HP Pavilion Elite HPE-180
Does it justify the premium?
Review The Pavilion Elite HPE-180 stands at the pinnacle of the HP's home PC line-up and sports spec to match. It has a 2.80GHz Intel Core i7-860 processor, 8GB of DDR 3 memory, a Blu-ray combo drive and, to make use of all that memory, 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium.
HP's Pavilion Elite HPE-180: merlot trim? More vin de table than premier cru
There’s a question mark hanging over the unbranded "special edition" Nvidia GeForce GTX 260 graphics card as it only supports DirectX 10. That’s something of a shame as AMD has a range of DirectX 11 cards. So from the start, the HPE-180 isn't quite as elite as its branding - and more importantly, its price - might suggest.
You won't be able to tell from the photos but the front of the case is well endowed with ports and connectors as they are covered by flaps and stealth doors.
At the top of the case there's a four-slot card reader and two USB 2.0 ports. Below that there is the Hitachi-made optical drive that will play Blu-ray movies and write regular DVDs at 16x speed, and is tucked into a bay labelled ‘Multimedia Optical Drive’.
Below it sits a second drive bay that is available for upgrades and so marked as the Elite's ‘Expansion bay’. That's would seem self-explanatory but we did need help identifying the third bay which is for an HP Pocket Media Drive.
Imposing case
Truth be told, we’ve never used a Pocket Drive - although we have seen photos and read about them - and we doubt they feature large in your life either. This type of feature sounds good if you buy into the Apple/Sony/Linn everything-from-one-vendor approach, but most of us would be happy with an external USB drive.
COMMENTS
I don't know
I don't know why you guys are so negative, if swap out the MOBO and RAM, and then replace the HD, PSU and case you end up with a pretty decent machine.
Elite?
Elite? No tlikely.
If it's anything like my Pavilion Elite m9505f :
- The BIOS is a cut down piece of s***.
- Does NOT support fan control from the motherboard.
- Ships with inadequately cooled, buggy video card.
Mine was one of the "notorious" MSI Geforce 9500 GS (which MSI don't even list on their web-site ... Probably 'cause they're embarassed by it's crap performance and the fact that 99% of the "Mk. 1" cards had to be replaced because of defective fans. The replacement runs WAY too fracking hot.
I will be trying to rebuild my elite into a better tower, but the comment earlier about "customized" connectors doesn't make it sound like a fun rebuild.
Cheers,
CC ("")(>o.o<)("") "O Hai Dere!"
Motherboard
The motherboard is an MSI - quite possibly the dullest MSI that your reviewer has ever seen
Is there a worse grade than "Fail"?
Does this Pavilion Elite share the same Truckee motherboard (Made by Pegatron) as the Pavilion Elite running the I7-920 chip? If so, prepare for frequent and never-ending BSOD's and HP's legendary (not in a good way) customer service. Don't believe me? Google it yourself - Pavilion Elite + Blue screens of death. You're got a LOT of reading ahead of you.
I wouldn't touch the HP Elite series with a 39 1/2 foot pole until they start using Intel mobos in their Elite series. You have been warned.
Wow.
I actually don't understand how they've taken all those parts and managed to make them perform so poorly. Your test system (practically identical to a system I own, just a different make of SSD) is much cheaper to build and outperforms it in every area.
Maybe they used cheapest mobo. and RAM that money can buy?
