The highly rated HP Pavilion Slimline PC thread

would disconnecting the power to the all in one reader and dvd drive (since i really dont use them) free enough watts to add a 9500gt without the 45w cpu?
 
Hey Archea I was wondering how you got the cd box out because I'm having some problems doing so to put more RAM. In the bottom. If you could explain what you did that'd be great. I checked out the hp site and for one of the instructions it said to unscrew the screw that's connected with the box. There's something blocking that 1 screw, it's a small box. In 1 of the pictures posted In the bottom right corner that's what it is blocking it. So please help me out before I have to go to geeksquad haha, they're kind of annoying and don't explain much.
 
I am very happy with the 9600GT. I would highly recommend to anyone who is interested and capable to not hesitate modding. Temps are ~48C idle and 51C load. Pretty amazing, well built card and cooler. I would love to mount my external usb fan inside but I am not sure there is any room left. The chassis is packed full of components and wires with just barely enough room to "breathe". Perhaps I might consider it one day if I get "the itch". My only additions now will be to upgrade to max RAM and get a external DVD drive to replace the internal one I pulled for this project. Thanks everyone for the support. If I can answer any questions or be of help to anyone please feel free to contact me as well.
 
zknight008 said:
Hey Archea I was wondering how you got the cd box out because I'm having some problems doing so to put more RAM. In the bottom. If you could explain what you did that'd be great. I checked out the hp site and for one of the instructions it said to unscrew the screw that's connected with the box. There's something blocking that 1 screw, it's a small box. In 1 of the pictures posted In the bottom right corner that's what it is blocking it. So please help me out before I have to go to geeksquad haha, they're kind of annoying and don't explain much.
Click to expand...

I think you're looking at the cage for the pocket drive. If I recall correctly, there's a couple of push-n-pull levers on the sides and the cage tilts up and out. There might be a screw or two on it too, I can't remember though.
 
I didn't have to remove the DVD rom to add RAM. I had already removed the media drive cage, so i can't really say whether it would have gotten in the way, but i suspect so.

Unless you have arthritus or very large hands, you should be able to get in there fairly easily with the cage out of the way.
 
Has anyone added an external sound card? I'd like to be able to get this thing to decode and output TrueHD and HDMA, even if it's just over analog.
 
Also can I get a link to the actual manual for how to take this thing apart? Can't figure how to pop out the drive bay to swap the CD.
 
Are you trying to take the DVD drive out or take out the entire drive bay? If you take out the entire drive bay you are also going to take out the holder for your HDD. To slide out the DVD drive you first need to take the front off the computer. There clips on the top and the bottom in the inside. Then there should be a black(?) screw on the side of the DVD drive that normally faces the ground when the tower is standing up that you need to unscrew. After that there is a silver metal clip at the top you push upwards and the drive should slide out. Then just make sure you have both your power and data SATA cables removed. Those just pull out of the drive. You'll probably want to take those out first though.
 
Thanks, figured it out finally.

Another question, has anyone downgraded to WinXP? I am trying to find the right drivers. I installed the Nvidia forceware drivers and it took care of some of the stuff, but the Ethernet controller and the sound drivers remain unknown. The sound drivers I know where to get but I can't figure out the Ethernet controller drivers. Any pointers?
 
Still can't get the ethernet driver to install. I'm using a spare USB ethernet dongle I had, but the onboard just won't pick up any drivers I've tried. Beginning to wonder if I should go back to Vista! ;)
 
Thanks Spider... that's what I used the first time and oddly it didn't do the network driver. I re-ran last night and it did the second time so I seem to be good to go in terms of drivers.

I am still trying to find a sound card that will let me get me all the advanced audio formats. Difficult! I wish the Xonar had a low profile version.
 
My 9500GT only has a S-Video, DVI and RGB connection. I bought a DVI to HDMI dongle and audio trough audio cable
 
I need some help asap for my grad project presentation. I was wondering if someone could tell me what all the wattage's are of the components inside the Slimline.

I just really need to know HDD, Ram, and chipset wattage. My chipet is the nForce 430.

Thanks a ton!
 
Now I've tried Crysis, Bioshock and Company of Heroes with my 9500GT, all run fine 1024x768 settings high. Very good card! No heat, no noise.
 
Grateful reader, first time posting.

I had problems with a Gigabyte HD4350 video card in my HP Slimline s3620f, video snow after using 3D for more than a second, or with any significant complexity at any resolution. I tried several versions of the (new) drivers before deciding to try a power supply. Thanks to great info here, I installed the In-Win 300W last night. Worked great, double sticky tape and a soldering iron are my friends.

