HP ENVY Quad-Core i7 Desktop w/ 12GB RAM Price: $699.99 Shipping Options: $5 Standard Shipping Estimates: Ships in 3-5 business days (Friday, Feb 21 to Wednesday, Feb 26) + transit Condition: Factory Reconditioned
For $699, this is a fantastic system with the ability to be upgraded in the future if needed. Believe it or not, this system has very solid pieces for the price.
The processor, an I7 4770 Haswell is on the stronger end of CPUs (a very energy efficient, hyper threading CPU) that retails for $300 alone.
The 7200 RPM hard-drive (2 TB on top of that) is plenty fast for just about anyone who doesn’t need an SSD!
The Radeon HD 8470 is a little underpowered for gaming, but can handle most anything as long as you don’t max graphics settings out. This may be the only piece a dedicated gamer would want to upgrade at some point.
PC-12800 DDR3 RAM is fantastic, fast and is still in both of my main desktops today.
Overall a solid price for a very strong desktop. Gamers, hobbyist video editors and even general PC users (who like a bit of speed on their side) will really enjoy this rig for the price!
If I had some extra money laying around, I would purchase and use this as my encoding PC on Twitch.
the CPU is a good one but can be had for 239.99@microCenter any day of the week. With a video card and power supply upgrade this would make a nice gaming rig. that means spending another $400 minimum however. As it is this is a pretty nice box for a casual gamer who needs some horsepower for everyday stuff.
Or StartIsBack, or Start8. Basically, for consumers there’s really very little reason to cling to Windows 7. Even if you hate the Metro user interface, loading one of the above programs will allow you to just use Windows 8.1 as though it were Windows 7 for the most part.
One exception is if you have truly ancient (16-bit) Windows applications that you still need to run, but in that case, I’d really look at upgrading your software, especially if you have the money for a new PC anyway.
For some business/industrial users that’s a real problem because they sometimes have old and very expensive custom software, but for home users there’s not much point in replacing Windows 8.1 with Windows 7.
The Microsoft Store recently was selling a Dell XPS 8700 with a similar configuration (same CPU, RAM, but only a 1 TB HDD) for the same price (but free shipping), but new (not refurbished).