HP to Offer Custom Compaq Gaming PCs

PunkerTFC writes "Announced in the run-up to E3, Hewlett-Packard will offer custom built-to-order gaming machines under the Compaq brand, according to Reuters. The machines will be avalible in June or July and 'offer a range of options with standard, off-the-shelf components.' HP has been selling a Compaq gaming machine on a limited basis through a few select retailers already - apparently, 'Those pilot sales... convinced the company that it could compete in a market where well-known specialty manufacturers like Alienware, Voodoo and Falcon Northwest face increasing competition from mainstream players like Dell Inc'. The X Gaming machines will feature 'a standard chassis from CoolerMaster, known for its work in keeping system noise down while also decreasing heat, and red glowing lights in front and back what will make it stand out in the dark.'"

Comments

Heh.

[Anonymous Coward]

If I call up asking for a machine to play Marathon they'll build me a Mac? Sweet!

Is this going to be a popular serivce?

[James A. O. Joyce]

I mean, don't most gamers do all of this already? The only people who might purchase these custom computers would be wannabes, surely? Your average gamer either make does with what he's got or just adapts custom hardware. Besides, there's no fun in a case mod if it comes with the PC.

Re:Is this going to be a popular serivce?

[_pruegel_]

Actually the article does not mention "case mod" at all. HP sells very high end machines to consumers and might be able to do so at a good price due to large volume. I don't think that the average gamer is also a hardware technician.

Re:Is this going to be a popular serivce?

[cynicalmoose]

Hold on.

At the moment, those with case mods are the people who know how to mod their machines, and actually know a little. They do it partly for the kudos, but also for the fun.

But I can just imagine your standard 1337 gamer wanting to have a console looking like that, but unable to do so. And some of them, many of them, would pay for the priveledge.

So no, although those currently who have mods, won't buy this thing, there is probably a market who will, who haven't been able to get modded machines before.

Re:Is this going to be a popular serivce?

[Woogiemonger]

I mean, don't most gamers do all of this already? The only people who might purchase these custom computers would be wannabes, surely? Your average gamer either make does with what he's got or just adapts custom hardware. Besides, there's no fun in a case mod if it comes with the PC.

While this is all true, it's nice once in a while to have a computer under warranty, with the components rigorously tested and certified to work well together. I'd often get add-on components and realize the power supply wasn't able to support new gaming hardware, or the new component turned out to be excessively noisy. There's a lot of gamers out there who would prefer to spend the time playing games rather than mucking about with worrying about such factors with the hardware.

Re:Is this going to be a popular serivce?

[Allen Zadr]

Definately, the mystique of a case mod is made completely lame by factory installation.

After-all, mod = modify. If it was just the windows, lights and custom fans that made case mods cool, then we'd call them case accessories, or some-other innane term.

However, there are plenty of die-hard gamers who have no clue as to what to do inside their computers. These folks buy 'gaming PCs'. Of course, the popular ones don't include pre-fab 'case mods', just seats for where case-mods could go.

Re:Is this going to be a popular serivce?

[TomorrowPlusX]

I don't mean to sound like an ass, but, it seems the great overarching movement of western culture has been to make available the image of "uniqueness" to anybody willing to pay for it. And I'm not talking about paying more for quality -- that's commendable ( disclaimer, I own an Apple laptop ). I'm talking about paying someone for a product that's meant to look "custom".

Well, I could be wrong, but a few years ago I said: "I don't think anybody will buy a Chrysler PT Cruiser. The kind of person who wants something like that will make one ( e.g., like a hot-rod ) from an old panel truck."

Boy, was I wrong.

Re:Is this going to be a popular serivce?

[Anonymous Coward]

RE: with the components rigorously tested and certified to work well together

We are talking about HP here..... The consumer PC lines don't test crap before then send them out....

I was one of the lead resource technicians for the HP Pavilion line for 3 years (97-2000)... and I stopped counting how many times they put out a machine that wouldn't work properly with alot of the consumer level scanners and printers out of the box....

HP's compatibility testing for consumer products is NON-EXISTANT

Re:Is this going to be a popular serivce?

[zerocool^]

I couldn't agree more.

I haven't bought a completely new computer for my main box since 1999. I've been upgrading this and that here and there, and everything on the machine has as of now been swapped out (450Mhz K6II -> 800Mhz PIII -> 1800+ AMD XP). However, it's starting to get to the point where I really want a machine where all the parts are of the same computing era, and are under warranty. So I've been looking at a new system built by monarch, with a 3 year extended parts/labor warranty. It's honestly appealing. And it's not devoid entirely of nerdishness - I am going to select every part on the list...

