Customer Reviews

HP Pavilion Slimline S5120F Desktop PC

5 star:		(8)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

The largest segment of computer users are primarily web browsers who use the occasional Office application. If that's you then this is a really good choice. It's small, well featured, and very well built. I've had a few opportunities to use these HP Slimline computers and I've been able to give them a good look over. The build quality is really good - on par with their higher end Pavilions and much better than their Compaq line.

Spec wise it's a good machine for a home user:

A solid dual core CPU. The AMD Athlon X2 7750 is a good choice for home users - not so powerful that it needs a lot of [loud] cooling but powerful enough to keep several apps going at once without noticing any slowdown. My min spec for any computer purchase is at least a dual core CPU so you can run your internet security suite in the back ground without your web browser grinding to a halt.

4GB is more than enough ram, which means you are future proofed a bit.

500GB Hard drive. Again, more than most users need but that just means you're less likely to run out of space. Unless you do a lot of video editing your aren't likely to need more space than this anytime soon. (I know maybe three or four non-gamers using more than 200GB of HDD space.)

The NVIDIA GeForce 6150 SE graphics is probably my least favorite component here. The performance is a little better than the Intel embedded graphics but not by much. You can't do any serious gaming with it and Nvidia has had some reliability issues. However that's been with higher end products and this one is almost certainly fine. Still, not my first choice (all things being equal I'd suggest ATI for graphics right now).

Let me be clear: there not much you can upgrade on this computer. It's difficult to upgrade the graphics (it requires a low profile card), there's only room for one HDD, and while you can replace the memory and cpu I don't recommend pushing that too far (slimlines have a very narrow thermal profile and it's easy to end up with a box that gets too hot). As long as you are okay with that, and don't plan on doing any heavy gaming then this is a far better choice than plopping a big ugly box on your desktop.

Oh and since this is a good dorm computer... if you are a student check out HP's "Academy Program" on their web site (Google "HP Academy", it's too hard to find from HP's site). You may be able to get a student discount on this or something like it.

I've always built my own gaming machines, but for the wife & kids, this one fits the bill perfectly. It's very cheap, hard to build something decent yourself at this price. Small model, saves space on the desk, which is always a plus. Good enough hardward for browsing, casual gaming ( such as yahoo games) and light application use.

As with most name brand machines, you can't do much upgrading to it, most of the parts are specifically made for them, so you can replace anything, and with the small form, you can add anything internally. Though for most common use, the specs that's already on the machine is plenty.

One common problem with all name brand machines - Junkware. They preload a whole bunch of stuff on these machines that makes the start and overall running very slow, takes you a bit of time to go in and uninstall everything. You can consider using norton 360 and use that to remove all the un-necessary startup programs.

Wanted to take out 1/2 a star for this issue below:

Keyboard & mouse, the 2pcs that comes with the machine is really poor quality, makes a 60wpm typer go 40wpm. Though it's understandable @ $399 retail price, it's hard to justify including a nice set of KB & Mouse. Instead of including something that very few will use and makes the machine look bad, rather they just exclude it completely, only creates extra waste.

I bought one as a media server for my PS3. This machine runs fine and has excellent performance for the price. I like it so much I bought one for my father who is a casual user. He spends most of his time watching foreign tv stations and listening to foreign radio stations on the internet. He lovs it, particularly it's compact size.

I should clarify that on my unit I run Windows 2003 Server and it is adequate to the task. My father's machine is running Vista and it is about 10-15% less in performance.

[...]. I felt this machine offers a lot of value for a non-gamer in a nice compact size. Though it has an Athlon 64, 4 g RAM, 500 g HD, the graphics capabilities are limited (no separate graphics card and supposedly hard to upgrade). My son uses it mostly for web surfing, YouTube and email. It works with my older wireless-G USB adapter and webcam, after I downloaded Vista drivers. So far Vista has been ok, but this machine is eligible for the Windows 7 upgrade; hopefully that will be a good thing!

Bought this PC about a year ago. It has been working flawlessly since then. Throughout the years, I have bought about half-dozen HP/Compaq machines, and have been happy with all of them

SUPPER GREAT! USED EVERYDAY, FOR HOURS! MY SON-IN-LAW DESCRIBES ME AS ELECTRONICALLY ILLITERATE, BUT I HOOKED IT UP MYSELF...WITH NO PROBLEMS! SLIMLINE IS WONDERFUL FOR MY LIMITED & PACKED OFFICE SPACE. I MIGHT ADD, RELATIVELY LIGHTWEIGHT...SO PLACING IT INTO A SMALL SPACE (PLASTIC STACKED SHELF UNIT FROM WAL-MART) WAS NOT A PROBLEM.

THE PROCESSING SPEED IS AMAZING, PREVIOUS PC MAY HAVE ARRIVED ON THE MAYFLOWER AND I MAY HAVE TAKEN MY FIRST COMPUTER CLASS WITH PUNCH CARDS IN A ROOM ABOUT 10,000 SQ FT THAT HOUSED "1" COMPUTER...AND YES I'VE HAD A COUPLE CLASSES SINCE THEN, BUT I'M STILL VERY IMPRESSED WITH THIS ONE...

LUCK...ONE STROKE OF LUCK...THE NEW PC ARRIVED 1 DAY BEFORE THE OLD ONE CRASHED...WHEW!

What a great value, and the free shipping, especially living in Hawaii, was great! Customer Support is fantastic! Highly recommend.

the cpu came in a reasonable time and the set up of it was easy. im using it now to write this review.. lol
no problems to report yet. came new and not damaged.

Does anyone else who purchased this item on Amazon remember one of the selling points being a free upgrade to Windows 7 when it released? Well it released and I got an email from HP promoting the release of windows 7, but nothing more about the free upgrade from Vista. It was suggesting I BUY windows 7. Now after going back to re-read the item description, I see no apparent mention of the free OS upgrade. Was I crackin', or has the upgrade promise evaporated? What say other buyers of this item? I bought back in August.

So far this has been a great small form factor desktop. I was skeptical about Windows Vista because of all the problems but it appears Microsoft has made the necessary corrections because it is now working flawlessly. It has accepted all the software I have loaded and it also is working just fine. The HP Pavilion Slimline S5120F is well made and runs very quietly while operating. Delivery was swift and the price was very reasonable. I have purchased many items from Amazon.com and have never been disappointed, keep up the good work!!! WRH, La Mesa, CA