Wootalyzer's Pricing Post! - The price of today's woot item is saved here for future reference
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HP Pavilion Quad-Core Desktop
$299.99 + $5 Shipping
Condition: Refurbished

*DISCLAIMER* Wootalyzer! is in no way affiliated with Woot!, and this post may not always be here!

The mice appear to have hung themselves...

I thought Two-for-Tuesday was back.

Big brother sells this for $200 more (shh don't tell Amazon!)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/tags-on-product/B004G5ZTM4

I have an HP Pavilion and it works great, the customer service is actually why I stick with them-- Way better than Dell!

I built a very similar machine for my wife, with a Quad-core Athlon II 3.0, 4 Gb, and integrated Radeon 4200.

The integrated graphics run Aero perfectly, better than I expected, and the processor is just stupid fast.

Can't speak to gaming, as the thing has never played a game besides Farmville and Solitaire.

Plays videos great in full HD.

Really crappy flimsy chassis (as seen in this upgrde guide: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01835715.pdf) but that shouldnt matter too much unless youre opening it up a lot...

That is a very good price. If I was in need of one right now, I'd be all over it.

For about $250 more this can be a nice gaming setup. You'd need a better power supply (500-600W) and a decent video card (NVIDIA GTX 560 Ti or AMD Radeon 6950).

The graphics card in this machine isn't very good at all.

However, all that needs to happen to turn this machine into a beast (or near one, anyway) is to get the proper PCI-E x16 card (not 2.0 from what I know) and good power supply.

Remember, folks: a cheap power supply is a good way to kill the machine.

User questions and reviews plus manufacturer answers over at Best Buy's website. Fifty-seven reviews with an average over of 4 out of 5 stars.

Just got a free monkey at Doug Benson's show in Fort Worth. Thanks Woot!

i bought a similar hp refurb and have had no problems with it. they usually come with one pci-e slot and the integrated ati 4200 video chipset really isn't all that. also beware, if you're planning on adding a dedicated video card the case has almost no ventilation so you would have to swap to an aftermarket case and of course add fans or water cool it. just my two cents!

8month old model for ONLY $300? Holy jeepers.

How's this Athlon CPU compare to Intel's i5 or i7? Or is it a stupid question?

coolrunner87 wrote:The graphics card in this machine isn't very good at all.

However, all that needs to happen to turn this machine into a beast (or near one, anyway) is to get the proper PCI-E x16 card (not 2.0 from what I know) and good power supply.

Remember, folks: a cheap power supply is a good way to kill the machine.

Can you upgrade the psu on these easily? I thought most PC makers used proprietary units typically... far as I know Dell always has anyhow.

kcatama wrote:i bought a similar hp refurb and have had no problems with it. they usually come with one pci-e slot and the integrated ati 4200 video chipset really isn't all that. also beware, if you're planning on adding a dedicated video card the case has almost no ventilation so you would have to swap to an aftermarket case and of course add fans or water cool it. just my two cents!

Fortunately newer cards run much cooler. My 560 Ti idles around 30 degrees and never eclipses 65C on full load. These things can handle much hotter than that. Just don't store it in a desk!

devexityspace wrote:
I have an HP Pavilion and it works great, the customer service is actually why I stick with them-- Way better than Dell!

The customer service may be great. Having the opportunity to get customer service from HP for only 90 days because this is a refurbished unit...not so great.

Nice price for my new Windows Home Server 2011. In for one.

dustyrogers wrote:Can you upgrade the psu on these easily? I thought most PC makers used proprietary units typically... far as I know Dell always has anyhow.

HP doesn't use proprietary power supplies. You can put in a full ATX PSU into any HP mid-tower and be just fine about it.

I used to own a HP several years ago, and I was able to put in an Antec EarthWatts 500W PSU no problem.

needs more power. a 250w supply is barely enough. If you want to but a decent vid card in this you'll need 500 at minimum.

Woah - I have a very similar PC with almost identical specs. In fact, I was just looking at the specs an hour ago trying to figure out if I could somehow use my old school TV (S-Video and RCA inputs) as a monitor to watch some shows on a bigger screen.

I can do this with my laptop which has S-Video out but this PC doesn't. I'm connected to my monitor via the DVI port. Could I do VGA to RCA or S-Video with a converter? Anyone know?

Thanks in advance!

