It Looks Like The Raptor Blackbird Open-Source Motherboard Will Sell For Just Under $900

Many have been curious to learn more about the Blackbird from Raptor Computing Systems as a lower-cost POWER9, open-source hardware alternative to their higher-end Talos II hardware that we've been recently benchmarking. The possible price has been revealed.

Overnight, Raptor Computing Systems tweeted a straw poll looking to gauge the interest level in "Would you pre-order a Raptor Computing Systems Blackbird system or board this year at a mainboard cost of $875?"

So it's looking like that for $875 USD is around the price point for where they are settling for this micro-ATX POWER9 motherboard. This will accept four and eight core IBM POWER9 CPUs, which will add a few hundred dollars to make up the overall price along with DDR4 ECC Registered memory. This sub-$900 price point is much lower than the Talos II Lite at $1,129.99 or the dual socket Talos II motherboard for $2,499.99 USD.

The Blackbird is intended for fully open-source desktop Linux systems, possible network / SOHO server, and similar use-cases.

Obviously they can't immediately be competitive on pricing with x86 and ARM hardware due to economies of scale and Raptor Computing Systems having more of a burden in their motherboard design work due to keeping everything open-source, etc. But it's nice to see with Blackbird they will at least be pushing well below the $1000 price point on the motherboard.

From SC18 is also a better look at the Blackbird, via Twitter:

Looking forward to learning more about the Blackbird soon!