Customer Reviews

Compaq Presario S3000NX Desktop PC (1.67-GHz Athlon XP 2000+, 256 MB RAM, 40 GB Hard Drive, CD-RW Drive)

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I bought this computer a month ago and have had nothing but
excellent results. The Athlon XP 2000 processor blows away
the Celerons (2.0g, 2.2g)-How do I know? because thanks to
Circuit City's way cool return policies I've been able to try
out the bargain basement computers, then take them back and
keep the best one.

I use photoshop 6 , autocad inventor 5, cakewalk pro audio,
frutyloops, etc .. on a regular basis. the HP and Emachines
computers ... with the celerons couldn't keep up with
the compaq s3000nx. - same 256m ram- but they both locked up
continually when running autocad, downloading from the dsl,
and burning audio cds.....not the compaq! it hasn't let
me down.
okay, so the other computers had a dvd player and firewire
ports. big deal. I bought a FW card for 13 bucks, and don't
care about watching movies on a 20 inch screen.
also, the audio is way quieter- the compaq has true
headphone\line outs to drive my stereo amp (NAD 2100)
wheras the other two had speaker level outputs i could not
get to clean up no matter how low i set the volume.
i recommend this machine
(beware of "reviews" by "authors" who don't know the actual
equipment or "have used a similar model and were unimpressed"

If you are looking for a high-end system - this isn't it. If you are looking for a decent computer for light computing task (internet, a few games, doing your taxes) then this is a decent option. The features are fine for a home user who doesn't need a lot of computing power and needs a bargain system.

Still there are some things you should know:

Because of the slow memory system and low-end embedded graphics this system is not suitable for a serious gamer (though there is an AGP slot for a video card upgrade) or anyone who needs cutting edge performance. The system is also not very rugged so don't plan on moving around too often (i.e. no LAN parties).

One other downside - it has a an old AthlonXP cpu. What's wrong with that? The heat-sink retention mechanism is flimsy and can fall off. These old Athlons and AthlonXPs don't have any temperature cutoff circuitry (unlike Intel Celerons P3s, and P4s or AMD Opterons) so the CPU catches fire and burns up in a few seconds. I know several people this has happened to and it's well known risk with Athlons.

So beware - it's cheap for reason.