Update - 1/17/17, 10:57am PT: iBuyPower announced that the Snowblind is now available for preorder on the company's website. The minimum configuration features an Intel Core i5-7400, 8GB of DDR4-3000 RAM, a 1TB HDD, and a GTX 1070, with a price tag of $1,499. The motherboard selection is between an MSI Z270 Tomahawk Arctic and a Z270 XPower Gaming Titanium.
Original article, published 1/7/17, 1:30pm PT:
iBuypower revealed that its LCD side panel-equipped Project Snowblind has graduated from a concept device to a real thing, with the new Snowblind PC coming to market this February.
The Snowblind is a custom desktop PC with a tempered glass side panel, which sports a translucent 19-inch 1280x1024 LCD display. Although it appears to be regular clear tempered glass with a hinge, it can be programmed to display multiple effects and colors using Rainmeter (an open-source overlay that does the same for standard displays). You can customize it with user-created backgrounds, animations, and widgets that can show your system specifications and real-time CPU, storage, and memory usage.
The display was developed by Intel and iBuypower, and the companies went through five iterations of the panel before approving the final production model we saw at CES. The system we were shown was configured with an Intel Core i7-7700K on an MSI Z270 motherboard (the specific model of the motherboard is not finalized, but we know that it will be white) with 16GB of DDR4, an Intel 240GB SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 1070. iBuypower said we can expect to see similar configurations with GTX 1080 GPUs under the video-screened hood.
iBuypower insisted that the case and LCD side panel cost only about $250 to make and said that it wanted to be aggressive in offering its customers a compelling aesthetic technology without launching the total cost into the stratosphere. Although pricing for the Snowblind gaming PC is not yet finalized (pending a decision on which white motherboard the company will offer), iBuypower told us that the aforementioned configuration would fetch between $1,700 and $1,800 when Snowblind arrives at retail outlets (including BestBuy) in February.
If you’re looking for something with a "wow" factor (that isn’t RGB) that won’t break the bank (as hard as you’d think it would), the Snowblind is one of the most compelling and unique aesthetic offerings we’ve seen in recent memory.