Voodoo’s demise were not just premature but “nonsense,” but said “HP is asking us to integrate into the larger execution engine.” Rahul is comfortable speaking both plainly and in business-ese—what we take this to mean is that Voodoo will merge manufacturing with HP’s core in Asia, unify other non-design aspects of the business, and shut down a good chunk of the operation in Calgary, Alberta. “Typically we don’t comment on layoffs specifically,” says Rahul, who adds that he himself will not be leaving Canada.
Voodoo’s Omen gaming desktop is the best-looking one around. But we (and gamers) care about inner beauty too, and the insides shot by Pocket Lint look like the Matrix’s people farm with all of the magenta tubes and cables flying around–a far cry from its clean, steely exterior, though about as neat as one can expect of such an intricate cooling system. It’s definitely designed around heat dissipation, though I’m not totally sold on the whole rotated motherboard.
I almost don’t care what’s inside Voodoo’s Omen desktop, beyond the usual gaming PC bombast —quad radiator and liquid cooling with integrated copper pipes to stave thermonuclear meltdown for extreme overclocking—because this is the best-looking made-to-order gaming desktop I’ve ever seen. It looks like a clean, efficient killing machine, not a disco-in-a-box. (Okay, there is a built-in seven-inch LCD auxiliary display that adds the necessary over-the-top flourish for obscene gaming PCs.) You can party it up with custom lights and paint, but I urge otherwise. But, if you can afford the US$20,000 for the top of the line model, I’m two social classes away from judging you. Update: Full spec sheet below shows what US$20k will buy you.
