The highly rated HP Pavilion Slimline PC thread

Redline_756 said:
@ Joseph_Lin

Thats great!!! Boy that's running about the max that psu can put out! :eek:

About the noise, do you think it would be possible to mod or get an aftermarket cooler for that 9600GT to maybe increase the quietness and hopefully cool better, yet still fit in that little case? You have the same model Slimline as me, and I hope to upgrade to a 9600GT as well.

Anybody tried using nTune to overclock a 5600+ in their Slimline, or any processor in their Slimline for that matter?
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I did nTune on 4800+, I can overclock to 2700+Mhz. I did not search for the aftermarket cooler, you maybe able to find one in newegg. In my opinion, it is useless as the heat will build up in you case. The best solution is to use external fans.
 
Great finds guys, and yes I know what you mean about blowing up pc's. I've done my share of experimenting and blowing up myself. Thank you for mentioning the risks.
 
Thanks for the reply Joseph_Lin! Good to hear your findings on nTune and your advice about the coolers. Could you upload a pix of what your 12 cm fan mod looks like? I'm having trouble imagining where you could squeeze a 12 cm in these things except the mesh "window" on the side. I do like 360Spider's rear fan mod, so I might try something like that with mine.
 
360Spider said:
Also, could you by chance find out what the wattage's are the card pulls from the PCI-e port and the extra PCI-e power connector under full load? I had said I was going to email KFA2 about 2 days ago and I did get a response but all they would tell me is that it consumes 95W under full load. Told me nothing because I already knew that. :p
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The system consumes 123 watt at high load (only for a blink of time) when using power booster, most of the time it consumes 110 watt during the game. The power booster consumes at most 44 watt during the game, most of the time it consumes less than 40watt. It looks like my 450 watt power booster is a waste as we don't need this much of power at all.
 
I just did the "rear fan mod" and it works wonderfully. CPU and GPU temps are at least 10C cooler idle and load. I am very pleased with the results. Hopefully within a month I will be able to get the 9600GT and PSU. I have a baby due in November so I am spending extra cash on getting baby items or I would already have it installed.
 
Joseph_Lin said:
My slimline only costs me $250, I don't know why you are paying more than that. You actually can get an even lower price by purchasing those the lowest end slimeline, that won't cost much.
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There seem to be alot of ebayers & resellers on ubid right now. I've been monitoring the auctions the last week or so, and it's the same guys who keep winning. Very little goes for cheap, especially Intel based s3400s. I wanted a cheap AMD, and it went for close to $300 yesterday.
 
I just wanted to add that the screws that came with the usb fan/cooling were much too short to use. Much shorter than the ones pictured in 360spiders photos. I will need to look for some longer ones, but for now I zip tied them on to the chassis which works fine and is secure.
 
bondisdead said:
There seem to be alot of ebayers & resellers on ubid right now. I've been monitoring the auctions the last week or so, and it's the same guys who keep winning. Very little goes for cheap, especially Intel based s3400s. I wanted a cheap AMD, and it went for close to $300 yesterday.
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It looks like the uber-cheap Slimlines are no longer available on Ubid. The word is getting out, which is driving up price. :(
 
Joseph_Lin said:
The system consumes 123 watt at high load (only for a blink of time) when using power booster, most of the time it consumes 110 watt during the game. The power booster consumes at most 44 watt during the game, most of the time it consumes less than 40watt. It looks like my 450 watt power booster is a waste as we don't need this much of power at all.
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That's still about 40 watts taken off the HP 160W PSU. Leaves you some space if you even dare adding the TV tuner back in there. :p

miosis said:
I just wanted to add that the screws that came with the usb fan/cooling were much too short to use. Much shorter than the ones pictured in 360spiders photos. I will need to look for some longer ones, but for now I zip tied them on to the chassis which works fine and is secure.
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That must be because of the manufacturer difference. Mine actually came with about an inch and a half screws with a metal nut on the end of each one. There were actually 8 of them holding both fans on the origional pelxi-glass cooling pad. Interesting they don't come that way anymore. Oh and uh, I told ya so about the temps difference. :p Really works doesn't it?

