Asus Essentio Desktop with Intel Core i7 Processor

"Runs everything beautifully... except its vista... and vista, doesn't like anything... if it didn't come with the free software upgrade, I wouldn't recommend it.



Vista is the dealbreaker, but otherwise i'm loving it."

"I've had this computer for about 2 weeks now, and I'm still genuinely excited about it. This PC is a massive powerhouse, ready for most anything you can throw at it, right out of the box. After having done extensive research over the course of a couple weeks, I realized that it's capabilities rival many "gaming" rigs that cost much more, if not twice as much.



The good stuff:



- The case is enormous, leaving lots of wiggle rooms for customization, add-ons, etc.



- The Asus Rampage II GENE microATX motherboard is x58 compliant / socket 1366, which means it will support all the newest processor chips for many years into the future.



- The Intel "Core i7" processor chips are the best you can get right now.



- The 9GB DDR3-1333 RAM memory is probably more than you'll need for quite a while, and is VERY fast.



- The nvidia GeForce GTX 260 graphics card is an excellent gaming card. It's not the best, but it's very close, and Supports 2 monitors. I play GTA IV on this PC just as it came out of the box, and here are my benchmarks for this very demanding game:



Average FPS: 50.15

Duration: 37.09 sec

CPU Usage: 47%

System memory usage: 51%

Video memory usage: 97%



Graphics Settings

Video Mode: 1920 x 1200 (60 Hz)

Texture Quality: High

Texture Filter Quality: Very High

View Distance: 28

Detail Distance: 100



Hardware

Microsoft Windows Vista" Home Premium

Service Pack 2

Video Adapter: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 260

Video Driver version: 182.50

Audio Adapter: Speakers (SoundMAX Integrated Digital HD Audio)

Intel(R) Core(TM) i7 CPU 920 @ 2.67GHz



Not bad. Not bad at all, but...



As good as this PC is, there are some things about it that aren't so good, such as...



- Again, the case is absolutely, positively massive to epic proportions. It is literally the largest PC case I have ever seen in my life.



- Only 1 generic DVD-DL burner. Good luck finding firmware updates, and drivers for this unit.



- Skimpy 3-in1 media card reader which accepts only SD (Secure Digital), Compact Flash, and MS (Memory Stick Duo) cards. These are the most popular, but if you have anything else, like an XD, then you'll need to buy an external all in one card reader.



- The plastic front facade feels cheap, and flimsy. The door / flap near the top which covers the front USB, and audio ports doesn't open far enough to offer proper access to the ports. In fact, when I plugged a USB into one of those ports, that flap was putting so much pressure on the plug that I thought it was going to snap the solder connections to the board inside. Unfortunately, it's a poor design that renders the front USB, as well as the front audio ports virtually unusable. (See photo)



- No Wireless Internet



- Enourmous case. You might need a U-Haul to get it home,



All in all, this is the very best performing PC you're going to find off the shelf anywhere. Be prepared to void your warranty if you want to upgrade The optical drive, add more RAM, or add another video card, which would really put this unit over the top."

"I was hesitant to buy this PC when researching online. I had my eyes focused on The HP Elite with core i7 because it (seemed) to come with a lil more. And at first look. I thought the case on this Asus PC was ugly, and not as functional as the HP model. The Asus does not come with a second optical drive. It only comes with one drive buildt in. But there is an open slot to add ANY other optical drive you want. This turns out to be the ONLY downfall though. And I plan to buy a Blue Ray player to easily add in to the second slot on this PC. As for the rest... this PC out performs the HP model I spoke above above. You get what you pay for. In this case, better quality parts that make up the inside of the PC. A higher PSU, and so forth.



I love this PC! Once I bought it, I realized I'm lucky that Asus chose this case. It's HUGE. Which means it has room inside it, to add all the upgrades and big graphic cards I may want to add in it years from now. The case is also sleek looking.

Right out of the box. This machine is FAST. You will not need to upgrade it, besides for a second OP drive, for many years. No bloatware on this machine. WOW plays on ULTRA settings, and the PC performs smoothly and FAST. There are many programs that help you tweek it's performance if you WISH to. Something missing on many retail PCs. This PC seems close to a geek building their own dream PC... but someone placed it on a retail shelf. Buy it. Don't hesitate.

