Customer Reviews

HP Pavilion Elite HPE-170F Desktop PC (Black)

5 star:		(17)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I recently purchased this machine because I needed a machine with greater power to do some high end rendering of my 3D artwork. This machine has more than filled this role, in fact it has surpassed it. I'm now able to render in mere minutes, what used to take days. I don't game, so this was never a consideration, but videos and streaming media play flawlessly. I've been able to multitask where previously I've had to use multiple computers. Windows 7 is a vast improvement over Vista, but still has a few minor incompatibilities, nothing major, and I've not yet bothered to research a fix for them, so they may be easily resolved.

All in all, for the price, I could not be more happy with the system. It runs quiet, and the built in wireless was a nice touch, as I've run out of ports on my router.

I bought this PC in bundle with a 27 inch monitor and haven't looked back or regretted my purchase since. It's a perfect PC for those who need more horsepower than your average desktop can provide, but aren't running high end games.

That said, this computer can run many games on High or Very High levels, although rarely can it run them maxed out. However, this PC isn't a gaming one so that's a slight issue if one at all.

Everything is very fast and responsive thanks to the processing power. The only downturn is the graphics card, which isn't quite up to par with the PC's other attributes, but again, this isn't a gaming PC and the graphics card it comes with is perfectly fine for normal use.

Read all the reviews for the 140f, reviewed the processor as well. All I can say is the machine exceeded even the positive comments of the other reviewers and computer magazines. I've used PC's since Dell was called PC Limited over 20 years ago. Except for a few machines running DOS, pre-windows PCs, this is an amazing fast machine. This is probably my 10th machine. I've owned Dell, HP, Compaq, when they were Compaq, Toshiba, even a Packard Bell. I've built my own machines and had them custom built but I have to say I am very pleased with the performance of this machine. I skipped Vista, thank heavens. However I still expected, despite reviews saying Win 7 was better than Vista that i5-750 processor would barely make windows 7 nimble enough. Boy was I wrong. Web pages load much faster, new program install with amazing speed and even 99% of my XP programs work without a hiccup in Windows 7 Home premium.

I haven't used the DVR or much of the multimedia features yet. But several of the huge databases I run are lightening quick. The machine is quiet, well built, very attractive in all black and in general is just a pleasure to use. Its hard to find it cheaper than Amazon I spent four days trying to find it under $900.00, no luck. However, Amazon had it to me next day for $3.99 shipping, can't beat that. I can't imagine you will find more bang for the buck for the next few months.

I purchased an HPE-140F, and discovered this to be a lemon and the warranty to be laughable. The warranty is a liscense to hell. I've spent hours following their suggestions. And none works. The screen regularly turns black -- no graphics and a constant loud humming, and a reboot. The machine crashed the 4th day after I used it. 45 days later I am still working with support. The only real solution is a new machine, credit for another model or a refund. What I get is a "let's try this" solution, all of which is something I did before. HP once meant quality. HP is only about making money and not quality or customer support. Don't buy this thinking of what HP once was. Look elsewhere. I've owned computers and HP products for 20 years. Never again.

I've had my HPE 140F for 5 weeks now and am totally pleased. I bought it especially for the multimedia and entertainment capabilities, and it has performed flawlessly in every way. I also play casual games with it, along with Sims 3. Again, totally flawless. This is my seventh PC since 1988, not counting multiple upgrades, etc. in between. I use this machine every single day, and most of the day at that. I was a bit leery choosing an HP, as the other HP I owned had integrated components, therefor not very upgradeable. The 140F has all separate components and can be upgraded as bigger and better components become available. I plan on having this PC for many useful and happy years. Also, I opted for the free shipping and still received the machine within 3 days, so saved some more money there. I love this machine!!!

I purchased this HPE-140f after a lot of research and it seemed a great choice. For the first 3 hours this pc shined and I loved using it; however, the next 6 hours proved to be another story. Skip to the end, I had to return this pc due to a bad graphics card and I am awaiting its replacement. I really loved many of the features and price point so I requested an exchange and hopefully, my next pc will not be a lemon and I can update this review to a positive one. UPDATE: Received another pc that didn't work properly - not a good sign.

I narrowed down my choices between the HPE-140f and the newer model (240f) but decided on this one due to three things: (1) the built-in tv tuner; (2) the HP Pavilion Elite HPE-240F Desktop PC (Black) is upgraded to a blu-ray dvd player but the built-in media storage was smaller - I figured I would save a couple of hundred and use my stand alone blu-ray player for now since media storage was key for me; and (3) two usb ports in the front & 4 in back versus the 1 usb in front and the rest in the back. I have a lot of devices that I connect to my pc - sometimes at the same time - and I did not want to have to purchase an usb hub to use them.

