20 Best Gaming Computer Under 1500 (2023 Updated)

Full disclosure, I purchased this system to shuck the video card and run the basic system with just the Ryzen 5600g’s integrated graphics, which is perfectly capable in it’s own right as a stand-alone desktop.

I’ll review the graphics card first: The discrete ATI Radeon 6600xt graphics card (PC Partner OEM) that HP includes in this system is significantly better built than the single fan Geforce 3060 that is included in other HP systems.

It’s also faster in most games at 1080p resolution, which is where most people at this price point are going to play. The HP / PC Partner 6600xt actually ran slightly faster at stock speeds than a Gigabyte Eagle 6600xt which was a surprise.

It’s a more compact and efficient build, with 2 larger fans that move plenty of air to keep the video card running at 64 degrees C or less even under a full Furmark load for 30 minutes. It’s a nicer looking card than most budget 6600 series cards with a black fan shroud, full backplate and a minimalist red logo that glows red in the HP system, though I could not control the LED function in a custom built PC which is a bummer.

It looks just like the same basic cooler design as the mid level Powercolor and Sapphire retail cards. Unfortunately, my first card was defective out of the box and caused crashes and bizarre power supply squealing as soon as the ATI driver initialized the 3D core in a custom built PC.

This required swapping the entire system to get a fully working card, annoying but at least pain free thanks to Micro Center’s customer friendly return policy. The replacement card works perfectly. The desktop itself is a very minimalist but functionally adequate budget computer.

It has a highly integrated case + motherboard + power supply which will need to remain together as they are not usable in any other system. That said, it’s an easy machine to work on, though you’ll need a flathead screw driver to deal with HP’s proprietary screw heads HP uses.

One screw and the side panel pops off revealing the insides. Airflow actually is not bad, with one large side vent and one small vent at the top of the front panel providing an intake for the 92mm rear fan to draw air through.

The spec sheet covers most of the particulars, the standouts to note are that there are a total of 2 x 3. 5″/2. 5″ drive bays available, one of which is occupied by the 1 TB 3. 5″ hard disk and the other which is open if you want/need more storage in this.

The single stick of 16 gigs of RAM on one of two available slots is a miss on HP’s part, since it leaves the machine in single channel mode vs utilizing 2 x 8 gig modules which would significantly improve performance for the same price/cost.

Most people will either opt to replace the single 16 gig module with a pair of 8’s, particularly if using the memory speed sensitive 5600g’s Vega-8 graphics core in lieu of the included ATI Radeon card.

Separated from the graphics card, the basic desktop is effectively a budget $400 lightweight gaming desktop in a nice compact package. To custom build a machine of equal performance you’d have to spend at least $200 more on parts, so the lack of expandability and relatively budget focused case design is forgivable in my opinion.

This computer’s pricing is a reflection of the times we’re in, but for it’s relative price & performance either as a complete system or GPU + budget gaming desktop combo it’s a good value with decent minimalist aesthetics and build quality.

My first system had a major video card defect, the second was perfect so either I just got unlucky or there might be some QC issues in play. For that and the dumb single stick of RAM choice I knocked a star off of my rating.

I purchased from VIPOutlet’s eBay store, but I’ve also bought directly from them many times. I’ve had some out-of-the-box failures but they’ve always taken care of it. On one occasion, the unit (HP similar to this one) was under warranty and HP replaced it free of charge.

Everything Ive bought so far has had a manufacturers warranty on it and HP / Lenovo have all happily stepped up to solve any issues. Now to this system specifically. It’s important to know and understand what you are buying.

This is not a good “ready to go” gaming computer, but it’s close enough that with just a little effort, it can be a great starting gaming computer. First – RAM – you need to go to 16 and have two sticks.

Any 8GB 3200 1. 2v stick will pair with this and you’ll be all set. Or, you can go for a 1. 2v 3200 16, 32, or 64 gb set (whatever your needs) and be good to go. DON’T GET GENERIC 3200 THAT NEEDS 1. 35V the motherboard will not detect it properly and there’s no way to set XMP in the bios.

You need 1. 2v that runs 3200 as its base freq. Second – Hard Drive – The 256GB NVME is fine for a boot drive. but you’ll need more storage if you want to download and play games. Adding a 1TB SATA drive is cheap and will get you going for a while.

Or, if you want to swap the NVME you can get a 512gb or 1tb and use Acronis (or some other utility) to clone the drive. Or just install a fresh copy of Windows, but that’s a bit more technical. Regardless, more storage is a necessity.