This PC is awesome... right out of the box. As is."

"I researched the best computer to run Cyberlink's Power Director video editing software, and this was by far the best deal for my needs. Power Director takes advantage of the i7 chipset AND the GTX260 GPU. I looked at other systems at Cyperpower and ibuypower, but for 1,199 ($1,313 out the door) this could have been a really nice deal!



So, I purchased the computer today, brought it home...didn't work. Spent hours trying to figure it out...nothing. Lack of documentation made it really difficult. Even the online support was hard to decipher. Eventually, I took it back and had the Geek Squad check it out. Bad motherboard. The good news is Best Buy quickly and efficiently replaced the computer with a new one (the last one in store).



So I take this one home, fire it up, and you guessed it, it didn't work! Took the SECOND computer back. This time the video card had come unseated and was disconnect from the mobo. The Geek Squad tech had to bend it to get it back in place. Obviously, nobody would want their sweet GTX260 video card in that condition.



Altogether six hours of troubleshooting, trips to the store, and still no computer. To their credit, the Best Buy staff were courteous, efficient, and never made any part of the experience worse."

"I've built my own PCs and know there can be a lot more tweakable PCs out there cyberpower, falcon northwest, alienware, etc., in terms of overclocking but the Asus Essentio Desktop Intel Core i7 with 9GB of ram, 64-bit Vista Premium, 1TB drive (model CG5290-BP007) with a free upgrade to Windows 7 on its release is a pretty impressive machine. Best Buy could probably knock off $200 from the $1229 retail price to make it even better.



This is the fastest machine at Best Buy as far as I can tell from the stock of specs in-store and on their website.



But if you want to fly Microsoft Flight Simulator X at a decent frame rate, I found the machine. Note that I dropped in an extra 300GB Western Digital Velociraptor (also sold @ Best Buy), picked up a BFG Geforce GTX 285 OC 1GB video card (from a local store, Best Buy didn't have these in the store) and an Antec Earthwatts 650w Power Supply, granted I could have picked up one with more Amps and headroom, but this was what they have. I'd advise staying away from rocketfish and especially thermaltake in terms of reliability. I took out the Asus Geforce GTX 260 896GB video card (no I didn't even try to fly with it, it would probably work too) and I took out the 450 watt power supply - I can reuse the GTX 260 in another computer.



I load up the 300GB Western Digital Velociraptor FSX, FSX Acceleration plus add-ons Ground Environment X, Ultimate Terrain, FSGenesis, Real Environment Extreme, Turbine Sound Studios, Samoshin Natural World Trees, some Aerosoft/Flytampa/CaptainSim/DreamFleet/Flight1 add-ons and VoxATC, FrapsX, FSX NHancer and TrackIR Pro v4, Saitek X52 Joystick, Saitek Pro FlightYoke & Throttle Quadrant, and Saitke Pro Rudder Pedals and BAM FSX is running between 65 and 120 FPS (if you test with Fraps actually in the high 30s to mid-40s), I'll have to show some benchmarks and this all without tweaking the fsx.cfg file to increase clarity of textures that are at a long distance (15+ miles) from the aircraft.



Note that the aircraft you fly affects the simulation and the extreme thunderstorm setting brought the 65-120 FPS (shift-Z to view) into the mid-30s. Everything moves seamlessly with no stutters whatsoever.



I have all graphics settings maxed out except for water, autogen and traffic.



Lastly, the Asus AI utility allows you to adjust bios settings and a 3% overclock for turbo mode Core i7-920 chip - nothing spectacular. I you might be able to overclock from 2.6GHz to over 3.0GHz, but you will have to know what you are doing. The FSX frame rates is based upon the basic 3% overclock, stock cooler and that's it.



I highly recommend Best Buys Asus Essentio CG5290-BP007 machine for Flight Simulator X!"

"I edit HD video & digital photos and was looking for a second computer to use while the first one was tied up. I debated about whether I should build my own or buy a prefabricated one. After pricing it out, this computer came in pretty close to what I would spend building one. Plus, I wanted to try out the new core i7 processor and DDR3 ram.