EDIT: Since I'm bored as heck in English class right now and I have nothing to do, I decided to go back and find the original cooling pad I had used that I know I had posted here at some point. Here it is: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16834994002
 
I just got the first lock up...maybe not to blame 9600GT as it has this lock up before I installed the 9600GT -- the chipset is to be blamed of as I mentioned before, the unit's quality from uBid is really questionable. Have to install my old PCI-X RAID card back, maybe I should turn this machine to a server to replace my old noisy server.

The report of using 9600GT before I send it back:

It is suitable for BE processors without using power booster as it will give you 20 more watts room for the video card. For gaming like hell in the past two days, the power draw sometimes goes up to 165 Watts without power booster. With 12cm fan mod, you get significantly lower noise and cooler system temperature: processor will run at around 32C (notice this is from coretemp, not accurate as when idle it reports 16C), video card never exceed 70C while gaming (for two hours of Alone in The Dark), idle at 54C. The noise is very low, it is at 0% fan speed at idle with the 12cm fan mod, while gaming if you crank up your 5.1 channel sound system, you won't hear a thing (of course :)).

Once again, the mods do not apply to people that are not aware of the danger of modding a slimline, it may blow up, cause black out of your city or even cause nuclear chain reaction that may wipe out your city. Be careful!

Now it is time to go back my research...ahhh...I wasted my precious two days for this meaningless experiment!
 
Glad I found this thread. I just got a SlimLine s3500t with an E7200 and the 9500GS. The video card just isn't cutting it for what I wanted, so now I'm reading the mods so I can perhaps come up with a different solution.
 
@ Madpoet,

Your really not going to get much better than that you have. The highest you can go is a 9600gt and even with your 180W PSU you should probably consider a supplemental power source. Can you take a picture by any chance of your 9500GS? I would like to see what the LP form of it looks like that's being shipped with HP comps...
 
@ Madpoet,

I recently took advantage of a deal and got the same system, (at least case, MB, proc and CPU) and was looking around for other options as well.

I'm more interested for the future though, as it's fine for all I want it for currently.

My current thoughts are to upgrade to a higher-end Core 2 Duo processor in the future if the prices ever drop (something like an 8400 or 8500) and keep my eyes open for any new low-profile, low-power video cards (I'd prefer to not do anything with the power supply). Along those lines I'm actively awaiting news on the low-profile HD4650 (which I know there will be because of pictures) and hopefully a low-profile HD4670; neither of these are as powerful as a 9600GT, but from all the reviews I've seen the 4670 can't be beat on performance/power (at least at the sub-100W cards).

By the time I'm seriously looking to do any of this there will likely be something out better.
 
hey guys, I'm getting ready to order a 8400 low profile card. Wanted to check here first and see if anyone had one that they were going to sell. I do need one with component out, which means I'm stuck with the 8400gs, I think. Anyway, let me know, otherwise, I'll just probably grab the evga one from newegg.com later today or tomorrow. Thanks!
 
Has any one got XP Pro working on their s3400t? If so, what drivers did you use? I wanted to use my Slimline's quad core CPU for video encoding, freeing up my main system, but I'm having a torrid time getting my software to actually work in Vista.
 
I've had a lot of problem finding that kind of software to work in Vista also. I found that if you're looking to convert DVDs, FairUse Wizard 2 works perfectly. I've had problems with DivX converter, Dr. DivX and AutoGK, though I haven't tried using them in a long time.
 
Nice little computer! 8GB RAM, nice PSU, not too expensive. The case is just a bit bigger than the Antec Minuet, a case for the computer I built for my mother. It is definitely thinner than the slimline, almost completely silent (minus the loud HD which bugs me), but the height and length are rather significantly bigger than the HP slimlines when comparing the two. The nice thing about the Minuet though is that it comes with a 350W Antec PSU.
 
That Dell does look nice. Just when I thought was going to get get a Slimline, there's another strong contender to consider. :)
 
That Dell's pretty nice. But a little pricey (unless you get a good deal).