No help at all. The card is on RMA, and an XFG NVidia 9500GT replacement card is on the way to me.

Along the way, I had to remove the CPU heat sink and fan to be able to swap the power supply.

On reinstalling, I found only one screw thread to secure it down.

Anyone else run into this? There is a thread for the hole nearest the power supply and back of the case, but from peering into the other three holes, no threads seen. No loose nuts making noises when I shake the box, and everything seems to work fine, although now I'm concerned about CPU temps.

I'll probably find out myself soon, but if I take the motherboard out, will I find three more sets of threads? Loose nuts?

TIA,
-->Aaron
 
APailthorp said:
Grateful reader, first time posting.

I had to remove the CPU heat sink and fan to be able to swap the power supply.

On reinstalling, I found only one screw thread to secure it down.

Anyone else run into this? There is a thread for the hole nearest the power supply and back of the case, but from peering into the other three holes, no threads seen. No loose nuts making noises when I shake the box, and everything seems to work fine, although now I'm concerned about CPU temps.

I'll probably find out myself soon, but if I take the motherboard out, will I find three more sets of threads? Loose nuts?

TIA,
-->Aaron
Click to expand...
And the answer is... of course there are supposed to be four sets of threads to secure the cooling heat sink and fan. It has been a while since I pulled out a motherboard, but I should have remembered seeing an X shaped thingie. It turns out my built in Mexico box doesn't have this part secured to the motherboard in any way. Pictures below, first is what I found, second is what I should found, and third is a picture of the motherboard side of the brace. There's a cardboard pad, but no adhesive to keep it in place against the motherboard.

Once again double sticky tape is my friend.

-->Aaron
3060804556_20b30023fd_m.jpg

Misplaced heat sink brace

3060805444_6567b1ea0e_m.jpg

Where it should have been

3059970975_4fd2fb5d74_m.jpg

Upper (PCB facing) side, cardboard but nothing to hold it in place. Two small bits of double sticky tape applied here.
 
I just got my parents one of these for Christmas. Really wanted Blu-Ray and HDMI so I ended up going with a new one, not one from Ubid. My parents have a top of the line Sony HDTV and they don't have Blu-Ray, so I figured with the small size they could just drag it downstairs to watch Blu-Ray on the big TV.

Other than the Blu-Ray decoding, my parents are NOT power users so the 4850e and Nvidia 9300 should work just fine for their purposes. I stuck with the base hard drive too as they will never fill up a 250GB drive in a million years. They still haven't filled up the 40GB drive on their 6 year old XP box either.

HP said:
* Genuine Windows Vista Home Premium with Service Pack 1 (64-bit)
* AMD Athlon(TM) 64 X2 4850e dual-core (2.5GHz)
* FREE UPGRADE! To 3GB DDR2-800MHz SDRAM (1x2048,1x1024) from 2GB
* SAVE $20! 256MB NVIDIA GeForce 9300, DVI-I, VGA adapter, HDMI
* 250GB 7200 rpm SATA 3Gb/s hard drive
* LAN port on system board (10/100Base-T), no wireles LAN
* SAVE $50! Blu-ray DVD player & Lightscribe SuperMulti DVD burner
* 15-in-1 memory card reader, 2 USB, headphone port
* Integrated 5.1 channel sound with front audio ports
* Microsoft(R) Works 9.0
* No additional security software
* No speakers
* HP keyboard and HP optical mouse
* HP Home & Home Office Store in-box envelope
Click to expand...

Base price with EPP was $319.59. The customizations over the base were +30 for CPU, +50 for the 9300 and +100 for the Blu-Ray reader.

I got around $30 off for my government employee EPP, $100 instant rebate and free shipping. I did have to pay $37 sales tax though, grrr. $479.59 before tax, ended up being $516.76 out the door. . Estimated build date is 12/2 which should have it at my door in plenty of time for me to take it out of the box and goof around with it for a few days. Err, I mean, in plenty of time for Christmas!

I know I probably could have saved some money by just getting one of the Ubid ones and throwing in a $99 blu-ray player but I wanted it to have HDMI too and those slimline cards aren't cheap or easy to find. This way I get a fully integrated solution and a full year of warranty.
 
oh yeah and 90 days no payments with HP Home and Home Office Store credit card. Yippee! I'll pay it off before the end of 90 days but it gives me some leeway to spend some more money on other people's gifts and then pay for this in January.
 
