HP Envy 700-030qe review: It's the components that matter

August 14, 2013

HP’s Envy product line gives the company’s engineers an opportunity to break from building buttoned-down productivity machines and strut their stuff by crafting something that gamers and media mavens will appreciate. While you’ll never mistake the Envy 700-030qe’s cookie-cutter design for a custom-built rig from a boutique PC builder, this machine features the key components that enable it to run with that crowd, but at a far lower price point. HP planted one of the world’s most powerful CPUs in its Envy 700-030qe: Intel’s Core i7-4770. A boutique vendor, on the other hand, would have sprung for the Core i7-4770K, the completely unlocked variant that begs to be overclocked. Actually, you can custom-order your Envy with that processor for an additional $150, but you’ll inevitably want to spend more cash after the machine arrives (no matter which processor you choose) to update its negligible cooling system: The chassis is equipped with just a single fan. My enthusiasm for the Envy 700 wanes just a little on the gaming front. Still, the Envy tore through our strenuous Desktop Worldbench 8.1 benchmark suite, producing a very good score of 352. That score not only marks the Envy 700-030qe as more than 3.5 times faster than our baseline system, Acer’s all-in-one Aspire U M5-583P-6428, but puts it in contention with—you guessed it—systems from boutique vendors that are based on Intel’s Core i7-4770K processor. Digital Storm’s Virtue, for instance, earned a Worldbench score of 399. ROBERT CARDINHP's Envy 700-030qe isn't the sexiest rig I've seen (click to enlarge). A PC needs more than just a fast processor to earn a high Worldbench score. The machine also needs plenty of memory, fast storage, and a strong video card. HP gets most of that right by packing in 12GB of DDR3/1600 memory, Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 645 video card, and a 256GB SSD inside the Envy 700. The SSD is generously proportioned for a consumer rig, but that 256GB is all the storage HP provides. I’d recommend either springing for a second drive if you order one (you can order the Envy 700 with a 1TB drive as secondary storage for $90, if you want the entire system to be covered by HP’s two-year warranty), or adding a second drive as soon as you unpack it (you should be able to find a 2TB drive for a few bucks more than what HP is charging, plus tax and shipping). To read this article in full or to leave a comment, please click here

Link: http://www.pcworld.com/article/2046555/hp-envy-700-030qe-review-its-the-components-that-matter.html#tk.rss_reviews