Maximum PC

I just read the review of the toshiba and HP AIO's....I've been waiting for a solid review on AIO in general including the Lenovo and dell models and wouldn't mind seeing a full on shoot out feature in MPC. Yes, the AIO isn't "Maximum", but I'm planning to replace several other PCs in my house with these non-critical machines. The problem is that I can't find good info on opening these boxes and their upgrade capability. for instance, can I replace the HDD with 2x SSD for raid0? this means I need to know if there's sufficient space where the HDD resides, if there is an extra Sata port as well as if it's sata2 or 3, and if the bios allows you to RAID. not to mention RAM capacity.

interestingly, there's a huge amount of info available on hacking iMacs, to the point I considered to simply buy one and run Win7 full time on it. Maybe MPC can expose these capabilities in upcoming reviews or even run a "maximizing an AIO" feature.

The Intel lga1155 520xt series touchsmart pcs are built around a custom H61 chipset motherboard by Pegatron (Board name: IPISB-NK, HP's name: LavacaSB). It only supports up to 4gb per dimm slot (total 8gb) up to 1333 speed. Other upgrade features include a PCI EM (MXM) socket, type A for an expanded video card as well as two PCIe mini card slots (gen 2).

It uses SataII (3gb/s; two ports) connections but doesn't support raid functions. The chassis only supports one hard drive slot while the 2nd port is for the optical. Its most likely a 3.5" slot hdd since you are allowed to sport 2 or 3tb disk drives, but this is omitted on the spec sheet on hp's website and support site.

thanks for that...I guess I should have dug deeper on hp's website for that info. looks like I'll have to checkout the others since I definitely want ssd raid and on the iMac you can do that (it has 3 internal Sata) and can raid0 in the os. or maybe just wait for ivy bridge updates...

why not build an ITX computer? takes up very little desktop space and gives you a much more open internal space and you can throw in a much more powerful cpu/gpu combo for less.

Because cords. And wife.

Build said ITX gaming rig, tell wife "hands off" and go without sex for 3 months... worth it. lol