It’s been nearly 20 years since HP bought the boutique laptop maker VoodooPC, bolstering each its gaming and design choices. And in 2009, that buy bore fruit: The firm’s “Blackbird” design was refined right into a super-powered, super-modular microtower referred to as the Firebird 803. On the most recent PCWorld YouTube video, we’re joined by VoodooPC founder Rahul Sood (at present CEO of Irreverent Labs) for a private tour of this extremely distinctive desktop design.

Despite being extremely compact and that includes a number of components designed for laptops, the Firebird is designed to be modular in each means, with straightforward consumer entry to all components. That consists of the twin cell graphics playing cards, a pair of Nvidia GeForce 9800S GPUs in SLI. Both MXM cards had been slotted into the motherboard below large watercooling blocks, nearly like outsized RAM DIMMs, user-accessible with no soldering.

The distinctive case deserves some consideration. Despite visually resembling the Blackbird, it’s a whole customized design integrating a laptop computer energy provide for a comparatively tiny inside quantity, although at present the slot-loading Blu-ray drive appears a little bit dated. Around again you possibly can see relics like Firewire and eSATA ports.

Sood had hoped that the Firebird could be the primary in a sequence of designs centered on modularity and consumer customization, together with a potential collaboration with LEGO on a full DIY build-a-PC package. Alas, HP went in a distinct route, switching to extra typical desktops and glossy laptops for the Voodoo sub-brand. Today, the Firebird’s reliance on MXM cell graphics playing cards and a customized liquid cooling setup means your improve choices are restricted, even if you happen to can observe one down in working order.

But arguably, the Firebird’s very existence impressed a brand new era of small kind issue PCs that refused to compromise on gaming efficiency. For extra deep dives on the historical past of laptop design, subscribe to PCWorld on YouTube.