According to the passmark cpu list this is one of the best "cpu value" processors. Apparently they take into consideration the performance and price. I think I'll try one of these out.

joehiatt wrote:Really crappy flimsy chassis (as seen in this upgrde guide: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c01835715.pdf) but that shouldnt matter too much unless youre opening it up a lot...

Darn it, I thought it was made of platinum for $299 plus $5 shipping hyuk.

I am thinking of quitting my cable package and getting a media center PC to hook up to the TV for Netflix and Hulu and the like. Would this do the trick?

could i run 2 dvi monitors on the current video card (with a y-splitter dvi plug)? or will i need a new card?

Have this machine (the 6710) that I bought new at MicroCenter a year or so ago. Best running machine I've had that I didn't build myself. I did eventually add a video card upgrade, and a 1TB external. Works even better now. I paid about a hundred bucks more, so this would be a no-brainer for me to buy, if I didn't already have it!

Not a bad deal at all.

Logic: if you bought this and parted out the processor ($90), hard drive ($80), RAM ($35) and Win7 license ($100) you'd have a MoBo, DVD burner, power supply, key/mouse and a craptastically dull case leftover.

shiframeir wrote:could i run 2 dvi monitors on the current video card (with a y-splitter dvi plug)? or will i need a new card?

You're going to need a dedicated card. Fortunately if that's all you want you can get any old $15-25 video card.

dustyrogers wrote:Can you upgrade the psu on these easily? I thought most PC makers used proprietary units typically... far as I know Dell always has anyhow.

I upgraded a powersupply in a similar desktop. Super easy to do. I upgraded cause I was adding a graphics card to run multiple montiors

kind of sad i jumped on the last quad core desktop last time. now you get a 1tb hard drive instead of 750 gb for the same price. but this is a good deal.

Nobody has talked about Win 7 64 bit. Has that been around long enough now that drivers are plentiful?

stncttr908 wrote:You're going to need a dedicated card. Fortunately if that's all you want you can get any old $15-25 video card.

Hes right. I did the exact same things. upgrade the psu to a decent 400-500watt, add cheap video card and you have a great multiple monitor system. will not play recent games but works great for everything else.

Does anybody know if I can yank the guts out of this thing and put them in my Lian-Li case? Or is the MoBo set up to only work with the HP case?

nieltj wrote:Nobody has talked about Win 7 64 bit. Has that been around long enough now that drivers are plentiful?

Never ran into any hardware incompatible and I've been running Win7 64-bit since beta. Good to go.

Question:
Okay, I admit it...I'm a Mac guy with ZERO experience
with non-Macs.

But I have hours and hours of full HD (1920x1080)
video in the AVCHD format, which Macs just do not
seem to like. I'm not looking to run a lot of fancy filters
or anything...just be able to do basic editing.

I already have an extra monitor (1920x1080) so I'm
thinking THIS machine might be a cheap $300 solution
to my video problem.

In short, will this machine handle full HD AVCHD editing
(without getting a new vid card, power supply, etc.?)

Thanks.

For the price this is a great machine, WAY more than enough power for the office or home. I almost want to recommend it to a customer of mine, but...

Be sure to open the unit up when you get it and make sure it is clean inside, the last time I jumped on an HP refurbish desktop offer that was this good it came full of dust.

The CPU fan/heatsink looked like this:

LarryCebula wrote:I am thinking of quitting my cable package and getting a media center PC to hook up to the TV for Netflix and Hulu and the like. Would this do the trick?

Cheaper to get an HD Media player like the WD Live or Zinwell - check Meritline.

Very similar to the HP P6727C sold at Sellout.Woot on 8-10-2011 for the same price but it had a smaller 750GB HDD (7200 RPM).

HP P6727C deals.woot.com forum discussion 20 days ago for the Sellout.Woot deal.

Lance19 wrote:Question:
Okay, I admit it...I'm a Mac guy with ZERO experience
with non-Macs.

But I have hours and hours of full HD (1920x1080)
video in the AVCHD format, which Macs just do not
seem to like. I'm not looking to run a lot of fancy filters
or anything...just be able to do basic editing.

I already have an extra monitor (1920x1080) so I'm
thinking THIS machine might be a cheap $300 solution
to my video problem.

In short, will this machine handle full HD AVCHD editing
(without getting a new vid card, power supply, etc.?)

Thanks.

It will be just fine as is. Even the hard drive is 7200 RPM which seems rare with woot refurbs. You could bump up the ram down the road if needed, working with HD video is about the only thing that will push the 4gb it comes with.