HP Gaming Power Desktop (WM BF special for $499+tax), got one

[VirtualLarry]

https://www.walmart.com/ip/HP-Pavil...GB-Memory-1TB-Hard-Drive-Windows-10/803136621

I guess.. I dunno, I had an un-healthy curiousity as to how a pre-built, budget, gaming rig would work out.

I kind of mentally added up the parts, and I couldn't really build one for this cheap, so there's that.

Now I need to decide upon one of several paths I could take with it.

I'm not 100% sure I'll keep it, but I wanted to snag one before they were gone. My local store still had a pallet of them from BF, evidently, they didn't sell all that well at all. Wondering if maybe most people know something that I don't about this rig.

Reviews suggest that the chassis has another spare drive bay, and a spare SATA port on the mobo, so I could install a 240GB SSD and a fresh copy of Windows 10 on it.

Would any of you recommend booting up with the factory 1TB HDD, and then trying to make Restore Media, and then using that to install the SSD, or would it be best to install Windows 10 fresh using install media created by the MS Media Creation Tool for Windows 10? Any advantage to using the HP install? Any utilities or Wifi drivers or something that might be useful?

Also debating on whether or not to upgrade the DDR4 to 16GB, because there's only two slots, and according to reviews, both slots are filled. (Actually semi-unusual for an OEM machine.)

 

[mnewsham]

I generally hate the pre-installed garbage from pre-built OS images, so I install a fresh copy of windows the moment I buy one.

I'd download any potential drivers you'll need beforehand in case windows 10 doesn't automatically download and install the latest drivers for you. (i've had good luck usually, but occasionally network or chipset drivers or similar will need manual installation)

 

[VirtualLarry]

I had an issue with an older Lenovo that I did something similar with (it wasn't a gaming rig, I dropped in a GPU), and it included built-in Wifi, but a fresh install of Windows 10 didn't pick up the wifi drivers automagically like it usually does, and the PC was an older model (Sandy/Ivy), and I don't think that they have Windows 10 drivers for it on their web site.

I was just afraid of that happening again, and losing the built-in Wifi support.

 

[mnewsham]

https://support.hp.com/us-en/driver...000-desktop-pc-series/16425610/model/17345625


Shouldnt be an issue, HP has W10 drivers across the board.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Thanks for the link, that's good to know. I guess if I wasn't so lazy, I could have simply just looked them up. I guess simple things escape me.

How would people rate this PC as far as "Gaming rig" boxes go? Is this basically the minimum spec to play AAA games these days? (True quad-core, 3.0Ghz 7th-gen Core, GTX1060 3GB)

If this was your new rig, what would you change out? Add SSD? Add RAM? Anything else?

Or would you have waited, and purchased a $1000-1200 gaming rig, if you were in the market for one, something with a 1070, and a "K" CPU and "Z" mobo?

 

[ElFenix]

with a 1060 non-ti i'd only add an ssd. ram is probably sufficient for anything that graphics card can handle.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Got it all installed, threw in a 240GB SSD, was more of a PITA to install than I thought it would be. The chassis is kind of shallow, front-to-back, and the portion where you plug the SATA ports, is all the way in the front of the board, and basically under the overhang of the front of the chassis where the drives mount. For my fat fingers, that was difficult. Then to find out that I snagged one of the antenna (internal) wires for the wireless card... whew, glad I was even able to get it all together again.

The 240GB SSD had Windows 10 1607 on it originally, and it had been activated on one of my other systems. Since the hardware changed, it de-activated itself, but hasn't re-activated. I assumed that things would "just work out", seeing as how this is an OEM rig that came with Windows10 initially, so that it should have the license key in the BIOS somehow. I haven't tried a clean install of 1709 yet, that might solve the issue.

I installed the newest NV drivers, but still had a stubby mouse cursor on my 4K UHD TV I'm using for a display. It took until the 1709 upgrade to get working again properly.

Also, the upgrade from 1607 to 1709 wiped out my OpenCL.dll, so my F@H client which auto-starts at boot, wasn't working, kept throwing errors about that.

So I re-installed the newest NV drivers that I had already downloaded, over themselves, checking "clean install", and then everything was happy again after a reboot. (It evidently put the correct OpenCL.dll back in.)

So now it's crunching F@H, and web browsing. It doesn't feel especially fast, but CPU-Z indicates that the CPU speed is hovering around 3.3Ghz, which is what I assume the all-core turbo ratio is for the i5-7400, so this is effectively a 3.3Ghz CPU, and not 3.0Ghz, as the rated base clock would suggest.

GPU temp is 74C, and PPD is around 300,000PPD to 320,000PPD, on both GTX1060 3GB, and two out of four CPU cores.

 

[Burpo]

Yeah, that deal's hard to beat.. Better than the one I linked you awhile back..
That's a capable little box for whatever. Tempting price too..

 

[UsandThem]

Yeah, HP consumer cases are usually a pain to work in. Very little room and everything you need to get to is covered by some component.

 

[Torn Mind]

Waste of a prebuilt license not to repartition and clone it.

Really, I don't why there would be much difference between prebuilt and custom. It is mainly a matter of who does the labor.

 

[XavierMace]

I'm not sure if I should say "You're welcome" for pointing you to that deal or apologize for feeding your addiction. LOL.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm not sure if I should say "You're welcome" for pointing you to that deal or apologize for feeding your addiction. LOL.

LOL. Hey, it's doing F@H home, for the month of Dec. (or until I find someone to sell it to), so I'll chalk it up to "for science".

 

[Torn Mind]

Use cash back sites like BeFrugal and you'll get a nice discount for the computer.