By the way... The cause for my want to upgrade w/ warranty is the death of my 1 year old video card. Buyer beware: PNY "Lifetime Warranty" = Shelf Lifetime of product = for computer parts, rarely longer than 8 months. Plus receipt required (why? it's obviously a PNY).

Anyway, Warranties are ranking as the number 1 reason for not building it yourself, at least in my mind.

~Will

Re:Is this going to be a popular serivce?

[Malor]

I haven't shopped for desktop PCs in quite awhile, but the last time I was looking, Compaqs were 'build to the numbers' machines.... ie, they chose the absolute cheapest possible components to let them say '128-bit graphic accelerator!', even if other chips were faster and cheaper. They chose a marketing spec, and built the machine to meet the spec as cheaply as possible. Actual performance was the very, very last thing on their mind; they were preying on ignorance, not providing good value for dollars spent.

I don't think it's a coincidence that they were a dying company before HP (incredibly foolishly) spent a bucket of money to buy them out, apparently in the theory that lashing two sinking ships together will make both float.

The Compaq brand is a terrible choice here. Even if they actually DO manage to shake off their slimy marketing habits, how many gamers are going to be convinced? They should have come up with a new label. A brand is supposed to help, or at least do no harm, but "Compaq" is an active hurdle to acceptance by the target market.

Re:Is this going to be a popular serivce?

[borgboy]

My last work rig was a Compaq dual 733 P3 which at the time rocked. One of the other devs in the office had a problem and a tech was onsite the next day to replace the motherboard.

My current rig is a HP xw8000. Same joy. The #2 HDD - a Seagate 10k 70GB cuda - died. Hardly HPs fault. Called support. Part arrived next day with return ship label.

Yes - there are plenty of crap machines with the HP or Compaq moniker. They do make good high end workstations, though, and a gamer PC is much more like a workstation than a celeron secretary special.

Red lights!

[Anonymous Coward]

red glowing lights in front and back what will make it stand out in the dark... and make it run faster!

Re:Red lights!

[dallask]

LED Glow wire = -2 FPS
Red lights = + 5 FPS
Blue Lights = + 7 FPS
LED Fans = +12 FPS

Case Window = +6 FPS
Window Etching = +2 FPS

Anti RIAA sticker = +27 FPS
Anti MPAA sticker = +14 FPS

Wife / girlfriend / parental oversight on your mod spending habits = -2200 FPS

Odd Choice of Brands, Maybe

[Schlemphfer]

Way back when HP and Compaq merged, the decision was made that HP's would be the higher end product, and Compaqs would be marketed toward the low-end.

So it's odd to see them choose their cheaper brand to be their game box, since game boxes are by definition amped up versions of regular machines.

Maybe they just think Compaq sounds a lot cooler than Hewlett-Packard.

Re:Odd Choice of Brands, Maybe

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, it does have that quirky 'q' at the end without a 'u' after it. I don't think the name would be so neat if it were Compaqu.

Re:Odd Choice of Brands, Maybe

[UserChrisCanter4]

I honestly couldn't point to the source that says this, but I remember them ultimately deciding that Compaq would be reintroduced as their "enthusiasts" brand, for people who tinkered a bit more with their PCs and demanded a bit more hardware (video editing folks, gamers, the guy who needs the new chip because it's new).

I suppose some market survey showed that Compaq owners did this more often than HP owners, or that people who were a bit more into hardware specs looked more favorably on the compaq name.

Toward the end of Compaq's stand-alone life, they were actually using some nice, deskpro-derived towers and were one of the first big-name companies to embrace the Athlon processor in their higher-range consumer equipment. They were also a big supporter of the Athlon/DDR combo during the P4A days when the only non-RDRAM chipset from intel supported PC133 SDRAM. Both of those things would indicate that, at least from a strategy standpoint, Compaq might have counted on their customers being slightly more informed on the hardware side of things than otherwise. Or it might just have been a gamble, who knows?

Again, I swear the first point about the enthusiast brand was from one of their official statements post-merger, where they started talking about what lines from each company would be dropped. Given those sorts of examples, though, I don't think it's too terribly far fetched.

Re:Odd Choice of Brands, Maybe

[pqdave]

I've had worse experience with Compaq than HP, (but come to think of it, I've had much more Compaq experience, so that may account for it...) Bios setup on it's own hard drive partition? BIOS that won't let you do a normal OS install, tries to force you into using the recovery/restore disk (not included with the system, order from Compaq)? RAM soldered to the motherboard? Cable Select hard drives? IDE cables with only one drive connection? All features of Compaq that I haven't had the misfortune of finding on an HP, or for the most part anywhere else.

