I have been very impressed with my Asus A27F-X1 laptop, which I bought just under 12 months ago so I decided to stick with the quality I know and purchased the Asus Essentio CM1730-01 desktop computer for $400 ($429 incl taxes) to replace my aging Compaq Presario F700 series laptop that we were using as the hub of our Home Theater Personal Computer (HTPC) setup.
I upgraded from the Compaq laptop for a couple of reasons, firstly no HDMI output so I was limited to 720p resolution through a SVGA cable connected to my 40in LCD TV. Secondly the laptop had an bad overheating problem, it would often shut off when streaming online media or streaming video files to the PS3 as soon as 30 minutes into playback at times plus the fan noise was immense, ruined any movie with a more subtle soundtrack! Thirdly no digital output for 5.1 surround sound, the CM1730-01 has digital output through HDMI and a separate optical port!
The Essentio CM1730-01 isn’t the most powerful desktop on the market but it also isn’t the most expensive, there are plenty of similar spec machines out there that cost over $100 more, so it rates high in the “bang for your buck” stakes. The relatively small tower case (14.2in [h] x 6.7in [w] x 15.9in [d]) packs in a AMD Athlon II X2 220 (2.8Ghz), 4GB of DD3 RAM, 750GB SATA 7200rpm HDD, onboard ATI Radeon 3000 graphics, onboard high-definition 8-channel audio, Gigabit network card and DL DVD-RW drive, delivering a “Windows Experience” base score of 4.5, which is based upon the weakest link, which in this case is the graphics card. But that’s not a problem for me as I don’t intend to play games, the CM1730-01 will be used exclusively as a server/HTPC. But if you are a gamer, a PCI Express x16 card slot is available for a more powerful graphics card!
On the outside of the case, there are 8 USB2 ports, two on the front, six at the rear. Also at the rear there are VGA, DVI and HDMI video outputs, digital optical output and six channel analogue audio outputs, 3.5mm jacks, a 10/100/1000Mb RJ45 Ethernet port and a legacy PS/2 port. There is also the ubiquitous media card reader which reads SD/HC, xD, MMC and Sony’s Memory Stick / PRO. On the inside, there are two PCI slots in addtion to the aforementioned PCIe x16 slot.
Like most new computers, Windows 7 Home Premium comes preinstalled, first bootup was painless, I simply plugged in Ethernet, HDMI, USB wireless keyboard/mouse receiver, 2TB external hard disk drive and finally the power cable before pressing the power button on the top centre of the case. All devices were recognised first time and connection to the Internet was instantaneous. Once past the initial configuration/personalisation stage, I was surprised to see how little junk was installed out of the box. Only a PC-Cillin trial, Microsoft Office 2010 trial, Bing Bar, Best Buy PC App and miscellaneous Windows ‘Live’ software, all of which I uninstalled straight away with the exception of Photo Gallery and Movie Maker. The lack of bloatware pre-installed was a refreshing change, I wish all Original Equipment Manufacturers would take a leaf out of Asus’ book.
Performance wise, it has exceeded my expectations at this price point, I have installed BOINC (Berkeley Open Infrastructure for Network Computing), running both SETI@Home and Einstein@Home programs, and it runs each work unit on a par with my Intel Core i3 330M based A72F-X1, just that it runs two work units simultaneously instead of the four of the Intel Core i3. Amazingly, the CPU temperature hasn’t risen above 35°C even at 100% constant load and I can hardly hear the fans from the sofa eight feet away! Video streaming performance is excellent, streaming 480p Flash video flawlessly and also playing 720p H.264/MPEG-4 AVC video perfectly on my 1080p 40in LCD Television. Also streaming to the PS3 via PS3 Media Server is flawless, no more DNLA dropouts that were frequent on the machine that the Asus Essentio replaced. Should any questions arise, pdf2word.org/ – is your answer.
Overall I would wholeheartedly recommend the Asus Essentio CM1730-01 to anyone, performance above it’s price point and it’s almost silent in operation, so it’s great for home theatre applications. It looks good and it’s relatively small footprint allows it to be placed almost anywhere, I have it sitting behind my HDTV and is almost invisible unless you walk around to the back of the TV. I’m very happy with my choice and it has raised Asus’ stock in my mind; great machine for the price!
just upgraded mine with a better power supply since the one provided came w built in graphics had to upgrade psupply for nvdia ddr5 gtx card dual 6 pin power adapters, but surprisingly enough due to width of tower, the NVDIA gtx 460 Enthusiast edition 1gb ddr5 etc…. works surprisingly well with the Amd x2 dual core. The DDR 3 makes the whole thing run smoother and unless u a hardcdore gamer like me the asus 399 hdmi combo can’t be beat, but the hard drive isn’t 7200 rpm.
The hard drive is listed as 7200rpm in the specs, but I have just done a test and it only seems to be able to produce a transfer rate of roughly 55MB/Sec, which falls well below the 7200rpm advertised speed. But despite that, it’s still a good machine, transferring a 4.3GB DVD file in about 90 seconds.
