HP Pavilion Elite e9180f Mainstream Desktop PC

Aug 10 2009 - HP's Pavilion Elite e9180f certainly takes the Elite portion of its name to heart. It offers a strong level of performance thanks to a Core i7 920 processor and 9GB of memory. Extra features such as a Blu-ray drive and wireless networking also give this features not found in many similarly priced systems. It would be nice to see HP put less trialware applications on the system which degrage the performance somewhat and put a newer generation of graphics processor in for those looking at gaming.

Aug 10 2009 - HP's Pavilion Elite e9810f offers a strong level of performance thanks to the Intel Core i7 920 processor. While this isn't the fastest model, the performance is quite strong thanks to the integrated DDR3 memory controller. HP packs the system with 9GB of memory into the system meaning that there are no potential memory slowdowns. It still uses a triple channel memory configuration for an added boost because of three 2GB and three 1GB memory modules. HP could have cut costs by using just 6GB as most applications won't benefit from much beyond this amount.

Storage is one of the best aspect of the HP Pavilion Elite e9180f. The 1TB of drive space is slightly higher than the average 750GB size in this size. The drive also spins at a 7200rpm rate compared to the 5400rpm of the lower priced Elite e9120f model. It also comes with a Blu-ray player drive in addition to the DVD burner allowing it to play back high definition movies. Expansion is also quite easy thanks to the two media drive bays for installing HP branded external drives into the system.

Probably the biggest downside to the Pavilion Elite e9180f is the graphics. While the GeForce GTS 250 is a new card, it really is just a rebranded GeForce 9800 GT graphics card. This gives it performance up to 1680x1050 resolution in games without issues. It would have been nice to see them include a higher GeForce GTX 260 card for some better gaming potential. It is possible for the card to be swapped out but installing a second isn't really an option with the 460W power supply.

Another issue is the number of applications that HP configures on the system to auto load. While the system is fast, it is bogged down slightly from a large number of unnecessary programs that are trialware. Still, this is one very solid general purpose system for just about any use.