Home > Consumer Reviews > Compaq Presario 5423US Desktop (1.6-GHz Pentium 4, 512 MB RAM, 80 GB hard drive)

Similar to the 5420 but substituting an Intel, P4 chip for the Athalon chip, both models double the RAM and hard drive size of the 5410 and like that model, include a NIC (network interface card) to make networking and fast access connections to the Internet more simple. It also features a CD burner that's twice as fast (16x) as the 5410. The decision in the end between the 5420 and 5423 will be one of personal preference btwn Athalon and Intel chips, but either one should find few users dissatisfied with the all around performance of their machine.
(personally, I prefer the Athalon chip)

I have had the Compaq Presario 5310US, with a Celeron 1.2GHz, and I was very happy with it because it is fast. with 256MB of SDRAM memory, 40GB Hard Drive... This new model was released, 5423US, and since I have had my computer for less than 30 days, I decided to return it and exchange it with the 5423US, which comes with the 1.6GHz Pentium 4, 512MB DDR SDRAM memory, 80GB Hard Drive, 16x writer, 16x DVD, Firewire ports, etc. I plugged it in, and it seems to be slower than the one I returned. I need to do more testing on it, to see how fast it is. My speakers, utilizing the built-in sound card, is making annoying noise when the computer is booting up, which i didn't experience on the Celeron system. The video card, advertised as having a TV-Out feature, doesn't come with the needed cable for you to hook it up on your TV, thus, leaving you no choice but to buy one to make use of it. The memory installed (512MB DDR-SDRAM) makes use of 2 banks on the motherboard, and is actually two 256MB DDR SDRAM modules.

I recommend testing it, or at least visiting a nearest computer store (Best Buy, Fry's, CompUSA, Circuit City, etc.) and check out the performance... If you'll like it, then go for it. Now I am thinking of returning this again and get the 5410US instead, which comes with the Celeron 1.3GHz.

Im writing here again, to tell you that this computer is actually fast. Despite the missing TV-Out cable and the 2 memory banks being occupied, its fine.

I installed a clean install of Windows XP Professional, and it is now working flawlessly. The factory default installer is not good for me though, as it takes like a minute or 2 to shutdown, and like 2 to 3 minutes to boot up, still unlike my previous celeron system, which is considerably faster than this one. Right now, I have no plans on returning this system anymore, and the power of the pentium 4 can be actually seen on multimedia and office applications.

My wife and I have owned this computer for seven years now, and it still holds its own compared with the brand new "low end" computers if 2009! In other words, I find it remarkable that a seven year old computer is still able to run today's software, and programs still run fast and look great on it! All we did was install more memory (it now has 1 GB RAM). If anyone finds this computer used on the market -- get it! You definitely won't be disappointed.

Impressed by the specs and price I bought this unit. After hooking it all up it wouldn't let me do the registration and setup. Called Compaq, very helpful tech said software wasn't properly installed at factory. Said it'd take 3-4 days to get the recovery discs they'd send me! Called store where I bought it, sposed to get another unit from them today. Hope this isn't a indication of things to come!