The $10,000 HP Gaming computer that never was (A brief history of VoodooPC)

[Trentent]

VoodooPC was a little known boutique computer shop based in Canada!  Calgary, Alberta, Canada to be precise.

 

I joined VoodooPC in 2002, when it was around ~15 people. Voodoo's claim to fame at the time was high-end PC's -- and when I started it had just started to ship laptops from various ODM's.

 

Voodoo was trying to differentiate itself from other players in the space. It took existing chassis's and laser cut the side panels with Voodoo branding.

 

To try and go further Voodoo partnered with another startup -- CoolIT -- to ship a unique CPU cooler that used TEC's to try and cool the CPU to a greater effect than air-cooling.

 

You can barely make it out in this picture:

 

However, these chassis were bog-standard off the shelf chassis that were painted in an automotive shop then branded. Not overly unique.

 

Forward to end of 2002/2003-ish and Voodoo worked with LianLi on customizing a chassis with Voodoo branding and some unique features only available to VoodooPC the Rage F1 (Based off the LianLi PC-60).

However, problems started to arise. The custom CPU cooler was running against the scorching hot Intel CPU's of them time -- and was being overwhelmed. It didn't help that the TEC's were adding additional heat to a heatsink incapable of dissipating it -- Voodoo advertised and overclocked CPU's out-of-the-box. This added even more heat.

 

With the CoolIT solution unable to cope, I took on a project to try and add more differentiators based around cooling.  A custom water-cooling loop was the obvious choice. We quickly found a solution and pivoted to using custom water-cooling loops. This was much more reliable, cooled the components allowing for higher overclocks and was much, much quieter. Voodoo won awards and was cranking out machines. There was a problem with the unexpected pivot though. The water-cooling took away a 5-1/4" bay and some hard drive capacity.  The chassis was a tight fit.

 

During this time, Voodoo partnered with Zalman and was shipping fully built PC's in Zalman's completely fanlass chassis -- branded the Rage F-15.

 

It was a monster chassis -- weighing ~60lbs without components. Heat pipes cooled everything! From the CPU to the GPU, it was completely silent. The original version came with a 250W PSU eventually upgraded to a 300-350W IIRC.  The largest problem of this chassis was the coil whine of the components. When it's completely silent, coil whine was VERY noticeable.

 

I assembled a team of the 3 desktop tech's -- Myself, Casey and Allan and we got to work on designing a chassis to replace the RAGE F1. We got a LianLi V1000 as the base and started to tear it apart.

 

We redesigned large parts of the internals. To maximize for features we offered and no extras -- and to make it one of the first (the first?) mainstream chassis that was designed with custom loop cooling in mind. We went through 2 iterations before shipping the first Voodoo RAGE F5 (later renamed OMEN)

 

To my knowledge, this was the first "mass" produced machine with custom-loop cooling. The cost of the chassis was around $300USD IIRC, and our MOQ was 100 units. We shipped an average of one machine every day-day and a half. But the cost of the Voodoo RAGE F5 was ~50% higher than previous units -- including the profit margins.

 

I had made modifications to the chassis for the next order (things like tube holes in the chrome to go straight into the radiator, lowering the 5-1/4" bays to have a 'hidden' 5-1/4" bay for a new reservoir/pump combo on top -- and other things to ease building (additional hard drive bays, holes for cable management, giant hole in the mobo tray to allow easy access to back to the CPU -- his wasn't common back then and I think we were the first to do it).

 

This 'rev 2' was rebranded OMEN.

 

I was doing all the desktop review systems at the time and we were crushing it. The custom water cooling loops with 120x240mm rad made us quiet, made the CPU exceptionally cool, and when GPU blocks came out we were quick to adopt them. Voodoo was at it's highest revenue that year IIRC. Voodoo gold plated a Voodoo OMEN as a publicity stunt, brought it to CES and eventually, actually, sold the machine!