A 2. 5″ SSD is also a great option. Last – Keyboard / Mouse – if you are wanting to game, then get some different peripherals. The bunded KB/MOUSE are terrible. (in my opinion)The rest of the system is great.

Front and Rear IO is way better than most. CPU, GPU match well and play most anything at 1080P high or medium settings at over 60 FPS. It’s quiet, small, and is a great little PC. I hope that helps folks understand what they are buying.

Have fun!.

You cannot beat the value for money here. Even outside of the current GPU market, you would not be able to get a pc with similar components for this cost except at maybe Black Friday type deals. I do wish that this pc shipped with dual channel ram.

I swapped in a pair of 2666mhz sticks I had in my old box and immediately saw a 5-10 fps increase in the game was playing. For 1080p gaming you can run pretty much any modern game at high or ultra settings at at least 60 frames per second.

Ray-tracing does introduce some issues, so do not recommend this card if that is your main draw. I have been playing Guardians of the Galaxy with ultra graphics and ray-tracing on the lowest level and a max fps setting of 60.

In certain areas with high ray traced reflections, the fps dips from 60 down to the low 20s, and the experience can be rather jarring. I was also initially worried about the 400w power-supply as well as that this case might run hot from reviews of other versions of these Pavillions I’ve seen around elsewhere.

However, the low power consumption of this gpu seems to alleviated any concerns on both fronts here. I usually cap my games at 60 or 75hz and with that in place I rarely draw more than 130w according to GPUz and the GPU temp stays in the low-mid 60’s under that load with a 55% fan-speed.

So lots of headroom there. I expect it to continue to perform well for the next several years as games becomes more demanding.

Ran some initial tests with Heaven benchmark and with all the boxes checked, ultra mode, and 2x anti-aliasing, I was still seeing between 90-115 fps. I’ve only had it less than 24 hours, but the machine looks promising.

I had hoped to be further along with it, though. I’ve lost hours trying to get the case and fan lights working. I’ve gone through Skytech’s troubleshooting page, I’ve looked at countless posts and YouTube videos, but to no avail.

This has been all the more difficult since I’m just making some semi-educated guesses about the fan hardware involved. Before purchasing, I toyed with the idea of building my own PC again. But I decided against that because my free time is limited and I really wanted to hit the ground running with a prebuilt.

And while it’s true the lights are just cosmetic, they’re also cool and very prominent in all the product photos. And spending this much time troubleshooting has been a bit frustrating.

Had some boot troubles initially, but all was sorted out. Skytech’s support is quick, personable and very reasonable. Truly great support. I think at its current price point and the market being the way it is, you couldn’t actually build this machine for cheaper yourself, so it is a bargain.

For those wondering my machine came with a Biostar B450MH V6. 3, a no frills barebones board, but a very stable & reliable board. The GPU mine came with is an MSI GeForce GTX 1660 Ventus XS 6GB, really happy with this, it is a dual fan unit and comes with a backplate.

The RAM, 2x 8GB ADATA XPG Sticks. These report in the bios as 2666 sticks not 3000, but the model name reports as DDR4-3000. Manually overclocked, these sticks do run 3000 MHz stable. Hard-drive, a WD BLUE 500GB SSD, solid reliable drive.

The Case, obviously a Thermaltake S200 Snow, a beautiful case with a ton of RGB modes to select from and a Thermaltake Smart Series 500w PSU. All in all this is a great build, Skytech hasn’t just thrown in cheap parts like many prebuilds, they clearly took the time to select parts that have proven reliability and also keep build costs reasonable.

It’s been extremely good to me. Despite all my complaints, I’ve nicknamed it, and I think I’ll be sticking with it for quite some time. It’s a stable computer and a great friend to add to your desk. The computer’s power supply likely would not support overclocking with everything running simultaneously.

The computer starts up insanely fast and everything seems to feel like it’s gliding along on clouds. I’d beware of treating the glass too roughly or jostling things too much- as computer equipment is sensitive.

Also, if you plan to install a second laptop-type drive as I did, please do yourself a favor and purchase a SATA cable along with it. It’ll save you time and investment of energy with digging into the wire bank in the back.

It’d also be prudent to purchase a larger power supply if you plan to upgrade in the near future, but if you don’t plan on doing any installs, forget about all that. It works as shipped. Just take care of it and it’ll take care of you.

There are three major issues with this PC: 1. Proprietary parts – The motherboard, case, and power supply are not standard form factors, which limits your options for upgrading. For example, the PSU, in theory, could support an upgrade to an RTX 3060 (which would pair nicely with the 5600G CPU), but the poor airflow to this case makes that inadvisable.

