Aldi Medion offer is back?

[thebruiser]

Today in the Louisville paper is another ad for the Medion PC. If anyone is still looking for one, check your local stores. Now a few questions for those who have already bought. 1. I heard the hard drive is not removeable. Is this true, and could this cause a problem in the future if it fails? 2. I also heard it has a cheap mobo and chip set. Is this true? 3. Is everything upgradeable? 4. Any problems surfaced yet? I'm thinking about buying one as my HP is trying to quit.

Thanks

If this is the wrong forum, please move.

 

[Damn Dirty Ape]

I can answer your questions, I purchased one this last Wednesday. The hard drive is removable, just as it would be on any PC, just some screws. The motherboard is a MSI (Micro-star intl.) MS-6701, with the SIS648 chipset. The machine has a 40x Sony CD-RW, a 16x Sony DVD-ROM, a 128mb Geforce4 Ti4200, but with operational AGP 8X, 256mb of PC2700 Samsung. Very quiet, one P/S fan and one (80mm)? fan slowly blowing down on the P4-2.6ghz chip. It comes with the modem installed in a PCI slot, the AGP card is removable, and NOT built on the mainboard. It does not come with a floppy disc drive, but has a slot under the sliding front cover for one, and there is a floppy port on the mainboard, as well as bios support for it. It comes with onboard sound (which is OK), a built-in 10/100 NIC card, the AGP card comes with dual monitor support. The slide down front cover has slots for Compact flash, smart media, memory stick and SD/MMC. It also has 3 USB 2.0 ports on the front as well as , (I believe, firewire connection). On the front it also has a joystick port, along with composite, s-video outputs, microphone and speaker outputs. It is a 250w fortron p/s. It is a little small on the inside, but has another slot for an additional stick of memory.

This review isn't perfect or guaranteed complete, but it's a nice system for the money..

 

[GtPrOjEcTX]

nice sumation.

there is no ad online this time.

 

[BAMAVOO]

Still three (3) of these available in the Madison Tennessee store. Just saw them last night. Looks pretty cool and is probably a very nice pc..

 

[thebruiser]

Thanks for the review. I suppose the mobo is also replaceable when the latest and greatest comes along?

 

[linuxthinker]

What exactly is this? I did a quick google search and got results in a different language

 

[Damn Dirty Ape]

I forgot.. it has SPDIF In/Out on the back as well as the same composite/s-video and two more USB ports on the back.. I'm not sure about the motherboard upgrade however..

 

[SKORPI0]

Originally posted by: linuxthinker
What exactly is this? I did a quick google search and got results in a different language

This was mentioned in <a target=new class=ftalternatingbarlinklarge href="http://forums.anandtech.com/messageview.cfm?catid=40&threadid=908343">BLACK FRIDAY at Aldi Foods, 2.66GHz computer! $899
</a>.

Nice if you can still get it for that price.

 

[thebruiser]

If you use Google to search for this, use the translator and it will put it in English. Funny English, sort of like the Jap-Lish you see on instructions, but good enough so you can tell what they're saying. The German ZDNet review says there is a better set of drivers available for the mobo. At least that's what I think it said. There is a link for the download on the German site.

 

[Miramonti]

Originally posted by: Hellspawn
I can answer your questions, I purchased one this last Wednesday. The hard drive is removable, just as it would be on any PC, just some screws. The motherboard is a MSI (Micro-star intl.) MS-6701, with the SIS648 chipset. The machine has a 40x Sony CD-RW, a 16x Sony DVD-ROM, a 128mb Geforce4 Ti4200, but with operational AGP 8X, 256mb of PC2700 Samsung. Very quiet, one P/S fan and one (80mm)? fan slowly blowing down on the P4-2.6ghz chip. It comes with the modem installed in a PCI slot, the AGP card is removable, and NOT built on the mainboard. It does not come with a floppy disc drive, but has a slot under the sliding front cover for one, and there is a floppy port on the mainboard, as well as bios support for it. It comes with onboard sound (which is OK), a built-in 10/100 NIC card, the AGP card comes with dual monitor support. The slide down front cover has slots for Compact flash, smart media, memory stick and SD/MMC. It also has 3 USB 2.0 ports on the front as well as , (I believe, firewire connection). On the front it also has a joystick port, along with composite, s-video outputs, microphone and speaker outputs. It is a 250w fortron p/s. It is a little small on the inside, but has another slot for an additional stick of memory. This review isn't perfect or guaranteed complete, but it's a nice system for the money..

Thx for the info. Unbelievable specs for a budget-priced machine!

 

[thinlizzie]

Hellspawn is correct in his review. To add a couple of points... I know it comes with a 1 year warranty but I couldn't leave my new Aldi machine alone! I opened it up and it was VERY HOT inside that small steel case.