Just got the 9500GT yesterday, and not a moment too soon - my 8600GT was obviously eating away at my PSU and started crashing left and right after having it in there after a month. The card is fine though, with a 65wt CPU it's just too much strain on the SL if you game for any extended period of time. Plus it's one noisy bastard, so I'd recommend to avoid the 8600GT unless you have a 45wt CPU, and even that may be pushing it over time.

The 9500GT is nice and quiet in normal operation, the fan does ramp up when gaming but goes back to near silent at the desktop after a minute or so (Vista as well). Performance wise I'd say it's pretty much on par with the 8600GT stock, in some older games the DDR2 ram holds it back and I can notice a little more slowdown than the 8600GT such as in games like Q4 in high res, but we're talking perhaps 10-15% slower in some rare situations. In other games it seems a little bit faster, the extra 256megs of memory helps such as in Gears of War where running with high textures has less stuttering than medium on my 8600GT. So performance wise over all it's a wash, I may try to overclock it a bit and see.

I've got a kill-a-watt on order so I'm going to be running a stress test and measuring total system load during a benchmark, I don't have any other cards in the system other than this. I doubt it's anywhere near stressing the system as bear in mind HP will sell you a quad-core slimline with a 9500GS + TV tuner card but I'm curious.

So this is pretty much it unless you want to add an additional power supply, Galaxy supposedly has a GDDR3 9500GT LP version but I haven't seen it available anywhere. It would likely give better results and closer to an 8600GTS, but for now the XFX9500GT is as good as it's going to get.

Edit: Should also add that heat is extremely negligible - just slightly warm after a decent gaming session, so it may be possible to cram the TV Tuner in the adjacent slot without issue.
 
Regional Coffee, I've got a XFX9500GT a month ago and put it on a Slimline s3620f (Intel E5200) with 160W PSU. I ran Crysis, Sins of a Solar Empire, Dead Space, Bioshock and Company of Heroes @ 1024x768 and got noise and no overheat. All those games ran above 30fps. It's a great card, but I want to know your Slimline specs and PSU. I don't know if I'm pushing mine too much!
 
Hi,

I want to upgrade my graphics card and HP recommends one that uses 25w or less. Since my Slimline is brand new I don't want to take any chances on power hungry cards. I found that the Sapphire 4550 only uses 20-25w, but would it be worth the upgrade from my standard Nvidia 9300GE card? What other options do I have?
 
Regional Coffee said:
Just got the 9500GT yesterday, and not a moment too soon - my 8600GT was obviously eating away at my PSU and started crashing left and right after having it in there after a month. The card is fine though, with a 65wt CPU it's just too much strain on the SL if you game for any extended period of time. Plus it's one noisy bastard, so I'd recommend to avoid the 8600GT unless you have a 45wt CPU, and even that may be pushing it over time.

The 9500GT is nice and quiet in normal operation, the fan does ramp up when gaming but goes back to near silent at the desktop after a minute or so (Vista as well). Performance wise I'd say it's pretty much on par with the 8600GT stock, in some older games the DDR2 ram holds it back and I can notice a little more slowdown than the 8600GT such as in games like Q4 in high res, but we're talking perhaps 10-15% slower in some rare situations. In other games it seems a little bit faster, the extra 256megs of memory helps such as in Gears of War where running with high textures has less stuttering than medium on my 8600GT. So performance wise over all it's a wash, I may try to overclock it a bit and see.

I've got a kill-a-watt on order so I'm going to be running a stress test and measuring total system load during a benchmark, I don't have any other cards in the system other than this. I doubt it's anywhere near stressing the system as bear in mind HP will sell you a quad-core slimline with a 9500GS + TV tuner card but I'm curious.

So this is pretty much it unless you want to add an additional power supply, Galaxy supposedly has a GDDR3 9500GT LP version but I haven't seen it available anywhere. It would likely give better results and closer to an 8600GTS, but for now the XFX9500GT is as good as it's going to get.

Edit: Should also add that heat is extremely negligible - just slightly warm after a decent gaming session, so it may be possible to cram the TV Tuner in the adjacent slot without issue.
Click to expand...

What? What 8600GT do you have? The PNY and Chaintech versions made virtually no noise and the Chaintech one I had installed in my Slimline (65W AMD and 160W PSU) for quite a number of months never BSOD or locked up once.

drpenicilin said:
Regional Coffee, I've got a XFX9500GT a month ago and put it on a Slimline s3620f (Intel E5200) with 160W PSU. I ran Crysis, Sins of a Solar Empire, Dead Space, Bioshock and Company of Heroes @ 1024x768 and got noise and no overheat. All those games ran above 30fps. It's a great card, but I want to know your Slimline specs and PSU. I don't know if I'm pushing mine too much!
Click to expand...