I grabbed the s3500t a few weeks ago because I had a $400 off. The Dell certainly has more room to grow if you're looking for moderate gaming; with the beefier PSU and newer motherboard. I'm happy to see the Gigabit integrated networking. (I wonder if this is a micro-ATX or mini-ITX board)

If there are two things I could change about the HP offering, it would be the lack of onboard Gigabit ethernet and lack of dual channel memory support. The Gigabit is solely for HTPC reasons, and the memory is for general use/gaming reasons (though I don't really plan to use the slimline for serious gaming). I'm thinking the Dell serves both of those up well and it will be a nice option with a few $100 off.

But if you really want that type of power out of a small PC, you may be better off building your own as it gives you the greatest flexibility for future upgrades. I have a hard time telling myself that this is *just* a HTPC. I have this gnawing desire to try to upgrade a slimline into a gaming PC (though the lack of good low profile Graphics Card hold me back).
 
Well, Vaelin, I was looking for a Slimline too, but now I changed my mind. Let's consider that we're building our SFF from maker's site: you have to spend $739.99 on HP's to build a s3500t with same characteristics as base Dell Studio Slim (C2D E7200, 2Gb Ram, 500Gb HDD, DVD, GeForce 9300 and wireless LAN) Yes, it's smaller but hotter too! It's same Inspiron 530s but better! You have to spend $659 on Dell's for same configuration with card reader/Bluetooth and Wireless-N LAN and $719 with HD3450 which is a better video card. This is a micro-ATX MB for sure (looks like the Intel DG45ID model) with plenty of room on it, so, with a 250W PSU, if you like games just wait for the low profile HD4670 and do it! The only drawback for me is height, but it doesn't look bad resting on his side... I'll buy mine in two months if HP doesn't have anything else then...
 
Oh, I agree completely. The main reason I got the HP slimline was because of the deal I got, and if not for the deal I was planning on building one myself.

I'd been on the fence for a while about a HTPC (small and quiet) PC and really had a hard time forcing myself to compromise on performance (that I didn't really need). It just went against my history of building of gaming/computational PCs (though setting a budget for myself helped).

If I were paying full retail for a >$650 small PC at this point, Dell would probably have me on the better motherboard (Gigabit ethernet for interfacing with my NAS) and bigger power supply for future upgrades.

I know the low profile HD4650s are coming, but I don't know if anyone will make a low profile HD4670. The idea of a low profile 4670 is enough to get anyone with a low profile, low power PC all excited. ;)
 
Earlier today, I didn't see any s3400t listings on UBid. :confused:

If Dell has any outstanding sales on that new small form factor PC, I might get it. Otherwise, I'll keep holding out hope for a great deal on an s3400t on UBid (or even HP's site if they have sale).

Like you, Vaelin, I want a small, quiet, and inexpensive HTPC. :cool:
 
beowulf7 said:
If Dell has any outstanding sales on that new small form factor PC, I might get it. Otherwise, I'll keep holding out hope for a great deal on an s3400t on UBid (or even HP's site if they have sale).
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Dell is having a deal on their 530s slim PC. It has the same form factor as the new Dell Studio Slim, and with $250 shipped, it is should be cheaper than the refurbished slimlines on ubid these days.
 
chklin said:
Dell is having a deal on their 530s slim PC. It has the same form factor as the new Dell Studio Slim, and with $250 shipped, it is should be cheaper than the refurbished slimlines on ubid these days.
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Thanks for the heads up and that SD link. :cool: In the brief time I've been reading about it, I don't the physical dimensions listed of that Inspiron 530S. It looks like nothing is worth upgrading since Dell is overcharging for those components. Too bad the case is silver; I strongly prefer black. : \

If I price out with the bare min. (as recommended in that thread), it comes out to ~$270 after tax+ship. Then I'd still need a low profile video card and another 2 GB of RAM (I noticed there are 4 slots). I don't know much about that CPU, so I need to research it a little. :eek: How's the PSU compared to an HP Slimline? Decisions, decisions ...

Edit: Since it's not a C2D, I'll pass. But thanks again for the info.
 