CNET wrote on their review of this machine that it would handle anything thrown at it, except for professional level video editing. That concerned me when I was about to make the purchase. However, I decided that if it didnt work out, I could always return it.



I work with both HD video from a Canon XH-A1 and Sony AVCHD files. I was concerned that I wouldnt be able to work with HD video without a raid setup. And for the most part that has turned out to be true. I can edit HD videoand encode/render HD videobut not at the same time. The 1 single hard drive seems to be bottleneck.



My other editing computer has 4 hd RAID setup, plus additional hard drives (operating system on its own). It allows me to do any step of the editing/encoding/burning process at the same time. That computer is running Vista Home on a Quad Core 6600 with 4 gigs of ram.



I might consider adding an additional hard drive, or adding an external raid setup in the future. Supposedly the ASUS supports RAID, but I havent found any documentation on it and theres not a whole lot of expansion room inside. Big case, but not a whole lot of expansion bays.



My only other quirk is the placement of the USB ports/media card reader on the front. They are behind a flip down door which when opened dont make for convenient access to the USB ports or the DVD-Rom drive below it. I always seem to have something plugged into it (and with needing to burn DVDs all the time) it gets in the way. I am this close to removing the front flap. I will probably just add a USB hub plugged into the back and place that on my desk.



One more thingmake sure your monitor supports DVI. This computer does not come with any adapters even though it has the off the shelf GTX-260. I bought the GTX-285 for my other computer and it came with all the adaptersso its unfortunate that ASUS/Best Buy leave the adapters out of the system. Its not a big deal because you probably have a DVI monitor/the correct connectors already if youre buying this system. But, its the principal that matters.



Bottom linefor editing HD video this ASUS computer will work. However, dont expect to do a lot of multi-tasking video-wise unless you make some additional purchases. In that case, you would be better off building something more custom."

"I normally don't write reviews as who cares about my opinion? (I love this machine so well, (and windows 7, but keep in mind it comes pre-installed with Vista--no big deal), that I wrote basically this same review only it was more about praising Microsoft's Win7 that is coming out).



Anyway, Ive been dying for an Intel I7 processor as my XP machine, which is about 6 years old, is far past its lifetime. Obviously the I7 is built for a 64 bit OS. I used to order all of the parts from an online popular part vendor, and then build the machine myself, but the last one I built was too flakey and it turned out being a stressful pain in the behind. So I just kept my eye open and for the first time I actually bought RETAIL (gasp)



I found the ASUS CG5290 from Bestbuy. Yes, maybe I could have built it myself cheaper, yada, yada, but I didnt want to deal with it. With this, I could take it home and find out immediately if it was a good pc or not--minus the stress of screwing something up, and of course it fed the need for immediate gratification. Anyway, it came with Vista 64 pre-installed. I ran vista for a while and it seemed to be fine, but then I saw the free Windows 7 RC and downloaded it.



IT KICKS!!! First of all, its extremely Win7 is FASTmuch faster than vista, I mean noticeably faster!! And I even got a 32 bit license key just for the heck of it and installed on my Dell D620 Laptop and it even runs fast on that!!! I am pretty blown away by this pc and the new win7 OS, and now I am hating my old XP machine it suddenly seems very clunky. I was able to get used to everything on Windows 7 and found out how to deal with the new UAC (User Account Control) situations (white papers everywhere on how to set it for your comfort level).



This is the first OS that microsoft has produced that I actually want to PAY FOR!!!! (..again.., GASP!). Anyway, this is an excellent deal and it is SO cool. Sony Vegas Pro renders video in a fraction of time it took on my old clunker. Good job ASUS (and bestbuy)."

"I am a software developer and became interested in this computer mainly for its motherboard and graphics card. The first unit I bought 3 weeks ago, that was messed up on arrival, it was frequently hanging up and restarting unpredictably. Had to return that and felt very bad for time spent. Then after a week of more research still came to conclusion on same PC, so bought same once again, this time it worked great out of box untill,,,,, alas,,,, whenever I would enable IIS or install Microsoft Visual Studio (which contains a stripped down version of IIS), after that the the windows shell would go crazy on mouse commands. I could open programs but couldn't close/minimize/maximize them, neither could I give mouse commands to client area of windows. Thinking it an issue with vista-hardware-software combination, I installed Windows 7 Release Candidate. Sadfully despite completely clean reinstall, the same problem persisted in Windows 7 too. Now I was reasonalbe certain that the only place state (or mis-state) could have persisted was outside hard disk, perhaps in BIOS or inside the mouse itself. So gave a try to another HP mouse, and that fixed the problem!