You're fine.
 
I've been reading bits and pieces from this thread all day, as I seem to run into it on Google any time I try to find information on my problem. I was trying to install a better video card into my HP s3400t, and hit a snag at the power supply. Specifically, I want a GeForce 9600GT 512mb low profile card. I never could find a power supply that was appropriate, though I likely could with enough looking.

Instead, I've decided to rebuild the computer, almost completely. I plan to salvage what I can from the Slimline, but I'm replacing my motherboard, video card, and case. Thus the reason I decided to sign up and post. Money's not going to be a huge issue, as I'm a university student and getting plenty of financial aid. The issue is that I'd rather not waste money. So I decided to come here and ask about some things so that I could better prepare myself for the coming purchases.

The case I'm looking at is an Athena Power case, specifically this one: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16811192088

The motherboard I'm considering is a uATX nVidia card, found here: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16813131348

The best deal I could find on a low profile 512 GeForce 9600 GT was at buy.com: http://www.buy.com/prod/kfa2-by-galaxy-geforce-9600gt-512mb-256-bit-pci-e-2-0-directx-10-low/q/loc/101/208448447.html

I have one really big question about the configuration I'm looking at. Mainly, I need to know whether or not anyone knows a good store online to purchase internal power supply cable adapters. I like to buy things all together, and I can't find any one place to pick up more than one or two types. I think the biggest ones I need are two 4-pin molex to 15-pin SATA adapters for the DVD and HDD from the Slimline, and one 4-pin molex to 6-pin PCI-E for the 9600 GT.

It seems I'll also have to replace my copy of Vista. It's gonna hurt my pocket book, but I can get a student discount so I should be alright.

Also, I would just like any advice or commentary on everything I've selected. This will be my first PC and any help or advice would be more than appreciated. About the uATX motherboard and the small case, I know I could build a full size computer, but I live in a fairly small home with more than a few people. Space is an issue, so the computer staying small is a prime concern. It's why I bought the Slimline in the first place. :)

Sorry it's so long, but I've been milling over this literally all day. It's kind of nerve-wracking. The worst part is that I don't get any more Fin Aid until January, and I kinda went hog-wild this semester and blew what I had, so I won't be able to start until then. The bright side is that this gives me more time to figure out what I need to do. Anyway, thanks in advance for whatever help is given.
 
Not sure if this post is really on topic in this thread, but I'll throw you a bone...

First off, I question why you are even using the parts from the slimline, since in essence, you are doing a fresh build. The only parts you seem to be using are cpu/hd/dvd/mem, none of which are slimline specific. It would prob only cost you another $150 to leave those parts in the slimline and keep the computer as-is.

Keeping this on topic - the problems most people face with the slimline are size and power. Getting the new case seems to only gain you some power. Honestly, it may seem intimidating, but there are at least 20-30 posts on here regarding swapping out the power supply. There are both internal and external solutions. Similar form factor and 5.25" solutions. They all cost ~$50 and only require some wire splicing/adapter mods.

In the sake of efficiency($), what else does the athena case really get you? Although, it isnt a bad case, although the purple light is cheesy in my opinion. Also, to save money, if you are going to part-out the slimline, why not use the motherboard. What does the asus get you that the slimline MB doesnt have? Regarding video card, the 9600GT is great. Im running it in my slimline. Newegg has that as well, so you can buy from the same place and it appears cheaper here:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16814162016

Trying to think along your lines, you asked about power adapters...the 9600GT comes with a 4-pin to 6-pin molex adapter. The molex to sata adapter can be found at newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16812201002

The search function is an amazing thing. I think thats the just of my $.02.
 
To update from my last post about rebuilding the Slimline in a Thermaltake LANBox Lite, I'm very happy to report that it's been an almost complete success.

We've installed a Palit 4850 Sonic video card and used the 500w power supply from my wife's previous machine. The machine runs like a champ; the wireless connection has not been tested, but Windows does see it.

We went with the Palit card because of the tests reporting low temperatures and low noise. I never expected all this though, even with all the fans that are in there, there is very little noise from this box. Were it not for the blue led on the front fan, it's actually not easy to tell if it's on - maybe cutting the power led leads from the case will be a good idea after all.

