After the acquisition of VoodooPC, HP has started designing more machines for gaming segment, traditionally being served by the likes of Alienware. Today we got another confirmation on Rahul Sood's statement that Hewlett-Packard wants to pursue gamers more aggressively. According to Engadget, HP is planning to launch a new gaming desktop called the HP Blackbird 002 next week (it's different from Virtus). The firm describes Blackbird 002 as "a machine born from the minds of gamers, created with gamers in mind." Encased in aluminum chassis the computer features removable side panel and interior/exterior back panel LED lighting that makes it "convenient for gamers to get inside the machine and tweak it."

It comes with open BIOS (so you can customize it to your liking), and maintenance-free liquid cooling for CPU, motherboard and GPUs. The blackbird can be purchased online at www.hp.com/blackbird beginning Sept. 5, 2007 with price ranging from $2,500 to $6,500.

[Via Engadget]