But the non-standard form of the motherboard would prevent you from simply moving the core components into a different case. Likewise, the HP form power supply wouldn’t properly fit in a standard case.

The only real upgrades you can make to the system are RAM and storage, both of which I highly recommend, because. 2. The PC is nearly unusable out of the box, especially for gaming. The 256GB SSD is entirely too small.

With SSDs, you typically need to leave 20-30% of the drive empty at all times, or it completely tanks the speed, making it sluggish as an old school, spinning disk HDD. So, a 256GB drive (actual storage is closer to 240GB) leaves you with only 180GB of usable storage.

Minus around 40GB for Windows 10 and basic apps. 140GB of storage is plenty for photos, videos, and documents, but given that the average AAA game is around 60-80GB, you can install maybe two big games.

But that leads into the other issue: the RAM. 8GB of RAM isn’t ideal, especially for AAA or demanding games, but it would be workable IF the folks at HP had used 2 sticks of 4GB instead of the single stick of 8GB in this PC.

You always, but especially with Ryzen CPUs, want to run RAM in dual channel configuration (i. e. two or four stick kits), or it severely hinders performance, potentially halving your frames per second.

So, at a minimum, you should really invest in replacing the single stick of 8GB RAM with a 16GB (2x8GB) kit and adding at least a 500GB SATA SSD for additional storage. (You could go with a 2TB HDD for around the same cost, but the load times are going to be horrendous if you don’t use an SSD.

) But, of course, that brings us to the final issue. 3. Price. For what you’re actually getting, $630 ($670 with tax) is about $100 too much for this PC, especially when you factor in spending an additional $70 for a 16GB RAM kit and $60 for a 500GB, you’re looking at nearly $800.

At $800, you’re within spitting distance of buying a $1,000 prebuilt that comes with a comparable CPU and an RTX 3060 – which is vastly superior to this PC’s RX 5500 – as well as already including 16GB of dual channel RAM and a 512GB SSD (saving you the trouble of having to upgrade it yourself).

Or, you spend a little bit more and buy a prebuilt from Newegg and get a system that uses off-the-shelf components, rather than proprietary parts, so you can maintain and upgrade it for years to come rather than throwing it away if something fails or becomes outdated.

The only people who should consider buying this PC are those who don’t intend to use it for gaming or those with an extremely tight budget.

I really, really LOVE this computer. I’m a professional video editor, been making very complex, multi-track videos my whole adult life with Magix Vegas software. I have owned at least 20 computers in my life, even built tons of them from scratch and this AMD Ryzen computer is the BEST I’ve ever owned.

I can’t speak for Gaming because I don’t play games, but as a video editing computer it’s wonderful. I’m making complex videos with lots of effects and it’s playing beautifully. I want to kiss it! I bought it used, refurbished.

The info inside says it was last inspected a year ago, so it’s probably been sitting in a warehouse somewhere, but the thing is gorgeous. It looks brand new. I bought a 4 year extended warranty for $60 and whole cost was around $1600.

I’m thinking if the thing blows up after 4 years, i will have had a top-notch computer for $400 a year which is nothing. I get good vibes from the company in that it was missing a side panel and they immediately shipped one to me without any hassle.

I thought it was a good deal for the money. So far, it’s been a lot better than I thought it would be. As far as I’m concerned, it’s worth $400 just to have it on and just look at it in your living room.

This thing is alive with a multi-colored neon light show going on with its cool glass windows. I’m really happy so far.

To start I’ll say that I bought this at 250 dollars off, and the savings have definitely skewed my purchasing experience towards the positive. Also, I should mention I am by no means a computer guru, if I were I can’t imagine I would buy a pre-built.

At its base price (2600) this is still one of the better builds you’re going to find. If your wanting entry into 4k gaming, but are not willing to break the bank, this might be the way to go. I bought myself this unit for the purposes of upscaled emulation, namely with PCSX2 and Dolphin emulators, as well as custom texture packs and mods.

At maximum settings and resolution (4K for Dolphin and 6K for PCSX2) this operates at well above 60 fps for everything I had the time to test. It’s high enough performance I can’t imagine even coming close to finding a 6th (or even 7th) console generation game that causes strain.

Dedicated computer games and ports from 2018 earlier should also sore above 100 fps in most instances in 4K. If you are looking at 4K gaming in terms of the absolutely newest titles, you are obviously going to want to look at something with a 3080 and above, but overall I’ve been very impressed, and plan to try out some newer titles when I get the time.

The large SSD is nice considering tacking on extra space in the form of an HDD is always much cheaper. The case is compact but spacious with decent ventilation, and upgrading seems like it would be not too difficult.