All said and done, we've invested another ~$280 (cdn) into the slimline between the new case and video card, but for less than $600 total, we've built a very solid gaming rig.

@KysoMyral - The HP board is actually a pretty decent board, you could save a good bit of cash with the method I used unless you're really keen on building a new machine.

-

Does anyone know if there's a "non-HP" version of Vista that's legitimatly available? The HP version is running well enough, but my wife's first language is Portuguese and HP only gave us an option for English or French and you can't change it after chosing one during the initial setup.
 
My 8600GT was the Galaxy GDDR3 version, it's known to be noisy but it was faster than the DDR chaintech. The extra power required of GDDR3 (?) may have been the back breaker.

My CPU is a 65wt 5000.
 
Not so much. GDDR3 uses less power than GDDR2 which is why your power draw problem makes no sense. I really don't know what the issue would have been with that card...perhaps overheating?
 
Sadly, first lockup tonight while playing Bioshock for 3 hours with my 9500GT. It started with Windows Vista sounds inside the game, just like connecting and disconnecting a flash drive, then it freezes while loading a saved game. I looked for a temperature measurement and got 51C for CPU and 45C for GPU...
 
Ah, got the DDR2/GDD3 power consumption mixed up then. It wasn't overheating, as this is the second system this card has gone into and I was monitoring the temps when it started locking up, they were all within a reasonable range and it's only after ~2 months of use with each system it started happening.

Power consumption chart here:

http://mark.zoomcities.com/images/gfx/GFXpowerchartby3d.png

The 9500GT 512mb is among the lowest power consumption cards in that lineup, with a peak power consumption of 28wts. The 8600gts is at 47, the 8600GT at 52 - why the GTS is lower than the GT I'm not sure. Different vendors, power supplies, motherboard quality can all play a factor, who knows - someone may never have a problem with their 8600gt in a 65wt X2 slimline, others might.

When you're getting up around 50 though in such a system with a 160wt PSU you are taking somewhat of a risk though that over time it will be straining the PSU, at least that's my best guess as it's the most reasonable explanation I can think of for occuring over two systems with the same card. When you add up the CPU peak consumption, motherboard, HD, ram, DVD, and factor in that no power supply is 100% efficient, taking on another ~50watts at peak is really getting close to the edge.

Edit: Of course, all this hand-ringing over peak power usage doesn't necessarily have to be if HP ever gets around to updating these little buggers. The _smaller_ Acer has a 220wt PSU along with gig Enet and esata, not to mention integrated video made in the past 2 years. Time to move on, HP.:mad:
 
drpenicilin said:
Sadly, first lockup tonight while playing Bioshock for 3 hours with my 9500GT. It started with Windows Vista sounds inside the game, just like connecting and disconnecting a flash drive, then it freezes while loading a saved game. I looked for a temperature measurement and got 51C for CPU and 45C for GPU...
Click to expand...
Those are well within tolerances for the CPU and GPU, that's actually quite a low temp for the GPU actually. I don't necessarily think it was heat related.
 
Hello all :D
I just signed up for these forums and I have been reading posts in these thread for close to the past 3 days. And if there is one thing I have learned about computer people, it is that they seldom agree with each other, which doesn't help the decision making process :p

So, the story...I'm getting an HP Slimline s3600t model as a Christmas present. I go to college so I use it for pretty much everything: gaming, tv, email, homework, etc.

Now, the model that I have is customizable and it's already been purchased, but certain parts are interchangeable and capable of being upgraded, but as I've seen that is a hard thing to do with a case that is so small. There is an open PCle x16 Express slot opening and it is the video card that I am looking at upgrading.

My System Specs are as follows:
. Intel (R) Core (TM) 2 Duo Processor (E4700 - 2.6 GHz)
. Integrated Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 7100, VGA
. 2 GB DDR2-800 MHz SDRAM
. Vista 32-bit system (SP1)

Obviously, the low part of this as far as gaming goes, which is what I'm concerned about, is the video card. I can't seem to find a general agreement as to which low-profile card to pick. I have heard the XFX 9500 GT mentioned a lot in regards to power supply demands. I've also heard of the Galaxy 8600 GT.
I just want to know if my 180W power supply that comes with the computer will be able to handle this card. I'm trying to make the upgrade to better gaming as cheap as possible without having to completely overhaul the system aka have to buy a new power supply and install that as well.
 
^ Blaire, don't get the 8600GT. Get the 9500GT instead. If you want to be even safer and don't care about FPS, get the 8500GT.
 
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