Fine for the kids

[Anonymous Coward]

But any l33t gamer wouldn't be caught dead with one of these. I have the feeling these won't sell all that well.

X, X, X!!!

[Daemongar]

For crying out loud if I hear of another X-machine, I'll go crazy! Are the nations game players, nerds, and marketers in such an uncreative funk that they can't think of anything more than putting an X on everything and therby making it "radical" or eXtreme?

This country sucks!

Re:X, X, X!!!

[penguinoid]

Just wait untill you hear about X-Windows... heh

They should just sell case badges...

[tbase]

...and be done with it.

Red lights

[Radi-0-head]

Red glowing lights? Must... buy... NOW...

Can't... resist... red glowing lights...

commercials...

[The Lynxpro]

But will they [HP] top AlienWare's commercial that airs on TechTV?

All HP has to do is throw in an AMD Athlon64 into the machine and they'll top *Dull* (err, Dell) since Dell is an Intel-only screwdriver operation, for now.

Speaking of Dell, has anyone seen the commericals to the NetFlix competitor starring the former *Dell Dude*?

..red glowing lights in front and back..

[burgburgburg]

red glowing lights in front and back what will make it stand out in the dark.

For those truly l33t gamer/night joggers. You really aren't an extreme gamer until you've hit the wall at the 30th mile at 3:00 am while fragging.

I've Seen These Pilots...

[ItMustBeEsoteric]

The Best Buy semi-local to me has them (in Toledo, OH). While I admit the case is cool (shiny polished aluminum), and definitely looks better than the Dell XPS or the hideous Alienwares, it was overpriced as is to be expected. It was almost as much as the Alienware they had (this was a few months ago).

Now, gamers who buy these gaming systems rather than building their own rigs go a lot for cool factor, name-brand recognition, and bragging rights. I think the fact that it's a Compaq may hurt this.

"Yeah, I have an Alienware Area-51"
"Sweet, I just got a Dell XPS laptop."
"Yeah, well, I got a Compaq gaming tower!"

See what I mean?

Hopeless.

[Trespass]

HP has worked tirelessly for the last five years to ensure that their consumer PCs are some of the most unreliable, poorly-supported pieces of Wal-Mart level junk on the market. I should know, I used to sell the damn things. Emachines were actual more reliable for most of the 3-year stint I worked at Orifice Depot. HP has done everything possible to drain any remaining residues of consumer goodwill left. Between not having mobo drivers for many of their PCs available at all, not even shipping a restore CD with their retail machines, and... oh hell I could go on.

Enthusiasts won't pay these prices for a machine from HP. They should at least do like Sony, and pretend to be a different company for their better products.

Build yer own

[Hecubas]

If you have the time, I highly recommend builing your own. Check out some of the popular tech sites and read the reviews.

A hot gaming system nowadays mostly consists of a $300 video card and whatever hardware will support it. Get the a AMD 64bit chip, a good mobo (Abit, Asus, etc.), some fast RAM (Corsair, etc) and your looking at a system under $1500 that will kick the snot out of their proposed $3K system.

Re:Build yer own

[Zathrus]

A decent DELL is like $400 and you get the l33t Dell case. Just put in some real RAM, a burner, and a new AGP card.

Er... show me a $400 Dell that's worth upgrading only the RAM, video, and optical drive. At that price you're looking at low-end Celeron units w/ 128MB of memory and built-in video. It's probably cheaper than what I could put together from parts, but my parts will be of considerably higher quality.

As per you, to get that Dell up to speed you'll need to buy a new video card ($130), burner ($80), and memory ($250). Total cost at this point is $910.

Or you can, for $115 more, have an Athlon64 3000+, quiet HSF (Zalman), top end motherboard, an 8-in-1 reader, vastly improved sound quality, faster memory, firewire, more USB ports, no issues with integrated video, a better motherboard, and probably some other stuff I forgot.

Two weeks ago I bought, for $750 shipped, a case w/ 420W PSU, Athlon64 3000+, Zalman HSF, Chaintech ZNF3-150 MB, 1 GB DDR-400 memory, and a DVD+/-RW 8x burner. Toss in another $270 for a HD, video, monitor, keyboard, and mouse and you have a respectible gaming machine. You can quibble with the video card, but it's the same price for either machine to improve it. Except that a higher end video card will rapidly outstrip the Celeron 2400 CPU in the Dell... not so with the Ath64 3000+.

