Asus - Essentio Desktop - 8GB Memory - 1TB Hard Drive

This was a Christmas gift for my son. He uses it for games and homework. So far its fast, reliable (though windows 8 is a little quirky) had the best hardware vs cost available. It also has minimal extra software installed. You know, all those useless programs you don't want or need "bundled" with your purchase. The keyboard and mouse are nice and come with it, when other desktops in this price range didn't.

Purchased alot during the christmas season and i now have 6 computers in my arsenal. 2 of which are last years model of this computer before they switched and put in a upgraded graphics card and lower amount of ram. 1 dell from 10 years ago that is still working perfectly. 1 new asus labtop for another review. and 1 gateway computer from 16 years ago. And last but not least is my new one here. I use 3 computers daily. 1 is my editing computer for my gaming footage. 1 is a slave computer that runs all server information and last up i have my new one which handles my day to day life and playing games and using the ps3/4. Never had any issues with the unit. Small quiet and easy to start up. Asus makes a great reliable product hence me now have 4 products that are asus. Great computer to get you started into a mid level gaming genre. If your planning to buy a high end computer and can afford about 2k. Build it and part it out and purchase. I just couldn't afford to build my comp this year so instead i bought this premade.

Bought for kids... Great for gaming.................................... Easy set up ...................................... Kids did it themselves... Able to run all of their graphics and preferred games Great gift... Good price for what tower has.... Capable of upgrading... Would by another ... Has all components and windows 8 operating system, new to windows 8 and just getting use to it. Gggggggggggggggggreeeeeaaaaattttttttttt For gammers Plays sims Xbox games Steam games

This is the second Asus computer in our family. I find that Asus uses slightly better components (since they are known as a gaming computer) in their “budget” line. Don’t be fooled by the price. This computer rocks! Lightning fast, with all the necessary ram, hard drive space and latest chip. Motherboard has a decent onboard video card (not for extreme gaming) and has room for additional ram, video card and space for additional hard drives. Very easy to set up. Windows 8 – get used to it. You won’t find a better machine for under $600.

My old computer was around 10 years old and getting really slow. This computer, in comparison, is like "lightening" speed. Was very easy to set up and get started. Having issues with Windows 8, the WiFi connection keeps dropping. After reading several on-line blogs, this is apparently a known problem. As far as I can tell everything about this computer works as it is supposed to, though. I did end up buying a different keyboard though, as the one that came with the computer didn't have white letters/numbers, so was very difficult to see.

Windows 8 came on the computer and isn't like stepping back into a new Windows 7 machine. Lots of things work differently. I found the ASUS app for controlling the screen scale but the function disappeared when I upgraded to Windows 8.1. ASUS said they didn't (at least at that time) support 8.1 and couldn't guide me to a driver update. I found the update on the AMD site and restored the scale function. Once I bought Windows 8.1 for Dummies and learned the new system, it works well. Although Windows 8.1 isn't quite as stable, Excel, Word, and browsers have to restart more often than in Windows 7, we are getting along well now after a month.

Win 8 is easy to work with. Processor speed and overall usage so for has been good . handles hard gore gaming fairly good.

I got this mainly for gaming as an upgrade to my 5 yr old dual core desktop. So far I have not been disappointed in my purchase. The on-board video left alot to be desired, as most prebuilt pc's do. Since putting in my own video card, the tower has been great. My only "complaint" is having to use Windows 8. Figuring out how to upgrade it to 8.1 was a real pain due to not having any type of paperwork on it at all included with the tower. After doing some online reading and a bit of updating I was finally able to get it set up with 8.1. Overall, I feel this is a decent gaming pc for the price of you are on a bit of a budget.