With a variety of configurations, HP’s Omen 35L mid-tower gaming desktop (beginning at $1,099.99; $2,449.99 as examined at Finest Purchase) caters to entry-level and fanatic PC avid gamers. This up to date mannequin flaunts a glossy case with tempered glass and hanging RGB lighting. We discover it impressively quiet and recognize its industry-standard half choice, which simplifies future upgrades. Its solely eyebrow-raiser is its AMD Ryzen G-series processor paired with a motherboard missing an HDMI port (we additionally would like an X-series chip), but it surely doesn’t compromise the tower’s efficiency. For driving efficient 1440p efficiency and serving a variety of customers, the Omen 35L earns our Editors’ Selection award for a mainstream mid-tower gaming desktop.Configurations & Design: An Upscale Mid-TowerHP’s Omen line focuses on extra {powerful} {hardware} and extra premium designs than its Victus and Pavilion collection. The Omen 35L reviewed right here is one among two Omen desktop fashions; the opposite is the full-tower HP Omen 45L, which has even better efficiency potential.
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(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
The Omen 35L’s entry-level setup is aimed toward 1080p gaming, with a six-core AMD Ryzen 5 8500G processor, an AMD Radeon RX 7600 graphics card, 16GB of reminiscence, and a 512GB solid-state drive. Our evaluate unit, priced greater than thrice larger than the bottom mannequin, contains all out there upgrades akin to CPU liquid cooling, 64GB of RAM, three storage drives, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Tremendous. HP’s on-line configurator permits for almost any configuration in between, and this mannequin additionally has Intel processor choices.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
The Omen 35L will get its identify from its dimensions: 16.1 by 8.3 by 16.1 inches (HWD), translating to roughly 35 liters in quantity. The Alienware Aurora R16 is equally sized at 16.5 by 7.8 by 18.1 inches.
HP’s Omen construct high quality is outstanding, crafting a strong steel case and each entrance and facet tempered-glass panels. Our mannequin is available in black, however HP additionally sells a white model with black accents. The RGB-lit followers and inside parts not solely look premium however are vivid sufficient to light up a small room. General, the Omen evokes a extra high-end really feel in contrast with the Alienware.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
The case’s entrance ports on the highest of the tower embody a 3.5mm audio jack, a USB Kind-C port (10Gbps), and two USB Kind-A ports (5Gbps). The facility button is on the suitable.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
HP’s motherboard I/O choice contains one USB Kind-C port (10Gbps), two USB Kind-A ports (5Gbps), 4 USB 2.0 connections, an Ethernet jack, and audio ports for line-in, line-out, and a microphone. A transparent CMOS button, sometimes discovered on fanatic aftermarket motherboards, is a notable inclusion. Weirdly, the motherboard doesn’t have any monitor outputs, rendering the AMD Ryzen G-series CPU’s built-in graphics moot. The GeForce RTX 4080 Tremendous (after all, a vastly superior graphics accelerator to the Ryzen’s built-in silicon) supplies one HDMI and three DisplayPort ports for monitor output. The Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 wi-fi antennas are seamlessly built-in into the case, avoiding any protrusions.The tempered-glass facet panel (a tiny $5 improve over the metal panel) slides again and detaches after loosening its two retainer-style thumbscrews. Inside, the structure is standardized and simple, precisely as you may anticipate from an aftermarket tower. Two 140mm followers deal with air consumption, whereas the 2 120mm followers on the CPU liquid cooling radiator and a further 120mm fan on the rear deal with exhaust duties. Whereas gaming with the Omen 35L, I barely discover the followers.
(Credit score: Joseph Maldonado)
HP aced serviceability on this desktop, making certain each half is a standardized part that may be changed within the aftermarket. It has a washable mud filter behind the pull-off entrance panel and one other beneath. Cable administration is respectable: A shroud hides a lot of the wires coming off the motherboard. The Omen energy provide is of top of the range, with a modular design that permits solely the mandatory cables to plug in. The three.5-inch drive cage in entrance of the facility provide homes a 2TB drive in our evaluate unit, though this configuration just isn’t at present out there from HP however as a substitute from Finest Purchase for $2,449.99 with half as a lot RAM.The RGB lighting from the CPU waterblock, the Kingston Fury reminiscence sticks, and the followers illuminates the whole inside the chassis. The GeForce brand on the graphics card can also be illuminated. You’ll be able to customise the lighting patterns and colours within the included Omen Gaming Hub app zone by zone, which additionally supplies system updates and diagnostics. Settings may be saved in profiles.Our evaluate unit additionally has some undesirable software program, specifically a McAfee antivirus trial and plenty of HP apps of various usefulness. The Omen 35L comes with a one-year guarantee.Testing the HP Omen 35L: A Speedy However Odd Selection in SiliconHP despatched us an Omen 35L decked out with each possibility, together with an eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 8700G CPU, a GeForce RTX 4080 Tremendous GPU, 64GB of RAM, a 2TB SSD with Home windows 11 Professional, and two secondary-storage drives (a further 2TB SSD and one 2TB exhausting drive). It additionally has CPU liquid cooling and a 1,000-watt energy provide. The Alienware Aurora R16 was $3,299.99, equally configured to this Omen evaluate unit, albeit with a Core i7-14700F processor.It’s puzzling why the Omen 35L has that Ryzen G-series chip inside, which is usually favored for its high-performance built-in graphics answer. That function is redundant on this tower since each configuration features a devoted GPU. Furthermore, even in case you wished to make use of the built-in graphics, the motherboard, once more, lacks an HDMI or DisplayPort output. Nonetheless, the CPU portion of the G-series chip has ample efficiency on faucet, so it shouldn’t maintain again the Omen 35L in any method.We’ve simply rebooted with an up to date PC benchmarking routine, so our comparability programs for the Omen 35L are restricted to the tiny Asus ROG NUC 970 (not but reviewed) with laptop-style parts, a funds MSI Codex R2 mid-tower gaming desktop, and the ultra-high-end MSI Imaginative and prescient Elite RS. If something, the Omen 35L compares with the latter, although it is fairly outclassed on the CPU entrance.