To get a roughly equivalent system from Dell, BTW, is around $2000. If you strip it down and buy the parts you suggest OEM then it still around $1500. Oh, and my case is quite a bit nicer than the one from Dell.

Hmmmm... Methinks there's no news here.

[quarkoid]

Perhaps foolishly, I'll assume for the moment that most people who play the kind of games which need specialist kit are the kind of people who know what kind of specialist kit they need. If they know what kit they need, the chances are that they'll know where to buy it cheaply. I'll also assume that the kind of people who want specialist kit (which, another assumption, would be bleeding edge) will be the kind of people who're likely to upgrade those individual components in need of a little more ooomph. If they're the kind of person who does their own upgrades, won't they just buy the bits themselves?

OK, OK, a lot of assumptions, but what I'm trying to say is that I can't imagine that this'll be popular with real gamers.

So, if this service is not going to be used by real gamers, who will order a specialist games PC? Probably the kind of numpty who would order a PC from the likes of HP/Dell/Whatever anyway. If this is the case, then we're not talking about news of earth-shattering importance. It's just a manufacturer introducing a new range to try to grab new market share. Just like soap powder manufacturers introducing a new powder to try to grab more market share.

So...

Move along, there's nothing to see....

Nick.

Real gamers build their computers..

[brxndxn]

There's the gamer nerd. Gamer nerd builds his computer and tweaks the hell out of it. It never runs at the specified bus speed, voltage, and it never crashes. The graphics card is overclocked along with every other component in the computer.

Then, there's the gamer dork. Gamer dork spends $2000 extra for an Alienware. He brags to his friends about how awesome it is. Then, he screws it up with spyware and it runs slow. Then, he pays Gamer Nerd $50 and a 12-pack to fix it.

Perhaps if Compaq offered a real savings over building the computer yourself, Gamer Nerd will be interested in it. However, Gamer Nerd quickly sees that $2000 of the price of the computer is for unneeded software, brand name, and unneeded support.

Re:Real gamers build their computers..

[Otto]

...and it never crashes.

You don't know a lot of "gamer nerds" or overclockers, do you? ;)

The Compaq brand is the 100% wrong move

[drinkypoo]

I would be dramatically more likely to consider a PC sold under the HP brand than the Compaq brand, if I didn't understand that they were the same company now. Every compaq machine I have ever used and/or owned was crap except my laptop (Presario 1692) which was passable. By contrast, some of the HP Kayak machines were very nice, and most of the Vectras weren't all that bad.

Obligatory SImpsons reference

[foidulus]

All it needs now are some "speed holes"

Markworth is wrong.

[abb3w]

"Credibility is something you only earn over time"

Nope. You also can lose it over time, which HP and Compaq are notorious for. At this point, I trust the HP mid-to-high-end laser printers... and nothing else they make. I used to swear by HP scanners and calculators, but almost everything they make is going downhill in ergonomics and durability, even when the performance isn't crap to begin with.

l33t gamers...not the market!

[Laetor]

All these posts are missing something...logic. These companies spend hundreds of thousands of dollars seeking markets and figuring out customer segmentation. You all actually think they don't know that truly elite gamers build their own systems? This market is a tiny friggin' niche in the greater scheme of things. "Gamers" does not equal "l33t". Gamers = PC enthusiasts who also probably own Xboxs or PS2s or somesuch, you know, the person who likes to play games, not lose their lives pretending to be some 12th level Elvish rogue mage while cybring some hottie online. It's amazing how many dorks are on here at /. hearing "gamer" and thinking "l33t CS scripter." That is not the market here. People like me, with families and other obligations eating up vast amounts of time, but with an l33t background (yes, I once had skillz, but since have gotten pwned by 2 babies) are the market. We don't have time to screw around building systems -- we're willing to spend money to save time. We also like warrantees so we can return things when the mobo fails or the WIFI card won't work with other components.

There are a ton of once-l33t gamers now growing into adults (gasp!) with much less time to solve component-conflicts and video driver problems. We're looking for the silver bullet solution, and willing to pay extra for it. And our numbers grow with each birth.

-Laetor

Modding no longer cool?

[pknoll]

I think the instant you can get something from or installed by a major vendor, that thing is no longer cool.

Isn't it the whole "I did it myself and it's different than a `normal' PC" the point?

$1599?

[hal2814]

Hp is "able to use our purchasing power as the world's largest consumer PC company" and they still can't put together a decent gaming system for under $1599? I can go out and make a SWEET gaming system for $1599.

A pretty darn fantastic gaming machine can be built for aroung $800. Why can't HP use a little bit of that leverage of theirs and assemble a machine for us at this price?