HP Pavilion p6130f Review

On the rear of the machine is where the rest of the ports unsurprisingly lie. There are four more USB2.0 ports, bringing the total up to a rather anemic six. That’s really not enough for a modern desktop. Wireless keyboards and mice can take two, a printer can take a third, a charging cable a fourth, and now we’re left with just the two on the front. In addition to the USB ports is a FireWire port, a 10/100 Base-T network jack (there is zero excuse for this not being Gigabit Ethernet), VGA and DVI video out, 7.1 analog and coaxial digital audio out and line in audio jacks as well as PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports. It’s a little strange to see PS/2 ports on a new consumer-grade desktop; business desktops often have them so they can lock down USB ports but still add a keyboard and mouse combo. Seeing them on here is a bit of a surprise.

The best part of the expansions on the rear of the machine, however, are the two little golden ports sitting in the middle PCI-E x1 card slot. These are antenna ports for the included wireless networking antenna. Similar to 10/100/1000 wired networking, there’s very little reason why every desktop can’t include some form of wireless networking. It’s nice to be able to put a computer anywhere in the house and not have to worry about yet another cord. Just because desktops are stationary doesn’t mean people want to run cords to them, so congratulations, HP, on that.

Inside of the machine there are more opportunities for expansion; again, since this desktop isn’t plagued with the giant metal brackets for HP’s media drives, there’s plenty of room to move around. On the left is the hard drive bracket; the included drive is mounted vertically in the lower-left hand corner. There’s a second vertical drive bay right next to it that’s still open. Up above are the more traditionally-located drive bays; while the top 5.25-inch bay is obviously taken up with the DVD burner, there is the 5.25-inch bay directly below it that’s open and a 3.5-inch bay that’s open right beneath that. All of the four RAM slots are taken up by RAM DIMMs; while the 8GB of included memory is less than the 16GB maximum that’s supported, chances are 8 gigabytes will be more than anyone who buys this computer ever ends up needing.

Happily, there are a number of open expansion slots available in the Pavilion p6130f. There are a total of three PCI-E x1 slots and one PCI-E x16 slot; only one of the x1 slots actually comes pre-populated with some kind of card. That leaves three slots open for expansion, including the all-important x16 slot. Drop in a cheap discrete video card like the ATI Radeon HD4770, and users will instantly have a pretty capable gaming machine, too. You might even be able to step up to the HD4850 or HD4870, although that’s getting a little close to the 300W power supply’s limits.

Performance

While the p6130f has pretty weak integrated graphics, its comparatively powerful quad-core processor helps it to keep from lagging too far behind in the benchmarks. It not be setting any records, but neither does it stray too far from the rest of the pack.

wPrime CPU performance comparison results (lower scores mean better performance):

DesktopTime to complete wPrime 32M

HP Pavilion Elite e9120f (AMD Phenom II X4 910 @ 2.6GHz)15.771sDell Studio Slim (Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 @ 2.33GHz)16.301sGateway SX2800-01 (Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 @ 2.33GHz)16.35sHP Pavilion Slimline s5160f (Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 @ 2.33GHz)16.379sHP Pavilion p6130f (AMD Phenom I X4 9750 @ 2.4GHz)17.253s

PCMark05 overall general performance comparison results (higher scores mean better performance):

DesktopPCMark06 Score

HP Pavilion Elite e9120f (AMD Phenom II X4 910 @ 2.6GHz)8455 PCMarksHP Pavilion Slimline s5160f (Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 @ 2.33GHz)7107 PCMarksDell Studio Slim (Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 @ 2.33GHz)6887 PCMarksGateway SX2800-01 (Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 @ 2.33GHz)6539 PCMarksHP Pavilion p6130f (AMD Phenom I X4 9750 @ 2.4GHz)6220 PCMarks

PCMark Vantage overall general performance comparison results (higher scores mean better performance):

DesktopPCMark Vantage ScoreHP Pavilion Elite m9600t (Intel Core i7 920 @ 2.66GHz)6479 PCMarksAlienware Area-51 790i (Intel Core 2 Quad Q9450 @ 2.66GHz)5976 PCMarksHP Pavilion Elite e9120f (AMD Phenom II X4 910 @ 2.6GHz)5801 PCMarksHP Pavilion Slimline s5160f (Intel Core 2 Quad Q8200 @ 2.33GHz)5280 PCMarksHP Pavilion p6130f (AMD Phenom I X4 9750 @ 2.4GHz)5157 PCMarks

3DMark06 overall graphics performance comparison results (higher scores mean better performance):

Desktop3DMark06 ScoreHP Pavilion Slimline s5160f (Core 2 Quad Q8200, NVIDIA G210) 2547 3DMarksDell Studio One 19 (Pentium Dual Core E5200, NVIDIA 9400)1966 3DMarksDell Studio Slim (Core 2 Quad Q8200, ATI HD3450)1820 3DMarksApple Mac Mini (Core 2 Duo P7350, NVIDIA 9400M)1552 3DMarksHP Pavilion p6130f (Phenom I X4 9750. NVIDIA 9100)1222 3DMarks

HDTune results:

The Pavilion p6130f have come in last in some of our canned benchmark trials, it isn’t as if it’s more than a few percent behind everyone else. It’s worth noting that I believe the p6130f is the cheapest, or among the cheapest, of any of the desktops listed. Additionally, while the graphics performance of this machine is nothing to write home about, users who are looking to edit or encode audio and video files will be pleased by the ability of the quad-core processor to power through those easily digestible processes. The hard drive isn’t super fast, but it’s fast enough for most people, and isn’t so slow as to cause any real lag.

Power, Heat and Noise

The p6130f is pretty much in the middle of the road as far as the electrical usage of mainstream desktop computers goes. At idle, we clocked the power draw as running around 86 watts of electricity. AMD’s processors do a decent job of ramping things down when they don’t need all of that power, so it’s mostly the CPU taxing the socket when we pushed it to its max of pulling down 165 watts. Since it doesn’t use excessive amounts of power, it doesn’t need to run too loudly to keep things cool. Fan noise is present, and audible in a quiet room, but it isn’t very noticeable unless you really search for it. Chances are most people won’t even notice it unless the room is absolutely quiet.

Conclusion

As we stated in the introductory paragraph, the amount of computer you can get for your money these days is just incredible. I’m sure this statement has been said an embarrassing number of times over the last thirty years, and I have little doubt it’ll be said many times more in the years to come. Still, for now, the ability to get four physical processor cores, eight gigabytes of memory, a 750GB hard drive, wireless networking, card readers, and more for less than six hundred dollars. It’s a pretty great value, all things considered. For users wanting to spend a little more, there is plenty of room inside for expansion, such as bigger hard drives or a fast solid state drive, a much nicer discrete video card, or even something a little more esoteric like a discrete sound card.

There is room for improvement, of course; we’d love for HP to have included such features like its indented charging tray that sits at the top of the computer, a few more USB ports and even Gigabit Ethernet. Still, the features that are included, especially wireless networking, still represent pretty good value. The HP Pavilion p6130f is a solid, mainstream desktop. It’s a great fit for users who need a little oomph, but not need all the latest features or capability. It also gives users the chance to grow with the machine, upgrading it as their needs change. Users looking for a dependable, affordable desktop could do much worse than picking this guy up.

Pros