The Compaq Presario SR5510F ($430 direct) is cheap, has a lot of space in its hard drive, and is basically the computing equivalent of an order of McDonalds' Chicken McNuggets. Like the nuggets, the SR5510F is inoffensive, will fulfill your needs with a minimum of fuss, and can appear on the Dollar Menu at a moment's notice. It's not too exciting, but if you need a new PC and want to spend as little as possible, take a look at this middle-of-the-road value system.

The SR5510F comes in a dark case that has more style than competitors like the eMachines T3642, but it's still a tower that will fade into the background on your desk. The system has an exposed DVD burner and a pair of USB ports on the front panel, which are convenient if you're using your PC as a base station for an iPod or other media player. There's a bunch of space inside the case for one each of the following: PCI, PCIe x1, and PCIe x16 cards, an additional optical drive, and an additional hard drive. The system is missing a digital media card reader, something I consider a necessity these days as many people own more than one digital camera and/or cameraphone. Additionally, the Compaq comes with a cheap-feeling keyboard and a ball mouse. Undoubtedly this was done to save money. Then again, HP's budget desktops all come with optical mice and decent keyboards, so why can't Compaq's?

The SR5510F's AMD Athlon X2 5000 processor is enough to keep the unfussy user multitasking with several windows open. The system's 2GB of RAM mean that you can alternate between several open programs with no problem, and you can do light to medium editing on your digital photos and videos. Good thing the desktop comes with a large 500GB hard drive; you won't have to archive any of your music, and the system can hold hundreds of hours of downloaded video.

The system bundles a few programs you might want, along with loads of programs you probably don't. The SR5510F's Norton Internet Security app only offers a 60-day trial period: way too short to be useful when Internet threats evolve quickly. The system also comes with muvee autoProducer Basic (aka trialware), and like the HP Slimline s3500f, autoProducer tries to upsell you to the "full" version for about $70. Other annoyances like an Office 60-day Trial, ads for NetZero, and "My HP Games" powered by WildTangent all conspire to grab more money out of your pocket. On the whole, the crapware-to-useful-app ratio is pretty poor.

The SR5510F is a middle-of-the-road performer on our benchmark tests, clocking in with an average time on both Windows Media Encoder (1:22) and PhotoShop CS3 (0:55). It was just a smidge slower than the more expensive Slimline s3500f. The SR5510F did poorly with 3D graphics, unsurprising considering its price point and relatively inexpensive integrated graphics. It couldn't run our DX10-based Crysis and World in Conflict tests at all, and when I ran both at DX9 for fun, the timedemos we use in our testing looked more like slideshows. You're better off sticking with 3D tasks like editing photos and videos, or web browsing with this machine.

The Compaq Presario SR5510F is cheap: At $430 it is one of the least expensive full-featured PCs I've reviewed lately. It is not a bad desktop per se, but it's also relatively unexciting. The SR5510F probably would've scored a little higher if it hadn't come with so much crapware and ads for stuff like WildTangent, Snapfish and NetZero. As it is, if your computer use is unfussy and undemanding, the SR5510F can get you on the net and rocking to your iPod for a few hundred dollars, and that counts for something.

Check out the HP Compaq Presario SR5510F's performance test results.

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