HP Pavilion s3120n Slimline Review
Thursday September 27, 2007
Image Courtesy HP
HP has been one of the biggest proponents of AMD's Athlon line of processors. They provided excellent performance for their cost. The problem is that Intel released the Core 2 Duo lineup that pushed performance up and at the same time driving down prices. HP still uses the AMD processors in many of their systems, but does this ultimately hurt their slimline desktop systems? Find out in my review of the HP Pavilion s3120n slimline desktop personal computer.
HP should be sued over the S3120n slimline desktop computer. I owned mine only 3 months when it started freezing and finally crashed. At the same time I bought mine, I also bought my parents one, it crashed after 2 months. HP is no help, I sent it back and it’s been 2 months and no word on it at all. I spend $800 on the bundle, I might as well have threw my money out the window….it’s junk!
The “review” looks like it is based on a product sheet, with the computer never actually having been seen or touched. A bit useless. We can all read the product sheets for ourselves, thanks.
I have had the HP Slimline s3120n for just over a year and mine also began to have problems freezing. I have tried everything and have even taken it to a computer service tech., but have had no luck fixing it. HP is aware of a problem because the have extended the warranty for a year for motherboard problems. However they won’t do anything until computer freezes completely. Don’t buy HP!!!
My s3120n has been back to the factory twice because of loss of video and now it will not boot up. HP want me to take it apart and help them diagnose it–although these issues are part of the warranty extension. Their definition of recurring problems requiring replacement differ from mine–and from Webster’s dictionary.
I bought my Slimline about a year ago, from time to time it will not boot and the video card will make some funny noises like it was on some kind of weird loop, but eventually the computer boots so I was never able to send it to warranty repair. Of course after 1 year warranty expired (one week after) the PC did not want to boot anymore, I tried putting a new video card without luck, fortunatelly I am able to use the onboard video chip. The funny thing is that they know the problem but my PC is not on the list of the extended warranty so I am screw with a $800 unreliable box…
I got the 3120 in 2008 the slimline started freezing up almost immediatley. JUNK DONT BUY DONT BUY DONT BUY hp is NO HELP no fix no software fix no downloads nothing!!!
pc wont boot, and the after a half hour it finally boots and then freezes up and wont unlock have to reboot and start all over again. Abd of course tech support makes it sound like its something”I” did to it ……THIS HP product makes a great anchor for my boat!
I just took 800 dollars and threw right in the ocean, LOST ALL MY DATA ALL MY FILES AND CANT GET THEM BACK!! YOU SUCK YOU SUCK YOU SUCK I NEED MY GODAMN FILES YOU F%$#@
THANKS HP! I WONT BUY YOUR CRAPP AGAIN
YOU SIR HAVE LOST A CUSTUMER
My s3120n had a fully functional lifespan of about 18 months, with growing troubles in the past 6 months. Now, it’s looking like it will never seen a Vista to Win7 upgrade, as I’ll be getting a new machine.
In mid-2009 when it first started acting up, I thought problems with Hibernate & Resume were Vista issues, but they keep increasing to where I sometimes need to power on/off 10+ times to get the system to “grab” the monitor. That’s with a full shutdown and restart. I gave up on Hibernation about a month ago. Purchase was made in Oct. 2007.
Now, the sound card (RealTek, onboard) seems to have died. All drivers look good but sound suddenly died after one restart. Spent hours trying various tricks to fix it and only get a quiet popping noise when muting the speakers, plus hiss & feedback when I turn them up. Speakers are fine on other PC. Microphone still works apparently.
I’m not sure I want to ship back the entire machine to HP just for a motherboard replacement (privacy, etc.) This whole thing may be an engineering oversight, i.e. the case being too small or improperly ventilated. The quiet fan did seem too good to be true. I smelled subtle electrical burning a few weeks ago and troubles have escalated since.
I can almost top that– my s3120n went back for trouble not booting in Oct. 2008; they said they put in a new motherboard. In December 2008: no boot- sent out; again they put in a new motherboard. May 2009 same problem, same solution. Today, Oct 11, 2009, same problem. Tomorrow I’m calling the lady which said in May, “if this does not cure the problem, we will give you a new computer”. If not, I go to the consumer protection agency.
My s3120n has been to Texas twice for motherbard replacement. It worked OK when I put it back in their shipping box in June for a 2 mile move to a new place. It stayed there until I tried to set it up again about two weeks ago and same problem. It failed again just sitting in the box unused!I can’t find a copy of the original extended warranty right now to see if it has any other options than more trips to Texas. I would like for them to give me a new computer or at least a trade-in for something more reliable. Has anyone had any luck getting anything other than repeated repairs out of HP?