According to a report from Dean Takahashi at Mercury News, Hewlett-Packard will be acquiring high-end gaming PC manufacturer VoodooPC for an undisclosed sum. This move clearly seeks to counter Dell’s recent acquisition of enthusiast-PC maker Alienware, but it looks like the integration for Voodoo will be deeper for HP.

The VoodooPC brand will still live on, but it remains to be seen how much of the core company survives integration. The co-founders, Rahul and Ravi Sood will take high profile positions in the company’s new gaming division in the personal technology group, so hopefully a lot of the esthetic of the company will live on. The Voodoo brand will benefit from access to Hewlett-Packard’s leverage in the supply chain, and HP clearly expects this acquisition to give them credibility in the gaming arena for some of their lower-end offerings.

The acquisitions by both Dell and HP seem to be driven by a couple of factors. First, it recognizes the hard-core PC gaming market as a segment with growth potential, but the focus on gaming also seems to be rooted in the need for both companies to differentiate their PC offerings on things other than price. The commoditization of the PC has made profit margins in the low-end PC market almost unsustainable and embracing the high-end may be one way to get away from cost pressures.