Gateway DX Series DX4320-09 Desktop PC Athlon II X4 635(2.9GHz) 4GB DDR3 1TB HDD Capacity ATI Radeon HD 5570 Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit

Pros: These seem to have sold out pretty quickly. Looked at it every which way I could before buying, but just too good to beat. Mine had a special $20 gift card and free year of extended warrantee to boot.

Tried to configure a box with this processor/memory/disk and GPU at a number of major computer dealers and always wound up around $200+ higher, and that was *without* TV + BluRay + Wireless KB/Mouse. I should have bought 2 and upgraded my HTPC.

Anyway, thanks Newegg for providing such deals.

Seems whisper quiet. Fired up right out of the box-- no problems.

Cons: Not sure how the system will perform under stress with only a 300w PSU and a 5570 + Athlon ii, but we'll see.

flashing standby power light

Gateway Tech Support hopeless:
Somehow we overlooked the instruction card for the mouse/keybard and were unaware that there was a USB dongle inside the mouse. (If you examine device manager, you'll see an eHOME keyboard and eHome mouse listed that disappear when you remove the IR dongle for the remote. We thought the kb/mouse must be IR based.)

After contacting support and being told wrong information troubleshooting tips *twice* they finally sent us a new mouse. As my son was loading the batteries in the new mouse he noticed that a rectangular piece in there looked removable and voilla. Can't imagine how we overlooked it-- we specifically searched for it many times, but I just found it 5 mins ago.

Oh well. Free mouse, but is 'remove USB from mouse' so hard for a tech support guy to utter?

Other Thoughts: My son wanted to spend his lawn money on a computer for his own (9th grader). He's into web-games like roblox and was very interested in Starcraft 2, but I only have one box in my house capable of playing starcraft2 and it's primarily an HTPC hooked up to an older 65" CRT HDTV and not really ideal. Was looking for a low to midrange gaming box for him. This price was *way* more attractive for this mix than anything else I could find.

Pros: Loads of features for the price. Quiet, fast, smooth. Free shipping and Newegg got it to me the next afternoon - that's simply awesome!

Cons: None as of yet.

Other Thoughts: First experience with Gateway and first with Windows 7. Delighted with both so far. I read the reviews about DOAs and the weak power supply. I did swap in a new robust ANTEC I had even before I booted up as a preventive measure. No problems.

Pros: Fairly easy to get started (after getting it to boot).

Support for multiple displays, including our HDTV via HDMI.

Tuner seems to work fine. Great to be able to record HD programs off our cable feed.

Superfast free delivery (about 25 hours after order submission).

Cons: Did not boot out of the box.

Flashing "standby" light on top of the box is annoyingly bright in a dark room. I would put black tape over it, but the power on/off button is in the center of this lighted ring. I will find something else to cover this light.

My wife states that she sees some speed glitches on playback of HD video. I have not seen this.

Other Thoughts: Have only played with this for a few hours. Still have lots to setup and test, but wanted to post a quick review to report my boot problem and solution.

Saw comments from others about systems being DOA, but purchased anyway. My system would not boot. Boot list showed just DVD and Blu-Ray drives. I removed the cover and found that the power cable to the HDD was not connected. Plugged it in and all worked fine.

Looking for suggestions for a USB adapter to use for this system with a wireless N 300 router (D-Link DIR-615).

Pros: This is a follow up to my review below.

With the Radeon 5570 @ 700/950 the system scored 8660 on 3DMark2006:

3DMark Score 8660.0 3DMarks
---------------------------------------
SM2.0 Score 3078.0

HDR/SM3.0 Score 3683.0

CPU Score 4026.0

Game Score N/A

GT1 - Return To Proxycon 23.71 FPS

GT2 - Firefly Forest 27.59 FPS

CPU1 - Red Valley 1.34 FPS

CPU2 - Red Valley 1.94 FPS

Cons: The system does not come with any restore disks, but it does come with a utility to create factory restore set of DVDs. It took 4 DVDs total for the set (3 for the OS + 1 for drivers).

Pros: Quad Core Athy X4, ATI 5570 with 1GB DDR3 (650Core/800Mem), 4GB DDR3, 1TB HDD, 2x Optical Drives including a Blu-Ray player & Win 7 Home 64-bit... All for under $600?!?! It has a TV-tuner card & a remote as well. What is not to love??!? MINIMAL pre-installed software (just get rid of Norton AV & Google Toolbar). Videocard easily overclocked (with pre-installed Catalyst driver) up to 700/950. Comes with remote control and IR blaster. TEN (10) USB ports (2.0). Quiet, sleek-looking glossy black case.

Cons: No Wi-Fi (just get the $30 for a Belkin USB 2.0 Wireless "n" adaptor which works great). No eSATA. No USB 3.0. Case is a fingerprint magnet. No bundled speakers or mic (this isn't really a con, just an observation).

As for gaming, this card far better than integrated graphics but it's no miracle worker. I was able to play BF2 @ 1600x1200 with everything maxed out (inc. 8xAA + Filtering set to High).

Other Thoughts: Got it on promotion with $20 Newegg.com gift card. Now you can get it with a 1-year extended warranty promotion. I challenge you to find a better bang-for-the-buck computer as of today's date.

Windows Experience Index: 5.9

Subscores:
CPU: 7.3
Mem: 7.3
Aero Graphics (@690/940): 6.8
Gaming Graphics (@690/940): 6.8
Disk Drive: 5.9

Pros: .

Cons: .

Other Thoughts: Computer delievered. Up and running. No problems.