As an evil in disguise through this process, I now had installed Windows 7, and liked it a lot! It has better speed (perhaps Windows 7 is better optimized for quad cores and hyperthreading), and seems stable. The important things like internet, sound, video, CD drive, flash card etc are working without additional drivers on Windows 7 RC. Although video was working fine by Windows 7 driver, just to make sure to utilize most of hardware accelleration I installed NVIDIA's Windows 7 driver for GTX260 available at their site. Now the only 'big' thing I don't have is ASUS's one-click overclocking software, but I wasn't gonna stretch beyond specs anyway, so I don't miss overclocking. If and when needed (when and why???) I am sure it is doable from BIOS or would be doable one-click when ASUS send official free upgrade to Windows 7."

"I've never felt strongly enough about a Best Buy purchase to write a review before but I want to tell you gamers out there to BUY THIS COMPUTER. The only downside I have found in two weeks is that there's basically no documentation with it and also there's no wifi on board.



Yesterday I got on the inside to install a second hard disk (which is trivial if you have the right SATA cable - lol) and was very impressed. The extra power leads and wires were bundled and placed out of the way, both sides of the case come off easily giving great access, and there is voluminous room for good airflow and proper cooling. I did notice that one of the memory cards was not completely seated, so I pushed it home - killed the whole system! Black screen on start, nothing but fans working. After a minute of reflection I simply released and reseated all the memory sticks and was once again 100% operational.



Anyway this machine flies, even with Vista64, and the overclocking possibilities are basically endless: there is a special overclocking section of the BIOS which gives you both performance data and access to to timings, voltages, all that happy stuff. I haven't started cranking it up yet tho - have not felt the need. The GTX 260 fills frames faster than anything I've had before, the machine runs almost silently, there's very little "bloat-ware" installed, and I would have given it all perfect "5" ratings but for the lack of wifi (bought a Belkin USB "N" which works slicker than a smelt), the memory card issue, and lack of proper documentation.



Could you build an equal machine for less? Maybe... but with no overall warranty or brand name so you'll lose on resale. In any case my time is valuable (at least to me!) so I was very happy with this bargain at Best Buy."

"I did lots of research before buying this computer mainly for high-end gaming, and am very satisfied. There seems no point in buying a faster i7 when this one is easily overclocked if you desire. More RAM (9GB) than what I was going to build in anyway. The GTX260 plays FAST and is a good start, I plan to buy a 295 when the price breaks. The 295, a new power supply and classier case are all I'm going to do to this machine.



One HUGE disappointment: This machine was DEAD OUT OF THE BOX. On power-up, the ASUS headlight and a fan came on, then nothing, I mean nothing else. I'm sure the BestBuy Geeks would have had a look, or ASUS would have authorized a return, but I wanted to GAME NOW! So I opened the case and found the Graphics Card and EVERY RAM board loose inside. The GTX had come loose and bounced into the lower release tabs of all 6 ram slots. The new Graphics Cards are simply too massive to just stick in the slot and put on the back of a truck for thousands of miles. I carefully reseated everything and it is now fully operational. DO NOT OPEN THE CASE unless you're comfortable with that, I'm sure BestBuy would have helped me.



This machine has an ASUS Rampage II Gene mobo, ASUS branded GTX260, "delta" 500 watt PSU, Hitachi 1TB HD, generic DVD, and "nanya" ram (3 x 2GB and 3 x 1GB). There is a suitable CPU cooler, not fancy but should work OK. I wouldn't have bought the "Arctosa" gaming keyboard, but it sells for $40 online. The case has a front mounted media reader, USBs and headphone/mic jacks, and is larger than it looks in the store, make sure you have room. Hope this helps!"