Raptor says the Blackbird crunch ends in August (and maybe Arctic Terns too)
Good news for everyone with a Blackbird backorder: Raptor is announcing order fulfillment and restocking by August 31, 2022. This may not mean the order you submit now will get fulfilled by then, but if you have your order already in, the wait will be over soon and new orders should be processed much more quickly. (This date does not apply yet to the Talos II Lite, but I'm sure Raptor is working on it.) In the meantime, if you can't wait, may we suggest a regular T2? Those are in stock and ready for purchase.
Raptor is also stating Arctic Tern will launch in the "next few weeks" for purchase, with the Kestrel soft-BMC onboard and compatible with the entire Raptor family including the full T2 and the 'Bird. We're looking forward to it and expect a review as soon as I can get my hands on a couple. Faster BMC booting is always welcome around here!
Nice, nice! A bit late for a birthday gift, and I don't yet have an order in anyway nor the money to put one in, but I'm always happy to hear new news on that front. I've got enough of the rest of the build ready and waiting to get it started, maybe, if I don't swap the GPU for an RX 5700 XT, just needs those last two parts. And I guess a boot drive, that would be helpful as well.
ReplyDeleteI definitely don't need the full T2, but I do wish it was more popular, SMYT might as well be SMYBB. Micro ATX mid-tower is just a form factor I genuinely like so the decision to go Blackbird was mostly informed by that rather than the lower cost, and I already got the case for it so it's a bit late to go T2 now.
Also, any signs of life at all from Raptor is always appreciated, considering how tight their margins seem to be. Will be keeping an eye on things as I get to work building up a Blackbird fund.
I believe that the Talos II with one processor is a better perspective. We do not have the Power 10 motherboards. Power 11 processors are the distant future. So if you want to have a workstation twice as powerful in some time, you only need to add the processor itself ;-)
DeleteIt really depends on what they want to use the PC for I guess. I for one am very happy with my BB, and I would not want to swap it for a T2, even if it was loaded to the top and could swap it for free, I would keep my BB. Smaller form factor and for me also the lower power footprint is nice :)
DeleteConsidering my daily driver laptop right now is a 15" DLSD, I think I'll be okay with being stuck with four to eight POWER9 cores (starting with four, may upgrade to eight later), a Radeon RX, and 32GB of RAM. My use cases are pretty light, mostly web browsing, office suites, and GIMP, and even though I want to expand into 3D animation and video editing on the Blackbird, I don't anticipate myself ever pushing into territory where I'd be unhappy with 8 cores, at least until either Power11 or RED Semi and Raptor team up to make IBM (and NXP)-independence a real thing. And even then, I'd feel like I was being wasteful to upgrade right away.
DeletePCIe space on the other hand... yeah, that's kind of painful, it just comes with the territory on Micro ATX, but I don't see myself needing more than a GPU and a sound card.
The 'Bird has on-board sound, so unless you really do need a sound card, you're probably good with just the GPU (I use optical sound to my HT receiver). My T2 uses a USB sound dongle which is good enough for that purpose.
DeleteIt's for recording, not output -- though if the output gains are appreciable, that'd be appreciated as well.
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