I transferred the whole insides of the Aldi rig to an aluminum case I have. Also ditched their 250w PSU and am now using my 350 Enermax Whisper. My transfer of guts wentr smooth until I got to that ConnectXL panel (the input panel on the front of the PC). I had to drill new holes and bend some tabs on the frame for the connectXL in order to get it to work in my current (industry standard) case. It looks really good and runs a good 40 degrees cooler now.

The way I see it is you are getting a true geforce card, a Seagate HD, an Intel CPU, all of which are warranted through the respective manufacturers anyway. Push comes to shove and I rebuild the old machine and restore from the restore CD. I don't think it will come to that though. I'm still surprised my wife actually didn't flip when she saw me gutting a perfectly good $900 machine that our miney had bought the day before!

Only thing I can't get to work is a HDD LED light. Has the connector on the mainboard for it, but it does not output anything. On the original Medion case there is no HDD LED either.

Anyway I am very impressed with the system and the parts they used. If you can still get this machine at $900 I would go for it. I would have a hard time building this for anything less than $1,300 with Pricewatch vendors - and we all know how dicey that can get!

 

[thebruiser]

Would it be possible to add another fan or two to the case?

 

[Morph]

thinlizzie,

What do you plan on doing with the Medion case? I might be interested in buyin it. Let me know. Your PM is not enabled.

 

[insmanbob]

i too brought one about a week ago i updated the sis ide driver , put in a floppy, added a case fan , updated the g force driver and added a 40 gig hd with all my programs from my old machine no overclocking, but I get almost 11000 winmarks @ 10x 7 x 32 w/vsync left on and everything runs real cool most of the heat came from the seagate hd anyway! a huge vaule for the buck

 

[MontyBurns]

My friend got this, and the HD was pre-partitioned: 50 gigs for system, 50 gigs for backup, 5 gigs for recovery. Yours the same way?

Kind of a pain.

 

[Yo2]

Originally posted by: insmanbob
i too brought one about a week ago i updated the sis ide driver , put in a floppy, added a case fan , updated the g force driver and added a 40 gig hd with all my programs from my old machine no overclocking, but I get almost 11000 winmarks @ 10x 7 x 32 w/vsync left on and everything runs real cool most of the heat came from the seagate hd anyway! a huge vaule for the buck

Does the Mob allow overclocking? (e.g. FSB, memory timing, voltage adjustments)?

THX

Yo

 

[insmanbob]

yes it is actually it 6o 50 5 but thats allright i just put programs on backup partition no problems

 

[Yo2]

Last Tuesday one of the stores here in Joisey still had about a dozen of them left. I doubt that they will be gone by now...

 

[Busie23]

what exactly does the composite video do? My girlfriends DVD player broke so I was going to hook this up to her TV in the mean time. Her tv only has the yellow/red/white connectors on the back as well as a cable hook up. Can I still use the composite video and plu in the yellow from the tv to the composite on the pc and get sound and video?

They also put a huge half page ad in the cleveland area papers for this machine again. I'm guessing they sent two boats over full of these things instead of one? If I had more money I would buy a few more of these guys.

 

[AnyMal]

Originally posted by: Busie23
what exactly does the composite video do? My girlfriends DVD player broke so I was going to hook this up to her TV in the mean time. Her tv only has the yellow/red/white connectors on the back as well as a cable hook up. Can I still use the composite video and plu in the yellow from the tv to the composite on the pc and get sound and video?

They also put a huge half page ad in the cleveland area papers for this machine again. I'm guessing they sent two boats over full of these things instead of one? If I had more money I would buy a few more of these guys.

You'll need to hook-up video out on your video card (it should be marked yellow, just like on TV), to the video-in on TV. For the sound, you may need to get a Y-adapter, to go from your audio-out port to red/white audio ports on TV.

 

[Damn Dirty Ape]

There is a space on the back of the case for a case fan, but there is only one MOBO fan connector, temp/rpm controlled, and it's taken by the CPU fan assembly. If you add a case fan you will need to use one of the four pin drive connector type..

No overclocking ability that I can see in the bios.. 1 year warranty from Medion.. I'm very pleased, I was expecting to maybe see some really low-end stuff in here, but very nice..

I'm adding a black floppy and 256mb of ram on Monday to it..


.................must resist urge to get 17" flat panel from aldi to keep it company.................

 

[Busie23]

You'll need to hook-up video out on your video card (it should be marked yellow, just like on TV), to the video-in on TV. For the sound, you may need to get a Y-adapter, to go from your audio-out port to red/white audio ports on TV.

The vid card only has s-video and the orange composite video out on the back? Could teh composite video double as the yellow guy?