The HP Omen Desktop PC is an all-powerful, future-proof gaming machine with terrific features and a decent price.
What kind of gaming computer is the HP Omen Desktop PC? Some gaming PCs are just better than others. Some are souped-up, but expensive gaming behemoths while others will just get you in the door and are much more affordable. Somewhere in the middle sits the HP Omen. In fact, it’s a relatively affordable machine, at least in terms of gaming PCs, that also is powerful and leaves plenty of room for future expansion. Is it actually cheap? Now, our review model came in at $2,300. However, it will give you good performance for a lot less than a lot of other options. The HP Omen Desktop PC’s design could use an upgrade, but it’s definitely a great value considering what you’re getting under the hood. The HP Omen Desktop PC is expected to receive deep price cuts for both Black Friday and Cyber Monday. We recommend waiting until then to hit that buy button. Black Friday rolls around at the end of November and Cyber Monday is November 30, so you won’t have to wait for long. While many gaming PCs of its caliber will cost you an arm and a leg, the HP Omen Desktop PC boasts a reasonable price tag. It has several different configurations available, but since HP only has two i7 8th generation and one i7 9th generation processors on hand, you’re guaranteed a powerful machine no matter what you choose. The cheapest of the configurations is the base model that comes in at $1,369 at the time of this review and with the i7-8700 processor, an 8GB RAM, a 1TB hard drive, and the Nvidia GeForce GTX 1050 graphics card, as well as a keyboard and mouse (which we didn’t get to test during the review). Even though our model’s GPU (GeForce GTX 1080 Ti 11GB) was available at the time of the actual review, that was no longer the case at the time of writing. This graphics card, as well as the 512GB SSD plus 1TB HDD combo, are no longer available on the HP website. The closest configuration we could put together is one with the same CPU and RAM, but with a 512GB SSD plus 2TB HDD and a GeForce GTX 1080 8G, which will set you back around the same price, if only slightly expensive, at $2,335. Furthermore, our exact HP Omen Desktop PC configuration isn’t available in the UK and Australia. Similar configurations may be found, however. In Australia, the HP Omen 880-189a boasts the same processor and RAM plus an Nvidia GTX 1080 graphics card for AU$ 4,499. In the UK, the closest to these specs you can find is that of the £2,050 HP Omen 880-139na, which has the same processor but boasts a GTX 1080 Ti GPU, half as much memory and SSD storage with a 2TB HDD. Many folks have commented on the HP Omen Desktop PC’s not-so-appealing design, and we must admit, it isn’t the most attractive looking gaming PC on the market. In fact, its gamer’s look kind of reminds us of a flattened head of a Deception, especially with its red RGB lighting.
