HP dx5150

15 Jun 2005 09:29

You can find faster work PCs, but we like the HP dx5150 as a low-cost business desktop, particularly when paired with the L1740 display.

The HP dx5150's attractive silver-and-black tower keeps things refreshingly quiet. Measuring 17.5cm wide by 42cm deep by 36.8cm high, the dx5150 is compact enough to sit on a desk without overwhelming your work space. Even so, it's surprisingly spacious on the inside (more so than HP's 'microtower' nomenclature suggests), offering unobstructed access to its expansion slots, RAM sockets and drive bays. Indeed, the dx5150 has room for a little of everything, so you could add up to three more memory sticks to our test system's lone 512MB DIMM, as well as a full-height PCI Express graphics card and a second hard drive. That's the advantage of choosing a tower over HP's small-form-factor desktop case, which accommodates only low-profile expansion cards and has fewer bays.

Although there's only a single captured thumbscrew holding the HP dx5150's side-access panel in place, we had a difficult time sliding the panel loose. Thankfully, once you're inside, it's a simple matter to pop out a drive for replacement or to drop in another RAM module. You can also connect a near-endless supply of external components, thanks to the dx5150's eight USB 2.0 ports, two of which are located at the front (along with headphone and microphone jacks).

Our HP dx5150 test system's no-frills configuration included an AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor, 512MB of 400MHz DDR SDRAM, a 40GB hard drive and a CD-RW burner. The motherboard's ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset manages multimedia duties with its integrated Radeon 9600 graphics processor and onboard sound chip. Although the dx5150 ships without external speakers, there's a speaker built into the tower so you can hear system sounds in all their tinny glory.

The HP L1740 monitor comes with both VGA and DVI inputs, so you should have no restrictions if you decide to upgrade to a discrete 3D card that has only one type of port. The L1740 can rotate 90 degrees and rise up several extra centimetres, so it's easy to see if you're working from a standing position, for instance at a countertop. Its base also acts as a keyboard cradle, which lets you tuck your keyboard away beneath the screen to save space. The monitor comes with a pair of USB 2.0 ports, although you may not want to endure the hassle of reaching them. They're recessed far behind the screen and accessible only by tilting it way back -- an effort that requires a fretful amount of muscle.

Although the HP dx5150 and the L1740 both have DVI video connectors, HP supplies only a VGA cable. Fortunately, the monitor manages to produce sharp, colourful detail even with an analogue connection. Its high-contrast, ultra-vivid images struck us as good enough not only for everyday business use but for professional graphics and video work as well.

We're not sure the same can be said of the HP dx5150 itself. On both our SysMark 2004 application test and our Unreal Tournament 2003 3D test, the dx5150 trailed the competition, even when compared to the HP Compaq dc7100 Business Desktop, which came out 11 months ago. This is not to say that the dx5150 is a terrible performer, as its scores were in the same ballpark as the competition. Still, if performance is an issue (that is, if you need a business PC for anything other than word processing, email and surfing the Web), then you'll want to configure a dx5150 with a faster CPU and a discrete 3D card. HP offers CPUs up to the Athlon 64 4000+, but the choice of graphics cards gets no better than the weak ATI Radeon X300 SE.

HP supplies no applications or utilities to speak of with the dx5150, although Norton AntiVirus 2004 is available at the time of purchase. IT departments will appreciate HP Client Manager and Altiris Deployment Solution Agent, which come preloaded to assist with system deployment and management.

HP's standard warranty delivers one year of on-site and one year of next business-day service for parts and labour and includes free telephone support 24x7. We particularly like the online support, which enabled us to quickly find HP dx5150-specific help and even chat in real time with a live technician.

Story URL: http://reviews.zdnet.co.uk/hardware/desktops/0,1000000968,39203731,00.htm