@ Gareee --

I want to say thank you very much.  Your posting of your experience concerning the power supply issue vis-a-vis a PCI Express video card helped me to dodge the same bullet myself.  Forwarned is forarmed, as they say.

I'm putting a 450W power supply into my brand-new PC.  I figure that this should cover pretty much any future upgrade that I care to undertake.

After reading your comments on the issue, I did some checking over at HP's website.  Some of their literature mentions that the installation of a PCI Express video card might require a power supply upgrade.  But you have to do some reading through their on-line PDF's to find this information.

It strikes me as a bit odd that HP would provide an empty PCI Express slot on the motherboard -- and then provide inadequate power to actually use the slot for much.  I suppose that they are assuming that most end-users will merely stick with whatever the built-in motherboard video provides -- and not attempt an upgrade.  So HP only gives a power supply that has just enough omphh to do the job in their default configuration.

I'd point out to HP that the very first thing that a lot of gamers (not to mention the smaller 3D community) will do will be to install a high-end video card.  The fact that doing so will instantly require a power supply upgrade isn't a good thing.

I still like the machine a lot.  But I consider this little problem to be a design flaw.

Thanks again, man.  You saved me some trouble.

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