Getting liquid cooling is a definite plus. The few setbacks I’ve seen I’ll lay out here: First, the fans themselves are relatively weak, but easily replaced. Also, the software meant for fine-tuning the system’s LED lights doesn’t seem to function properly for me.

These are the only drawbacks I’ve found so far though. Bottom line: This build is not going to compete in the long run with next-generation consoles or a build floating around 3K. If all you care about is optimal gaming for a reasonable price, I would recommend trying your hand to snag a PS5 or Xbox series X, which will perform better with high-end games and cost 1/5th the price.

However, if your looking for a good entryway into 4K gaming in the form of a PC, well, I’ve been perfectly satisfied with my purchase so far. Skytech seems like a generally good provider when it comes to prebuilt’s.

Remember to search for more professional reviews if you’re looking for the fine details, user reviews are always going to be disproportionately numbered by customers who have received faulty products, as they are more likely than anyone else to be motivated to leave a review.

As it stands now, I am very happy with my purchase and would reccomend.

I had to return 3 different PC’s all due to different issues. They come with a quality control checklist which is obviously just pencil whipped. The first PC had an intermittent power issue which then shorted out the motherboard.

upon inspection most of the cables were barely plugged in and the cable for the power button and LED control was bent over so much that it bent the pins on the board. Also the LED control never did work from the first power up.

The replacement for the first PC arrived and while I was unboxing it I noticed that the case had a huge dent in it on the side and the back had bent tabs for the screws that hold the sides on. The third and final PC was gone thru by the geek squad on arrival due to the first 2 being junk and when they powered it up the water cooler was making a lot of noise as if it wasn’t full.

I return the final one on the spot and went with a different brand all together. None of these issues should reflect on Bestbuy and their employees as they were extremely accommodating and did everything they could to make things right for me.

I’ve had this rig for 2 days and I’m returning it tomorrow. Games look great, crisp graphics and run super smooth. Well, at least for a few minutes. Once I dare to do the unthinkable and play a game for 4 or 5 minutes, it crashes.

Mostly crashes to desktop, sometimes it restarts completely. I’ve updated every driver known to man, followed way too many tutorial videos, and have nearly gone mad from reading pc technical repair forums.

I’ve had enough. Tomorrow I stuff it all in the box and bring it back. Despite my suffering, I will ask for a new one. Those 2-3 minutes of amazing gameplay were magical. Fingers crossed round 2 with this rig goes better.

If so, I will edit this review into a glowing tribute to the magnificence of the machine and Best Buy. Until then, I wait in disappointment and frustration.

First off, shipping was fine. Got to the store a day early so that was nice. However after opening the case I found that the CPU cooler wire had a cut in it. Not a big deal because I planned on replacing this regardless.

After replacing the CPU cooler I proceeded to turn on the PC for the first time and was greeted with a screen filled with green dots and lines. Found out this was caused my the GPU sag that had damaged the motherboard card where it sat.

I tried to prop up the GPU and this seemed to make the dots disappear. Next I struggled to get the drivers updated as the GPU connection kept causing my computer to crash randomly. I would get to the point of loading up into a game just for it to crash my whole system with lines of green and blue.

I was quite upset, I spent an entire weekend trying to get this work and tried to look past the fact that ultimately I was given a faulty GPU. So I decided to return it, which the employee was quite nice and transparent.

However I couldn’t wait for a new PC to be shipped because I needed it for school. So I ended up having to spend an additional $262. 50 on a PC that is barely more high end than the one I had initially purchased.

Overall quite an upsetting exchange I have had. Let’s hope this new more expensive PC does better than this one.

Just bought a Skytech Chronos with an Intel 11700f and a Gigabyte Aorus RTX 3070 Master (with a cool LCD screen). They listened to GN’s review!!! The front plastic white paint matches the metal. The cable management was well done.

The glass panel now is attached to the metal frame and it slides back when you unscrew it making it easy to take off. No bent screws. XMP profiles were set to 3200 like advertised. It was well assembled.

Only thing that it’s lack is the Mobo as it’s a Gigabyte B560 DS3H AC-Y1 which has no Bios updates on the website as it’s only available to the company that prebuilds it. Also, the SSD Sata brackets don’t have screws to attach an extra additional SSD to nor an extra SATA cable to add another SSD.

The PSU seems decent but swapping it out for a Thermaltake 750w GOLD and the ram for 32GB of Corsair. I’ll also be swapping out the network card as it only used Bluetooth 4 and the wifi speeds are kinda slow.

Will be getting an Intel Wifi 6 card.