 

As we moved closer to exhausting this chassis supply, we made further modifications, ordered the next batch, etc. We eventually corrected the motherboard orientation so it wasn't upside-down, etc. Things were clicking. I still maintain these are among the most enjoyable chassis to work on. Roomy.  Solid. 

 

In early 2006, I left Voodoo for ~6 months then rejoined the company.  Shortly after HP acquired Voodoo. The first week we flew down to Cupertino to meet the HP Gaming team and see the first product they were developing. We got to see Blackbird 002, some other concept products and the roadmap HP had laid out. We gave some input into the roadmap and worked on the layout and architecture of Blackbird. We focused a ton on niceties we weren't sure we'd ever get.  Things like tool-less PCI slots, tool-less hard drive slots, etc. Blackbird wouldn't come out for another year though.

 

So we got to work on the last revision of the LianLi OMEN chassis and I wanted to update the look.

 

My little brother, Troy, was taking some graphic design classes at the time and through our youth we marvelled at things like the Apple Blue-and-White G3 design, the internals, the ease of use. We would design systems or products in 3D and imagine what it was like to have them made. He had made some concepts for the new OMEN and I forwarded it HP Gaming's head of design, Mark. Mark made plans to come to Calgary to meet the team and the space where the machines would be built and he mentioned he would like to meet Troy. Troy skipped class, drove 6 hours and only got to speak to Mark for about 20 minutes. But he made a big enough impression that Mark hired Troy out of school and assigned him to work on the HP Gaming products.

 

One of Troy's concepts made it into the Voodoo OMEN.  We called it 'floating face' OMEN.

 

 

With LED's recessed  in the gap, the face appeared to 'float' in front of you -- especially in low-light.  Further modifications to the internals included a removable PCI stability bar -- this is was done to avoid the 'blow up foam' that @LinusSebastianfound in his most recent secret shopper videos.

 

This was the last of the VoodooPC OMEN's.

 

HP OMEN's.

 

Blackbird 002 launched and we wanted to follow up with 'the tower to end all towers'.  It was supposed to be the ultimate gaming PC. Asetek had their AIO cooler which HP adopted for blackbird but it had drawbacks. At the time, I think the pump was louder than the D5 , it's cooling was adequate but not exceptional and cooling anything more than the CPU was not feasible. The lag time between design and production meant cooling a GPU or two GPU's had to built into the product -- and if you upgraded the graphics card you'd be left with a dangling bit.

 

the HP OMEN was going to address this and keep with the custom loop.  The design was to be as thin as possible (because thin was in) but this made trade-off's that in hindsight, maybe weren't the best. At the time, AMD and Intel had come out (or were going to come out) with dual-socket gaming motherboards (Intel Skulltrail -- I can't recall the AMD platform).  We got early engineering samples and I stressed and overclocked and tried to murder the hardware. Between the two, I think we measured ~800W from the wall (with GPU's). So we wanted our new tower to be able to cool all of that -- and quietly.

 

I made a checklist and worked with design on making it happen.

 

Dual-pass 480x120mm radiator. Double-thick fans with PWM control. EATX. Quick-connects. Copper tubing for fluid routing. Water-cooled PSU, 32bit RGB. Dual slot, thin, HP light-scribe CD/DVD burners, 6x3.5 toolless hot-swap HDD's.

 

I'm not sure who wanted the screen on the tower, but we added a 7" LCD too.

 

In order to minimize wasted space we found the orientation of the motherboard would have to be vertical. This is what was designed:

 

The 7" LCD was powered internally by USB. DisplayLink -- IIRC. They were the first vendor with Windows 7 drivers, were USB, and could operate completely off USB power. Plans were to make the display removeable, but at the time this wasn't feasible. The primary blocker was the lack of a wireless protocol. Wireless USB was still being finalized and once done I was hoping we'd adopt it for the next revision.

 

We hit all the bullets and more. To remove the side panel, you'd take the top off, and slide a switch. This would activate (at the time) super-bright WHITE LED's, illuminating the internals for you to work on. This was powered via a rechargeable battery pack, so it worked without power plugged in.

 

Youtube has a great video of this chassis when we were trying to get ready for launch.

