Voodoo reveals the new Omen dream machine

Integrated water-cooling, vertically positioned graphics cards, built-in LCD and a choice of glass, wood and leather finishes. What more could you want?

After teasing us with a frustratingly short video, not to mention setting fire to the Voodoo website, Voodoo has finally revealed its brand new Omen PC. Unlike the company’s previous Omen machines, which were based around a heavily modded Lian-Li chassis, the new Omen’s 22in tall chassis was designed completely from the ground-up by Voodoo, and very flash it is too.

This marks a new strategy for Voodoo, which HP’s chief technologist of HP Gaming Worldwide, Rahul Sood, likens to Lamborghini after it was bought by Audi. ‘Ten years ago, Lamborghini made great cars that looked great and performed great,’ claims Sood, ‘but their quality control wasn’t the greatest. They sold around 200 cars a year worldwide and every one was hand built.’ Sood explains that this made it ‘difficult to get the same level of control that the Audi mobiles were delivering, but ten years later they’re now doing 2,500 cars a year, they’re quality control is completely different; it’s 1,000 times better and the cars are just amazing.’

HP plans to pull off a similar feat with the Voodoo brand. Basically, HP will continue to make HP-branded high-end gaming machines with ‘Voodoo DNA’ such as the Blackbird 002, while the Voodoo brand will be used for the PC-equivalent of luxury sports cars, taking advantage of HP’s higher level of engineering and quality control. ‘HP wants us to bring back Voodoo, like Lamborghini in 1998 to 2008,’ says Sood, ‘so they want us to make new products with a much higher level of engineering than we’ve had in the past.’