HP Pavilion P6540Y

HP Pavilion P6540Y

This review is part of our , covering specific fixed configurations of popular systems that can be found in retail stores. The HP Pavilion p6540y has a lot going for it. The dark gray exterior ("magnesium," according to HP), provides a welcome alternative from the sea of staid black midtowers on retail shelves. We're also generally satisfied with its comparative value. Relying on a quad-core AMD CPU, this $699 PC trades performance wins with Intel-based systems that come in both more and less expensive. We wish it had a few more connectivity options, but in general, for its features and strong multicore performance, we can recommend this desktop to anyone shopping for an everyday midtower. HP isn't the first tower desktop vendor to branch out from black recently. We've seen two PCs from Dell that took a similar chance, and while we're not necessarily looking to encourage an old iMac-style color explosion, we wouldn't mind if other vendors got to know the color wheel, or at least the grayscale band. Its dark gray exterior might be new, but the Pavilion p6540y's external features are familiar. HP hasn't updated its core midtower design in a while, which means this system lacks the upswept port panel and a gadget tray like we've seen on more recent PCs from Dell, Gateway, and other mainstream vendors.