HP Pavilion Intel i7 Quad-Core Desktop Price: $499.99 Shipping Options:: $5 Standard Shipping Estimates: Ships in 3-5 business days. (Tuesday, May 19 to Friday, May 22) + transit Condition: Factory Reconditioned
They had the same computer on sale in the beginning of April and I picked it up, though with the intention of using an existing graphics card instead of the integrated.
As a user I’m quite happy with it. And win 8.1 is in line for free win10 upgrades from what MS says.
As a tinkerer the case doesn’t have a lot of room. The power supply is only 300W and it has very few connectors and they are all in use except some SATA. Not even a free molex much less the 6-pin PCI express I needed.
Would recommend with the caveat that the included graphics won’t run dual monitors and aren’t strong for gaming.
Bought at beginning of March for $10 more. It easily took a mid-range NVidia graphics card (GTX 750 Ti) selected for low power needs. Works just fine, not a high-end unit, but an excellent value with some careful tuning.
Might want to read up on the “Free” portion of the Windows 10 upgrade. It’s rumored that Windows 10 is the last of it’s series and MS will just name it Windows and when they do, it will be a subscription based operating system. At which point, it’s rumored that Windows 10 users will be forced into the “upgrade” to the subscription based OS.
If you do not upgrade in the first year, you will be charged. There has been some confusion around pricing - but Microsoft is expected to charge a one-off license fee and NOT move to a subscription model.
As with most systems, yes you can put in a discrete graphics card. What the person was referring to, was the lack of a 6 pin power cable that higher end video cards require.
So yes, any PCI-E video card that does not require external power can be put into the system as is… any 'gaming" card will most likely require a new power supply. Not only for the lack of a plug, but the fact the stock PSU is only 300w, and not suitable for most gaming cards along with the rest of the system.
My bad, I didn’t read all the way back to the original post. But you are completely correct. To upgrade to a good gaming videocard the power supply would need upgraded. To add a videocard so that you could have HDMI ports or adding a lower power- but decent gaming card like a Geforce GTX 750 (60 watt) should work fine with a 300 watt PS, it also does not require external power outside of the PCI x16 slot.
'Seems like a decent deal, but I’m not comfortable with only a 90 day warranty. For the money, I would think HP and/or Amazon could offer a 1 year warranty or add some software like MS Office and/or Quicken.
Not sure where you’re pulling your prices from, but they seem to be far too high. Even if they were spot on, you’d be lucky to get near those prices without a warranty or box for the items.
$500 for this setup feels a bit high. Seems to me that this should be listed at $399 or there should be a monitor thrown in there for this price.
Yea, his prices are way off, no idea where he pulled them from.
i7 4770 - $304
16GB RAM - $99
1TB Sata - $50
Windows 8.1 - $99 (if you get an actual serial number, which I doubt)
DVD Burner - $20-$30
And that’s for new retail, this is a reconditioned system. So with real world prices, you’re looking at maybe $580 resale if you got actual retail price, which you wouldn’t.
As for the tower, you also have to factor in cost of motherboard, case, power supply. So while $499 isn’t too far off, it’s really not a terrible price for a complete i7 powered desktop.
That said, I would never buy one of these, because even with it’s i7, it still uses cheap components where they can, like the motherboard and psu. So adding a beefy video card to turn it into a gaming rig, would require a new PSU, and possibly a new motherboard as well if it uses proprietary connections.
