A Chassis Ahead of its Time: GTR Tech GT3

The GT3 by GTR Tech. I heard about this product at the beginning of 2008, I have loved it from the first second I saw it, and I've been using it as my main tower for 6 months now. Basically, it's a chassis that is volumetrically smaller than the vast majority of MicroATX enclosures out there, yet it can take a full ATX board and a full-sized double-slot video card. Just let that wash over you for a second. This is tech art. Feast.

GT3 is the brainchild of Sean Hall, the owner of GTR Tech. He's got a deep background as an engineer, and if you get him on the phone, he will talk to you about the GT3 all day long and still be just as excited about it as he undoubtedly was over 4 years ago when he first started his company. We were talking a few days ago, and he said that he is renewing his push to widen the market for this product, he's working on some updates and changes to the design, and he's even got some new products potentially in the works. Pay attention to this guy!

I'll leave it to real hardware websites to handle legitimate reviews of stuff like this, but I want to highlight the significance here. Dwight Silverman at the Houston Chronicle reviewed the HP Firebird this week: "What’s interesting about these specs is that, on paper, some of them aren’t that good. The hard drives, for example, are the slower, 5,400-RPM models you’d find in a notebook. Most performance-based desktops use 7,200-RPM drives; some even use 10,000 RPM drives. The memory is also not state-of-the-art, since it’s DDR2 instead of the newer, zippier DDR3. But put the whole package together, and it works well."

Works "well"? Not good "on paper"? Firebird is essentially MXM on the desktop done wrong. I've talked before about this, nothing new. But this little Chron snippet really jumped out at me because the messaging is sounding eerily familiar to Apple vs. PC. Apple's messaging is: "It's not about 'specs', it's about 'experience.'" HP Firebird is: "It's not about specs, it's about the fact that games will play on it and it's so small."

Anyone else think "good enough" isn't the type of thing you want to pay a premium for? I mean, I'm all about leveraging the fact that hardware tech right now is significantly more advanced than what games can utilize, so you can play with lower end hardware and be happy. But why pay more for laptop components to do it? GT3 is smaller, or at least the same size as, the Firebird, and it does NOT have an external power brick, you can upgrade it yourself, and it's more powerful for less money. Where's the Firebird's advantage again?

Microsoft's new commercials have been speaking to this point exactly (one Apple-drone's parody was hilarious). Microsoft thinks the fact that you can get a great machine that does the same thing as a MAC for a lot less is an important message right now. But at least Apple can point to a different OS to fight back and argue the point. Firebird has no fall-back.

GT3 is for everyone. It's priced at $189 and uses industry standard components, so it can be the platform for some incredible $1K range systems that can run with the big boys. I've got an e8600/4GB/ATI 4850 in mine. Sean says he's got 4870's running in his lab, and he's done higher-end builds for customers, too. Like I said, keep an eye on him, and I hope he makes a killing because it's about time this thing got out there.

Here's to one guy taking HP's $3B R&D budget to school! Almost like a "perfect storm of innovation", huh?