The Intel i5 core with 3.2 GHz provides lots of speed. It is so much faster then my 2002 HP media center model. It beats everything else I tried when combined with the other included options. It has a built-in tv tuner (you need to connect it with cables not provided - additional purchases are needed to use this option) with a remote. Very cool. I have a Samsung Touch Of Color T220HD 22-inch LCD HDTV Monitor which allows me to watch tv on my pc but this HPE-140f allows me to seamlessly switch between the two (I had to manually switch the cable between my pc and monitor on my old pc set-up).

I use my pc as a music and video center and I was very pleased with the HP media smart software although it took a while to get used to it. My old HP had media buttons on the keyboard labeled "burn cd", "burn dvd", etc. which made things much easier. The pc came preloaded with Windows 7 which required another learning curve and there are some issues, but that's another review. Please note that if you purchase a pc with Windows 7 already loaded, Microsoft will not help you with any technical issues unless you pay a $59.99 charge. The pc also had a free trial of Norton Anti-virus installed which was very annoying as it kept popping up. I uninstalled this software very quickly. It has advertising software that takes up space and that I am not savy enough to uninstall. Yuck.

The real problems started when I shut down the pc and rebooted the next morning. The bottom portion of my screen was black and the screen had moved up a couple of inches. Calls to HP customer service proved frustrating - we are talking 4 hours worth! - until I finally got a U.S. service center. They used remote access to take over my computer to try and fix the problem. It turned out to be a bad graphics card. HP told me they could send me a pre-paid box for shipping and that they would fix it and send it back to me within 2-4 weeks. I choose to return it using my 30 day return policy from the vendor (sidenote: J&R was a pleasure to deal with concerning returns). UPDATE: For Round II, HP had no record of previous phone calls despite providing a case number. It all depends on who is taking notes - some do not enter more then "customer called" and other provide more details. They were not helpful and wasted hours going around in circled without addressing the issue. The automated voice system kept insisting I was saying "kayak" - ARRGH!

Lately, I have had to return a lot of "lemons." I think this is an overall trend in products being manufactured to a lower standard and hoped it was not this pc specifically and was willing to try another one. This proved to be a mistake. I spent 6 hours on the phone with customer support on Round I and 4 hours on the phone for Round II. Even with the knowledge that you need to keep calling their service center (1-800-474-6836) until you get an American one, I spent way too much time on the phone. Customer service blamed Windows 7, my monitor and several other factors. They provided some crazy advice (shake the pc!) which provided some much needed laughter but too many hours of frustration. This experience proved to be very annoying and cost me too much time and money. I cannot recommend this pc due to my experiences with two HPE-140f models.

I've been a fan of HP products for a very long time, but this particular model is the icing on the cake. The processing speed is simply awesome and very enjoyable. I work with Video streams, internet TV and other forms of photography, and this unit runs flawlessly, all wireless I might add. Any program that I have installed on this unit was accepted like an astronaut getting a chance to fly to the moon. Again flawlessly installed each software program without any hang-ups or problems. More than enough USP ports, seven of them, three of which are on the front of the maching.

Would diffently recommend this HP product.

Just purchased this HPE-170f and right out of the box everything worked. Hooked up new 24" Monitor via DVI Cable, hooked up HP Printer via USB, and wireless being built-in to system it found my wireless network right away. I have a ton of applications running, and it is instantaneous, running Windows 7 Premium. Changed browser to FireFox of which I love, great job guys/gals. Ran google earth and flew across the USA in a couple seconds. This system is so WOW!!! Great job HP, love it, and you will not be disappointed in what you get for the dollars here. The video nVidia GeForce with 1.8GB of memory on it keeps it flying super fast with a ton of applications running simultaneously on system with 9GB memory. Checkout [...] if you wish to play and overclock the i7 quad core CPU, but unless you want to play it is plenty fast enough!! Will have to buy a Personal or Pocket Media drive for backups. Thinking about the 1TB HP Personal Media drive since then I can plug it into any system, and back up my other systems as well, and still have plenty of storage capacity to spare. My hats off to HP on this model, and MS as well. My old Pentium 4/1.4GHz with only 256MB of memory is awful hard to use now after this purchase. HP keep up the great work in Engineering of Hardware and Software, and bring us all more computer for the dollars in the future.

I have had the PC for a few weeks now and it has been great plenty of ram and hard drive space runs pretty quiet and the price was excellent. The only modifications I did were on the graphics card it just wasn't up to snuff and then I upgraded the power supply since only a 300W power supply comes in the tower and the new graphics card needed a better power supply more W. Not sure why towers are still coming with 300W power supplies since most decent graphics cards now require a 450W power supply to connect to and more if you are going to use the cross fire tec. This mother board won't support the cross fire tec but for what I am going to use if for the pc more than meets my needs.

I've been a Dell owner for the past decade and have never been dissatisfied. However, after doing some research I found this HP to be a good candidate for my next desktop so I purchased it about 3 weeks ago. So far it has met all expectations and has performed flawlessly. I used the new CPU with all of my existing peripherals, but did upgrade to Windows 7 Professional immediately upon receipt.

Good service from Amazon. Very satisfied.