All-In-One PCs: The Death of the Tower?

We know some of the advantages of the tower configuration: The ability of adding and upgrading internal components, the freedom to choose your own display, the ease to add or change a DVD burner or other hard drives, or the plenty of internal expansion bays. But there's an argument for most people the smarter choice is an "all-in-one model", with the smaller decor-friendly footprint, portability, and recently, plenty of computing power.

Sony Vaio L Series VPC-L11S1E/S
This is a 24" HD display that comes with a touch-screen function. It has A 512 MB graphics card which makes it very capable for gaming. You can even achieve 31fps. Core 2 Duo and windows 7 pre-installed and 4GB of RAM paired with a 500 GB hard drive. 6 USB ports for all your peripherals. Too bad it doesn't sports the new line of intel processors.

Lenovo Ideacentre B500 0887-4AG
We love the ATI Radeon HD 5570 graphics card and its 1GB of memory, 35fps are achieved pretty easily. Quad Core 2.66 GHz with 4GB or RAM and 1TB of storage space. Bluetooth keyboard for less cables and 6 USB ports comes standard. This is a good value for the money.

Asus ET2400XVT
This is a 23 incher that has a touch screen surface; and also comes with Invidia's 3D glasses. A 120Hz refresh rate and 1.5GB GeoForce GTX460 graphics card. 6GB of RAM and the more upgraded i7 Intel Core running at 1.73 GHZ. This is the best rig for gaming with steady 37fps. It can go 2D and 3D with no problems whatsoever.

Comments (8)

I had an all in one MAC. I was a big fan. A USB port got blown out. The bill? $1100. I went back to a PC. Windows 7 works great. 1/2 the price for dual monitor as powerful set up. I can write just as fast on it. If an all in one isn't a must, stay tower.

Here's a second vote for keeping the tower. Towers are easy to upgrade and pretty cheap. I would use an all-in-one only if it were completely required to fulfill the desired design goals, but in most cases there's a tower out there that can do it, and in my case most of the time there are plenty of other things ruining my perfect looking space. I would have to fix all those things before the computer tower became an issue.

My vote is for "towers", but that we need a newer standard form factor or at least better adoption of the smaller standards we have. For 99% of people if you can add ram and upgrade your video card you have 0 need for more expansion. With the coming adoption of stuff like Thunderbolt I am all for smaller, more resource friendly, easier to place towers. Computers don't have any reason to be as big and ugly as they often are, and we don't need to sacrifice platform consistency either.

Or get an all in one that uses standard parts. I seem to remember a 'case' for the build it yourselfer that used a standard AT (?) motherboard, and no doubt such an option is open to the manufacturers.

Nearly all of these AIO PCs use laptop components, so if they're adequate for your needs you can likely just get a laptop and a big external screen. A lot more functionality with the same components.

These make nice internet browsing computers. They will not take over the tower PC, just find a niche market. Like for example the I-Pad.
2 things prevent me from taking them seriously. Storage space and multiple monitors. Storage space can be solved with Network Attached Storage but I can not go back to single monitor solution for a computer that I do work on.

As someone who does all his own upgrades and repairs, I don't see all-in-ones completely taking over. They're great for some people, but not all. Once it breaks down or needs a new drive added to it people will be regretting their purchase.

One thing that has been missed so far in the discussion is cooling...

Towers are much better at heat dissipation with lower fan noise. As we all know, more speed usually means more heat. Sure, processor makers are coming up with CPU's that use less wattage, but for now you still need to have some sort of cooling system installed. Reduce the airflow, like in an All-In-One, and you either need a less powerful processor and GPU, or you need a way to move more air- which usually means a noisy fan.