I don't think anyone has tried the 9500GT yet so I have no idea how that would work out for you. The 9400GT has roughly the same specs as the 8600GT with a core clock only 10Mhz faster. The 9400GT should work fine. I don't see any reason why it wouldn't. The power draw can't possibly be any higher than the 8600GT with those specs. But like I said, I really don't know for sure with the 9500GT.
 
http://www.techpowerup.com/reviews/HIS/HD_4670_IceQ_Turbo/24.html

There's TechPowerUp's power consumption table, it's in a review of the ATI 4670 but has a ton of other cards benchmarked as well, the 9500GT's overall power usage in average/peak is lower than the 8600GT. I think the 9500GT is definitely doable, it's a better card overall with performance between the 8600GT and GTS, and that's quite a good price - the Galaxy 8600GT was $120 when I got it only a few months ago.

Damn look at those 4670 power consumption and benchmarks though (especially Quake4 and Doom3 - it's about 9800GTX speed in those games!) - I really hope someone makes a LP version. Getting it in the slimline may be iffy, but the Acer could certainly handle it.
 
Well, there's the picture that was touted around a little while ago: http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=1059559

They show a passively cooled 4450, the recently popular 4670, and a low-profile 4650!

Aside from that one picture though, I've seen no evidence of a low-profile HD4650 out there. The card does look a little long though, so I'm not sure if it'll fit into a slimline case. But it should have lower power consumption than the 4670 while still supporting 7.1 out the HDMI, both good for fitting into a slimline.

Maybe we'll see one before Christmas. ;)
 
I don't think anything can possibly be longer than the 9600GT which I have installed right now. And it does fit to a certain degree. The only thing is that it would be touching the metal HDD and drive bay bracket if it were not for a little electrical tape insulation.
 
Apologies if this question has been answered already, I used the search function but did not find the right posts.

I own an HP slimline s3049 (don't know if that model was available in the UK at all), and somehow I managed to rip a chip off the motherboard. This happened because the USB plug from the HP pocketdrive was dangling loose inside my case as i removed that small case that normally holds the pocketdrive and got stuck between the chip and the lid of the case when I was closing it. :(

Anyhow, I gave the motherboard to someone who knows their stuff soldering small parts, but unfortunately, the board did not come back to life.

So I called HP support Germany for a replacement motherboard, but unless I have my PC repaired by them (294€ = 234GBP!), they won't let me have a new one.

Needless to say how much that s*cks, right?!

So I now have to find myself a new motherboard that fits into my slimline pc case.
Obviously, HP use some intermediate form factor between µATX and ITX (7.5 x 6.8 in).
Does anyone know of any motherboards that are suitable? ITX boards are really expensive (didn't even realize that until now), so maybe there is a really small µATX board that has the right size?

It's really hard and time-consuming browsing through the hundreds of available µATX-Boards, so I was hoping that maybe somebody could give me a hint :confused:

Any hints & suggestions will be greatly appreciated :D
 
Yeah, mini-ITX boards have sort of a niche market, similar to non-standard low-profile video cards, and tend to cost a little more as a result.

The HP slimline MBs seem a little bit longer to accommodate extra expansion slots not seen on standard mini-ITX boards. So if you want to replace the motherboard without going to HP (sounds like they want to charge you quite a bit to do that) you're probably not going to get more than one PCI-e 1x slot from what I've seen.

I don't know if there are any special connectors, but from what I've seen from the pictures, the mounting screws look consistent from the slimline MB to these Intels:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...&SpeTabStoreType=&Order=BESTMATCH&srchInDesc=

The only problem is you may lose a PCI expansion slots (if you had it filled). It's a personal call about how much you want to fiddle with it, but just about any socket 775 mini-ITX board should be compatible with the case... though I'm not sure about the power adapter from the slimline PSU. I recall reading somewhere back in the thread that some models had a non-standard power adapter.
 
^ If those s3600 series are for real, I'm surprised that s3500 PCs haven't even shown up on UBid yet (last time I checked, which was this past weekend). :confused:
 
Amheck, we got same computer, same MB, same "high end" CPU options, same video card, same PSU!!! No Q8200, not even an E7300 option, not Blu-ray lower price and no lower price at all. So, what's new? 3500 to 3600 makes sense? Welcome Dell's Desktop Slim...
Gooooood point, omjeremy :)
 
i just picked up a s3020n off craigslist for $80 (good deal?)

from what ive seen from the original specs, it hasnt been touched, COA is till attatched

any advice for this model?
 
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