Compaq Presario CQ5110f Budget Desktop PC

Oct 20 2009 - Compaq's Presario CQ5110f is all about value, and with a $300 street price right now, it certainly is a very inexpensive system. Performance is decent for those looking at doing most general applications and not things like gaming or desktop video. This is really a one shot computer for those looking at a low cost web or productivity machine. The limited features and just as limited expansion capabilities really restrict what the machine could be. Still, for its price many may find this meets their basic computing needs just fine.

Oct 20 2009 - With a street price of under $300, the Compaq Presario CQ5110f is certainly a very affordable system. HP is able to achieve such a low cost system by using older parts and technology. This does limit its performance somewhat but it is still quite capable for the majority of internet and productivity applications that many use their computers form.

Powering the Presario CQ5110f is a venerable AMD Athlon X2 7750 dual core processor. It shares the same clock speed as the Pentium E5200 from Intel and has the advantage of a built-in memory controller for improved memory performance. This should give the system more than enough power to even be capable of playing PC games at moderate levels if the expansion capabilities weren't restricted.

While the Presario CQ5110f uses a mini-desktop tower case, the interior of the case provides many challenges to expanding the this low cost desktop. The power supply is very low limited and prevents use of more modern graphics cards that require external power. The PCI-Express graphics slot is also in an awkward spot with lots of cables in the way. The biggest issue though is the lack of drive cages in the front portion of the case to add more internal hard drives.

To keep the costs down, HP reduced the total amount of storage space in the Presario CQ5110f. Rather that using a more industry standard 500GB hard drive, this model ships with a 320GB hard drive that holds only 2/3 of the storage space of the competition. At least they keep the dual layer DVD burner that also has the ability to burn labels directly to LightScribe compatible DVD and CD media.

One other problem with the Presario CQ5110f is the lack of a digital video connector. Without a DVI or HDMI connector, some HD video options will not be available to users.