HP Pavilion Elite HPE-180

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 Pavilion Elite HPE-180 HP's Pavilion Elite HPE-180: merlot …

[James Thomas]

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?

[Bo Pedersen]

performance is bad because

HP et al, take standard components and fiddle around with them so as a consumer you have to go back to them for future support/upgrades

its like Packard Bell tattooing hard drive bios'

and moving a row of pins for the usb connector in a standard gigabyte board so that you can't just replace broken usb ports without rewiring the connector.

I recently repaired an HP machine which had stability issues from day 1, the single drive system had a default bios configuration for RAID.

nuff said :)

[The Grump]

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.

[Leo Waldock]

Motherboard

The motherboard is an MSI - quite possibly the dullest MSI that your reviewer has ever seen

[Ceiling Cat]

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!"

[Paul Smith]

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.