Staples: Lenovo H430 Desktop, Intel i3-2120 3.3Ghz, 4GB ram, 1TB hd, $279.99 Free Shipping

If anyone's still watching this, I put a Sapphire HD 7750 OC (850mhz) video card in it (stock power supply), and the Windows score for Graphics and Gaming Graphics went from 4.6 and 5.8 respectively to 7.4 for both. Haven't upgraded the ram yet, but so far it's cost me less than $400 this thing is a (relative) monster.

Quote from doema : if H61 chipset, chances are its SAT2 only

I just bought a different model lenovo with an h61, and its got sata 3, but generally you're correct. I was pretty surprised to get a cheap box from them with sata 3 AND a sata 3 hard drive.

Quote from deeppolverizing : what's a cheap graphic card under $40 that would work with the 250w power supply?

To do what?

The one that comes with it isn't much worse than many cheap graphics cards. I think you'll be mostly stuck with either a 6450 or 7750 due to the power supply, but the 7750 will be more than $40 and the 6450, while an excellent card for video, can't do much in the gaming area.

Hello,
I picked this up in-store today (Falls Church, VA), Seems pretty fast to the average user (not a gamer)

Couple of noob questions:
1) How do you find out the SATA speed (6gbps etc)? Is it via cpu-z?
2) The specs on staples state that there are speakers ("Built in surround sound"). When I installed the realtek hd audio drivers, it always prompts me to plugin a speaker/headphone. Am i missing something?

Thanks, and apologies in advance if these are silly questions.

Quote from Harvi : Hello, I picked this up in-store today (Falls Church, VA), Seems pretty fast to the average user (not a gamer) Couple of noob questions: 1) How do you find out the SATA speed (6gbps etc)? Is it via cpu-z? 2) The specs on staples state that there are speakers ("Built in surround sound"). When I installed the realtek hd audio drivers, it always prompts me to plugin a speaker/headphone. Am i missing something? Thanks, and apologies in advance if these are silly questions.

Answer to #2:

They only mean the sound card is capable of surround sound. You need to hook it up to external speakers/headphones to get sound.

for #1,

I don't know if cpu-z has that info. I usually go into Device manager (right click my comp--> properties), then go to Disk drives, get the model # and then google it. There is probably an easier way to do it though, but this only takes a minute anyway.

Quote from roggan : Answer to #2: They only mean the sound card is capable of surround sound. You need to hook it up to external speakers/headphones to get sound.

Thank you for the super quick answer, that saved me a few anxious moments!

FYI - If you're looking to upgrade memory I was able to install 16gb (2x8gb) Gskill Sniper DDR3-1600 from newegg deal a few days ago.