 

I was actually at this event. I was supposed to make sure all the hardware worked smoothly for the review as these were fragile engineering samples.  We had the new HP Envy laptops too. Crazy things kept me scrambling at this event. We actually shipped two OMEN's but only one would power on. The HP ENVY laptop's pre-production chassis were splitting, etc. I tried to make it all work at this event. Stressful, fun and crazy. I wrote the software that is cycling the RGB lights.  The coolest thing is the PCI card holders. They were borrowed from HP Server division and they were mostly transparent. This was perfect for when the LED lit them up!

 

These towers started at $10,000. Only 10 were ever made. They were all recalled.

 

When HP Gaming was shutdown I was lucky to have two PVT units in my possession. They might be the last two in existence.

 

Anyways, thought I'd share. This seems like the kind of crowd who might enjoy this.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[G0dSpeed]

Wow amazing story!

[Emergence177013]

Honestly, this was a cool story with an even cooler pc 

[WinDreamer]

What a story. I did not expect a write-up on VoodooPC in 2020! I'm just happy to see more pictures of 2008 Omens kicking. Somehow one of them ended up in Spain of all places: https://pcpartpicker.com/b/ZhnnTW. Voodoo fans are still active on The Other Bench forums which is where I found out the number of 10 (chassis in existence). Wasn't it Silverstone who made this last case? In any case, Digital Storm has the Aventum which definitely cribbed your notes but still doesn't compare with the original in all its glory. I am the proud owner of a humble Blackbird myself, but it's always been my dream to give one of these the TLC it deserves. What can I say, they really don't make 'em like they used to. I'd settle for seeing someone else post their build or the rough schematics being released to be improved upon after 13 years since it was so ahead of its time. Protocase will literally make your custom case out of aluminum for you as long as you can provide the CAD files.

[The Tech Wizarder]

interesting 

[Grovermummy]

Thank you for posting this Trent.
 

What a flash to the past, the kids and I were going down memory lane as my son wants to build his own gaming system. Wish his dad (Nick Grover) was still with us to help.

my kids laugh at me sometimes because I still have my F-Class case, it’s not running but I just can’t seem to let it go.

it was last rebuilt 2012 and I would love to see if I could use it to make a functional computer again. If anyone has any tips, advice or know of someone in the Edmonton area that could help please let me know. 
 

still have my voodoo doll t-shirt and Erika the voodoo baby is turning 18 this summer!!! Those were some great years. 

[tkitch]

I remember VooDoo PC...  I hadn't thought of that name in /forever/!

 

[gameboy3800]

sorry not sorry for topic bump.

 

let's see what we can stir up here. see if you can name them all

 

side note: are there any surviving voodoopc forums or groups on facebook or discord? i'm in a couple but they seem to be the only ones left and more of a general pc focus.

 

fun fact: the floating face omen is from my video. i actually got another one in brand new condition still.

 

heres some neat images of my collection and even some rare adverts for some of the final voodoo machines. neat custom backgrounds too.

[NaClKnight]

This was fascinating, and also explains why HP had a serious of PCs named "Omen" which always sounded out of place for such a big stuffy company.

 

The desire to stand out and the improvements and customization that ensued in this story and these mid 2000s cases/PC is hella cool

[WinDreamer]

On 10/5/2022 at 3:27 AM, gameboy3800 said:

sorry not sorry for topic bump.

 

let's see what we can stir up here. see if you can name them all

 

side note: are there any surviving voodoopc forums or groups on facebook or discord? i'm in a couple but they seem to be the only ones left and more of a general pc focus.

 

fun fact: the floating face omen is from my video. i actually got another one in brand new condition still.

 

heres some neat images of my collection and even some rare adverts for some of the final voodoo machines. neat custom backgrounds too.

Thank you for posting. I see you around the usual haunts. It's too bad the 2008 Omen case didn't end up with you, or I'm sure you'd be providing us with lots of photos. Your poor Blackbird has a dent just like mine (I have the regular version).

