Its features are mostly modest, but the HP Pavilion p6654y's ($529.99 list) performance is stellar for a budget desktop—its not so modest attribute is a spacious 750GB hard drive. And not counting a rather anemic 250-watt power supply, the p6654y, which is available at Best Buy, has decent upgrade potential to boot. For its sheer performance capabilities, the p6654y presents an very good value for a budget desktop.
Design
The p6654y is one of the rare exceptions to the typically all-black HP Pavilion desktops. It still has a black metal chassis, but adds a little contrast to the mix with a gray-colored, plastic front bezel. The color might be a tad different from the usual, but the design is the same as all other Pavilion p6500- and p6600-series "everyday computing" line of desktops, such as the HP Pavilion p6627c-b ($749.99, 3 stars). This design entails a 15-in-1 media card reader at the top of the front bezel, with two accessible 5.25-inch bays below that. In the instance of the p6654y, the top bay houses a DVD burner, while the bottom bay is unoccupied. The bottom half of the bezel slides down about an inch to reveal access to two USB 2.0 ports and mic and headphone jacks.
You'll need a screwdriver to remove the single screw that holds the system's side panel in place. It slides away to reveal a clean-looking interior with plenty of room to work. All three 1X PCIe expansion slots are empty; and as the p6654y uses integrated graphics, the 16X PCIe slot remains unused as well. Two of the four DIMM slots are in use, so you could easily upgrade the system's memory from the 4GB it comes with to 8GB, without having to discard the existing memory modules. There are three internal 3.5-inch bays, of which only one is in use—it holds the 750GB 7,200rpm hard drive. Counting the spare 5.25-inch bay, there are a total of three empty drive bays; but since the motherboard has only two unused SATA ports, you could only install a total of two more drives.
If you are eyeing the p6654y as a platform for future upgrades, your options are going to be limited by the meager 250-watt power supply unit (PSU). It can probably handle a couple of additional drives and a few 1X PCIe cards, but installing anything other than a low-end graphics card in the 16X PCIe slot likely means having to upgrade the PSU as well. A MiniPCI Express on the motherboard has a half-height 802.11b/g/n card installed in it; unlike the HP Pavilion Elite HPE-410y ($929.99 street, 3 stars), which has the Wi-Fi antenna built into the case, the p6654y comes with an external antenna that attaches to a connector located on the back of the system.
Features
On the back of the system, you'll also find a 100MBps Ethernet port, as well as 6 analog audio jacks for 7.1-channel support, a digital audio connector, 4 USB 2.0 ports, and DVI and VGA-out video connectors. You won't find HDMI, eSATA, or FireWire connections on the system, but any of those types of connections might be wishful thinking for a budget desktop.
I keep waiting for an HP system to show up that doesn't have lots of bloatware preinstalled on it, and it looks like I'm going to have to keep waiting. While apps and utilities like CinemaNow Media Manager and SnapFish Picture Mover are of questionable value, you can at least take comfort in that including many of these subsidized applications helps HP keep the cost of the system down. It's not all waste, however, as a few potentially useful apps can be found among the flotsam and jetsam, such as CyberLink DVD Suite Deluxe for media-creation tasks, and the HP MediaSmart suite for media playback. The p6654y comes with a one-year limited parts and labor warranty, and HP provides toll-free supports around the clock.
Performance
Considering the p6654y's budget price tag, its overall application performance is excellent and should be sufficient for everyday tasks and most multimedia-minded jobs. Powered by a quad-core 2.8GHz AMD Athlon II X4 630 processor, the p6654y's respectable PCMark Vantage score of 5,886 bested both the triple-core 2.9GHz Athlon II X3 435-based Acer Aspire X3400's ($459.99 street) score of 5,450 and the dual-core 2.8GHz Ahtlon II X2 220-based Asus Essentio CM1630-05's ($479.99 street, 4 stars, EC) 4,503 showing. That said, both the X3400 and CM1630-05 are less expensive systems than the p6654y; on the other hand, the more expensive, dual-core 3.2GHz Intel Core i5-650-based Asus Essentio CM5675-09 ($799.99 street, 3.5 stars) handily beat them all with its score of 6,714.
The p6654y's Handbrake video-encoding performance of 2 minutes 40 seconds is also a solid showing for a budget system, which is better than what the CM1630-05 (3:12) could dish out, a statistical tie with the X3400 (2:39), but beat out by the CM5675-09 (2:20). The p6654y also had the best showing of the AMD-based systems on the Photoshop CS5 test with a time of 6:05; but once again the Intel-based CM5675-09 took the win with a time of 4:07. Perhaps the one surprise to come out of our tests is that the p6654y had the highest CineBench R11.5 score (3.15) of all of these systems, including the CM5675-09 (2.79). CineBench is a highly multi-threaded application that performs much faster when more CPU cores are present to share the workload. As the p6654y has four cores, and the other systems have either just two or three cores, it makes sense that the p6654y comes out on top on this test.
Budget systems seldom have the necessary hardware to play present-day 3D games, and the p6654y is no exception. The system's integrated ATI Radeon HD 4200 graphics engine is sufficient for casual games and HD video playback. But if you want to play games that require real 3D graphics horsepower, like Crysis or Lost Planet 2, you will need to consider a pricier system or at least take advantage of the p6654y's upgrade potential by investing in a discrete graphics card and possibly even a more powerful PSU.
Because of its budget price, it wouldn't be fair to ding the HP Pavilion p6654y for its lack of 3D gaming chutzpah—if you find a system at this price point that has good 3D gaming capabilities, snatch it up quickly, because it's probably a pricing error. For a budget desktop, the p6654y's application performance is top of its class, and therefore the system offers excellent bang-for-the-buck. It certainly lacks many of the bells and whistles that you'll find on more expensive systems, but its feature set more than holds its own against similarly priced systems, especially its generous 750GB hard drive. Still, the Asus CM1630, our Editors' Choice, is still the budget desktop to beat, with its additional video connectors, lack of bloatware, and lower price..
BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS
COMPARISON TABLE
Compare the HP Pavilion p6654y with several other desktops side by side.
• Dell Inspiron i580-6736NBC
• HP Pavilion p6654y
• Lenovo IdeaCentre K300-53162FU
• iBuypower LAN Warrior II
• Asus Essentio CM5675-09
• more
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