Productiveness & Content material Creation TestsOur major general benchmark, UL’s PCMark 10, places a system by way of its paces in productiveness apps starting from net shopping to phrase processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC’s storage throughput. Three extra assessments are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon’s Cinebench 2024 makes use of that firm’s Cinema 4D engine to render a posh scene; Primate Labs’ Geekbench 6.3 Professional simulates widespread apps starting from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine studying; and we see how lengthy it takes the video modifying instrument HandBrake 1.8 to transform a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p decision. Lastly, workstation maker Puget Methods’ PugetBench for Creators charges a PC’s picture modifying prowess with a wide range of automated operations in Adobe Photoshop 25.
The Omen 35L completed behind the ultra-powerful MSI Imaginative and prescient Elite RS however effectively forward of the others in PCMark’s major check, although it carried out simply common within the storage portion. It additionally didn’t stand out subsequent to the Asus ROG mini PC within the CPU-centric assessments the place it ought to have carried out higher being a liquid-cooled, full-blown desktop. A minimum of it did moderately effectively in Photoshop. Anticipate respectable productiveness speeds out of this machine, but when you really want to crunch on CPU-centric duties, you will want a higher-end chip.Gaming & Graphics TestsWe problem all desktops’ graphics with a quartet of animations or gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark check suite. The primary two, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Excessive (4K), use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The others, 3DMark’s Metal Nomad and Metal Nomad Gentle subtests, give attention to APIs extra generally used for recreation improvement, like Metallic and DirectX 12, to evaluate gaming geometry and particle results.We then flip to 3DMark Photo voltaic Bay to measure ray tracing efficiency in an artificial setting. This benchmark works with Vulkan for Home windows and Android and Metallic for Apple units, subjecting 3D scenes to more and more intense ray-traced workloads at 1440p.Our real-world gaming testing comes from the in-game benchmarks of Name of Responsibility: Fashionable Warfare 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and F1 2024. These three video games—all benchmarked at full HD (1080p or 1200p), 2K (1440p or 1600p), and 4K (2160p) decision—characterize aggressive shooter, open-world, and simulation video games, respectively. Every recreation runs at excessive element or the best out there settings: “Excessive” for Name of Responsibility, “Overdrive” for Cyberpunk, and “Extremely Excessive” for F1 24.We run the Name of Responsibility benchmark on the Excessive graphics preset on desktops, however the check nonetheless goals to maximise body charges to guage compatibility with quick shows. Our Cyberpunk 2077 check settings intention to push PCs absolutely, so we run it on the all-out Ray Tracing Overdrive preset with out DLSS or FSR. Lastly, F1 2024 represents our DLSS effectiveness (or FSR on AMD programs) check, demonstrating a GPU’s potential with frame-boosting upscaling applied sciences in play.
The Omen PC predictably lagged behind the GeForce RTX 4090-powered MSI Imaginative and prescient Elite RS in all assessments, but it surely was considerably sooner than the Asus (the place it counts: gaming) and MSI Codex R2 desktops. As famous earlier, our comparability programs are restricted to these included right here. These outcomes point out that the Omen 35L, when geared up with an upper-end graphics card just like the GeForce RTX 4080 Tremendous, will excel in any fashionable recreation.Verdict: A Gamer’s Close to-Preferrred Mid-TowerThanks to its numerous vary of configurations, HP’s Omen 35L mid-tower caters to avid gamers, whether or not they’re simply getting began or are deep-pocketed lovers. The Omen 35L impressed us with its quiet followers, standardized parts, and tasteful design. Though together with a Ryzen G-series CPU is uncommon since you possibly can’t entry its built-in graphics with the motherboard included, the processor nonetheless has ample energy for gaming. General, we favor the Omen 35L to the Alienware Aurora R16 for its superior construct high quality and design, and its use of all-industry-standard elements, so we give it our Editors’ Selection award for mainstream mid-tower gaming desktops.
The Backside Line
HP’s Omen 35L pumps out greater than sufficient frames at 1440p, and does it quietly in a horny mid-tower chassis, making it an award-winning rig for mainstream PC avid gamers.
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About Charles Jefferies
Computer systems are my lifelong obsession. I wrote my first laptop computer evaluate in 2005 for NotebookReview.com, continued with a constant PC-reviewing gig at Pc Shopper in 2014, and moved to PCMag in 2018. Right here, I check and evaluate the most recent high-performance laptops and desktops, and generally a key core PC part or two. I additionally evaluate enterprise computing options for StorageReview.I work full-time as a technical analyst for a enterprise software program and companies firm. My hobbies are digital pictures, health, two-stroke engines, and studying. I’m a graduate of the Rochester Institute of Expertise.
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