Abarth Launches Eye-Candy Intel Gaming Desktop

Abarth has just launched the so-called “Powerplay Extreme”, the result of a new collaboration between Fiat's Abarth and Intel that comes in the form of a gaming desktop capable of “extreme” performances, according to a press statement of the two companies. At first sight, this looks incredibly good, but digging a bit on the Internet unveils a fact which wasn't apparently mentioned by Abarth/Intel representatives: the new system is actually made of a bunch of high-performance computer parts installed on an Antec open air case.

In fact, the case does the whole job, because it's the only part of the computer that brings the extreme-gaming look to the system. So, how did Abarth launch the “Powerplay Extreme”? Well, they took Antec's computer case, they painted it white and installed a brand sticker in the front. Sure, the system probably features the most recent hardware components developed by Intel but this still doesn't explain Abarth's “let's use Antec's case and let's forget to mention its name” marketing strategy.

And because we were talking about hardware resources, “Powerplay Extreme” is indeed a high performance computer, being powered by Intel's newly-developed i7 Extreme process, considered “the most powerful microchip ever made by Intel.” The partially exposed motherboard does not say too much about the system but what we do know is that the system includes a Blu-ray unit plus firewire and USB ports for external devices connectivity. Still no word on RAM or storage capacity, but it's likely to see several gigabytes for each.

There's no information regarding the price for the time being but, taking into account the Intel hardware components plus Antec's unmentioned open air case plus Abarth's sticker plus the brand, it's likely to see something in the 1,000 dollar ballpark.