[maestro0428]

Love Voodoos products.  Its a great story.  I remember back when they started.  The cable management guy was an origami master.  I always wanted one.  I had a Falcon Northwest and Dell XPS 510 cases from back in the day, but they have been sold.  Awesome post.  Thanks for this.

[gameboy3800]

On 10/16/2022 at 12:01 AM, WinDreamer said:

Thank you for posting. I see you around the usual haunts. It's too bad the 2008 Omen case didn't end up with you, or I'm sure you'd be providing us with lots of photos. Your poor Blackbird has a dent just like mine (I have the regular version).

i wasnt collecting back when that 08 omen was being talked about. if i was i'm sure i could've worked something out. I've got some holy grail status items regardless so i'm not too fussed about it.

 

the blackbirds are such an odd shape and so heavy theyre like impossible to ship safely without the original padding. 

 

i've been posting some repair logs and looks at interesting systems on my Legacy Tech Stories youtube channel if you'd like to see more. 

[holleyman]

Wow, blast from the past!

Haven't thought of Voodoo in many years. Worked there in 2000 ~ 2001 and worked with some really cool people. Thanks for the old but relevant post. 

[RevGAM]

Very interesting story - thank you for sharing it! I wish I had your skillset! What is that ribbed tubing?

 

A few of the pictures didn't display...?

[Nodeerck]

Hi everyone! This was very cool. I really liked Voodoo pcs. I’m trying to find info on a 2001 voodoo monsoon I saw. I like the plain jade case that I believe was an Antec widebody but I’m not sure. Hopefully you all might have some info on what it was and possibly where I could find it for a retro build. Here’s pictures from Maximum PC January 2001 issue

[Nodeerck]

On 4/20/2023 at 4:22 PM, holleyman said:

Wow, blast from the past!

Haven't thought of Voodoo in many years. Worked there in 2000 ~ 2001 and worked with some really cool people. Thanks for the old but relevant post. 

Do you happen to remember what the case was based off of for a 2001 Voodoo Monsoon? I thought it might be an Antec design. Perhaps you might remember? Thank you!

[sentrytv]

3 hours ago, Nodeerck said:

Hi everyone! This was very cool. I really liked Voodoo pcs. I’m trying to find info on a 2001 voodoo monsoon I saw. I like the plain jade case that I believe was an Antec widebody but I’m not sure. Hopefully you all might have some info on what it was and possibly where I could find it for a retro build. Here’s pictures from Maximum PC January 2001 issue

Here are some better pictures of the one that I have which I have a buyer for currentlyHere are some better pictures of the one that I have which I have a buyer for currently

[sentrytv]

1 hour ago, Nodeerck said:

Hi everyone! This was very cool. I really liked Voodoo pcs. I’m trying to find info on a 2001 voodoo monsoon I saw. I like the plain jade case that I believe was an Antec widebody but I’m not sure. Hopefully you all might have some info on what it was and possibly where I could find it for a retro build. Here’s pictures from Maximum PC January 2001 issue

I am wondering what the hardware was inside??

[Asuka.Soryu]

On 10/5/2022 at 4:27 PM, gameboy3800 said:

sorry not sorry for topic bump.

 

let's see what we can stir up here. see if you can name them all

 

side note: are there any surviving voodoopc forums or groups on facebook or discord? i'm in a couple but they seem to be the only ones left and more of a general pc focus.

 

fun fact: the floating face omen is from my video. i actually got another one in brand new condition still.

 

heres some neat images of my collection and even some rare adverts for some of the final voodoo machines. neat custom backgrounds too.

Hey I’m making a wiki website of voodoo PC，but I can’t find anywhere on internet about what chipset does Firebird 003 use……(the laptop with QX9200 and hd3870CF), could you please tell me what north bridge chipset is it? Thanks very much!

[etz]

Thanks for sharing, I remember pining for these PC-s when I was a kid, having seen them on PC Gamer magazine most likely. My dad was in publishing briefly and I got the demo CD-s and magazines, even though they officially didnt even print them in my country.