I knew that tiny little hard drive couldn’t run at 7200 rpm, lol. I however was able to take the 750 gb hard drive out w/ little effort (due to the easy to swap parts asus incorporated in the tower) and REPLACE it with my older Seagate 500 gb 7200 rpm hard drive and am now getting up to 3 gb transfer speed, that’s 3000 mb/sec so it was definately worth buying this system just for the motherboard and case… considering it has PCI Express 2nd Generation card slot, my Nvdia card and AMD processor seem to be getting along quite well, the design was built to be upgraded provided you account for cooling issues. Fortunately the Back of the tower has the perfect size for basically any cooling fan on the market and was VERY EASY to install. I play Star Wars Old Republic online and could make it minimum with the HD 3000 (barely) which is actually good for integrated motherboard but I was VERY IMPRESSED with the ease in which the Essentio was able to handle such powerful cards. I had a heck of a time w/ my previous dell xps 410 installing ANYTHING new hardware wise. So after I took the Asus out of the box, I put in a new power supply (my old one lol) a small fan and 1 GB DDR5 Nvdia Gtx 460 card, removed old drive replaced w/ 7200 rpm seagate, reformatted and then re-installed windows 7 and it worked without a glitch. I am a computer tech and it is not usually so easy to swap 1 part let alone 4 without run into some kind of problem. So if you want a RELIABLE computer you can add anything you want to without worrying about compatibility you should grab this sucker and just remember to account for heating issues if you do add a high power card because it will overheat without proper power supply installed 550 watt reccomended and if need be don’t forget the cooling fan installation. Also, unless your a hardcore gamer like me you don’t have to worry about all this. But if you want to play old republic online and have a good experience, this comp is easy and ready to upgrade.
Hope my long comment helps, God bless.
Thank you for your comment Matthew, I appreciate you taking the time. I won’t be upgrading anything in the machine any time soon, for my needs it works fine out of the box, compared to the Turion X2 TL-58 / NVIDIA GeForce 7000M laptop it replaced, it’s super quick! Like yourself, my chosen type of work is within the IT technical/server administration field, so I know my way around the inside of a PC, although I haven’t opened up the Essentio, I haven’t had a need, if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it is my moto! If I wanted a monster PC I would have built it from scratch as 9 times out of 10, an OEM machine is about as upgradeable as a brick, Dell, along with HP are the worst for creating machines that are not user upgradable. At the price point, the Essentio was directly up against the Dell Inspiron I570, and I went with the Asus because of my previous good experience with their machines and bad experiences with Dell.
I just have a real quick question. I have recently bought a asus 1730-01 . I have a geforce 8500gt 1g graphics card from my old computer . Will this work in my new computer ? Will i have to upgrade my power supply and the cooling units? I like to play mmorpg’s and are wanting to see if this will work?
Stephanie, technically your GeForce 8500 is compatible, as it’s a PCI-E card but I can’t tell you whether you’ll need an uprated power supply as I my Essentio is completely stock. But reading Matt’s comment above, it looks likely that the installed PSU won’t be upto task, so expect to have to shell out for a more powerful PSU. The obvious answer is pop in your 8500 and see what happens, the worst that will happen is that it won’t work. Sorry I can’t be of more help!
What kind of power supply do you recomend.. Do I have to buy a high priced power supply or can I just go with a reasonable priced power supply at a lower cost 200 bux.
You certainly don’t need to spend $200 on a power supply, however you’ll need a power supply with SATA power supply cables, I would recommend 500w or more, 600w would be ideal as it’ll give you a little headroom for expansion. You can buy a 500w power supply for less than $60 from Amazon.com, don’t buy from Best Buy, they over charge massively!
Ok cool thanx you have been very helpful. Great forum btw!
Thank you to all of you – I need a desktop badly mine is getting old and i just dont want to spend the money it would take to repair then try and upgrade. All of you have made my decision for me. I’m not a gamer, but a college student, my daughter is also and the other kids use it for “social network sites”.. But I was a little worried with the Asus name, not knowing much about it. But as long as it has what it says can we say “SOLD”. Thanks again to all of you.
I just bought this at Best Buy on sale for $299. Looked it over in the store and the employee even let me remove the cover when I asked to check out the make and quality of the parts. The display model had a Toshiba 2.5″ laptop HDD, 7200 rpm. The RAM was one Adata 4gb stick with three more open banks. The specs seemed solid for what I wanted it for (my wife just surfs, facebooks, emails and light word processing). I was a bit surprised by the laptop HDD in a desktop tower but thought it made sense to run cooler and at lower power. The HDD in the display, which runs all day, was cool to the touch even with no case fan. Satisfied with the components, I made the purchase along with another 4gb RAM for a cheap upgrade. Now I’m home and the first thing I do is pop off the cover. Inside is a standard size HDD (can’t tell what manufacturer) and a 4gb stick of ASint (???) brand memory. This sorta bothers me. I understand that these cheap computers at big box stores usually have mass produced lower quality parts, but to have a mix and match of components differing from unit to unit….. I’ll have to do some research on the HDD to see how it stacks up against what I THOUGHT I was getting.
Thank you for your contribution Keldog; I haven’t opened the case to see what is inside. I’m happy with the performance out of the box, it does what I bought it for without any slowdown or problems, had it running solid since I bought it six months ago. I understand your annoyance but at the same time; a reasonable spec tower for less than $300, I’m not surprised to hear that it’s not an absolute spec of components in every box; I would suspect that even more expensive units would have differing components, it’s all about maximising profit, buy whatever is cheapest at the time of manufacture!
Jason,
Thank you for the information about the power supply. Will you please take a moment to elaborate on your recommendation? Specifically, is there a power supply model number that you would recommend? One that would fit the “cm” box? I am trying to turn this thing into a mid-range gaming machine. I plan to replace the processor, cooling system, and fan. Thanks in advance for any help you can offer.
All,
Do you have any specific recomendations for a cooling fan, processor, hard drive, and power supply? I am trying to build a mid-range gaming machine.
Scoot; I can’t give you specifics about what to buy as I haven’t even opened the case of my CM1730-01 and have no intention of doing so as the stock machine suits my need perfectly (if it aint broke; don’t fix it). But maybe someone else would be able to give you better advice who has made the alterations you are planning.