I bought one just a week before Black Friday for $250 off. Cons first: Small-ish pc case, and fans are rather cheaply made, you may want to upgrade those for better airflow. The onboard wifi is only ac, wifi 4 if I’m not mistaken.

Get a dedicated network card for wifi 6/E if you need better wifi performance. No HDD for extra storage room. Pros: Pre-installed Windows 10 is a major plus, 11 is simply not ready for prime time yet.

You want a stable OS if you’re a serious gamer. RTX3070. Unless you were able to get one of these for MSRP, the GPU is what you buy these prebuilt PCs for, it runs any AAA games you throw on at max settings for anything 1440p or less.

If you want 4K 170hz gaming you will have to buy something better. This machine is not perfect by any means, but I personally do not trust other prebuilt brands like iBuyPower, CyberpowerPC and ABS. Nor I wanted to deal with Canada Computers for their notorious after sales services, so this is as good as I could get.

I firstly want to state that this machine is really quite good overall. Aesthetics are quite nice, most components are up to “gamer” standards, and you really won’t be going wrong with this machine as a pre-built.

I’m impressed with the name brand RAM, installed in a dual-channel configuration which is important for a Ryzen processor. The 120mm AIO water cooler looks nice and performs reasonably well. The machine maintains good thermals and stays quiet while gaming.

One issue I had after receiving this machine was that the CPU got seemingly stuck at 0. 5GHz. Upgrading/reinstalling the BIOS fixed this issue. The BIOS definitely leaves a lot to be desired. Very few settings are configurable here, but some are exposed through the Omen software and Ryzen master.

The motherboard appears to be HP specific and there have only been a few BIOS updates. I worry that this machine will miss out on Ryzen firmware upgrades that fix instability/performance issues in the future.

I would prefer having a USB-C or two on the front panel instead of four USB-A ports (2 USB 3. 1 and 2 USB 2). The design of where the USB ports are makes installing and removing some devices difficult.

McAfee being pre-installed is annoying. The other software is HP related. The Omen software is alright and even enables pushing the RAM with an XMP profile. The included mouse and keyboard are awful.

In my opinion, if you are already spending on a machine you should also spend for a good mouse and keyboard and not rely on cheap included peripherals. I appreciate that this machine provides easy upgradeability with push buttons to pop off the side panels.

There is room for 2. 5″ drives behind the motherboard tray and the RTX 3070 can be easily swapped out for a new GPU in the future. The motherboard has one empty PCI express 8x slot that can be used for a faster NIC, USB controller, or other PCIe device in the future.

Really enjoying this machine so far. It performs great and should be useable/upgradeable long into the future.

I’ve been using this all AMD build for a couple of weeks and so far am very pleased. (6600 Ryzen, 5800x CPU). I recommend, I don’t think most will be displeased. Note: I haven’t overclocked it or run HyperX on the RAM.

No need and I’m not into stressing the build for a few FPS when I’m getting good enough FPS. Glad I didn’t go with water cooler, this fan is doing fine and isn’t loud. Interesting design with what appears to be wrapped heatpipes running to the exterior fan housing or some such thing.

Pros: – Quiet so far in every test. – Good performance, Passmark score of 93%. That is performs as well or better than 93% of computers currently on the market. Good enough for me. Much better than my previous Pavilion entry gaming rig with the 2400g and R580 graphics.

(Its test hit around the 50% mark. ) – Handles my Two 2k 165mhz monitors with ease. -Stress test Red Dead Redemption 2 – Mixed high and ultra barely works the fan, with radeon chill capped at 85fps (no need to cook the thing) and only using 3200 ram speed (no hyperx, again no need to cook it) I’m getting reasonable temps in the 60s to low 70s and up to 85 frames.

Very little more challenging than RDR2. – Fairly easy to setup, no problems or discouraging incidents. – Clean build, looks nice, lots of cooling features. Really seems well constructed and solid. I like the look.

I could do without the glass and blinky lights but nobody does that anymore. 🙁 If you want that, lots of pretty tunable lighting. Cons: – A few adds from McAffee and related that are annoying. I’ll tune them out.

– Big and heavy for a micro sized MB with little expansion , may help the cooling I suppose. – Windows 11 – just the pain of figuring out where everything is again in the new Windows, but so far I think I’ll like the OS in the end.

– Cheapest of cheap Keyboard and mouse. CMon HP, I know most will buy their own Corsair or Steelseries rig, but you could at least try to provide a decent initial setup for a $2k (with tax) purchase.

Doesn’t have to be tops, but scaling res mouse and some moderatly useful keys would be a reasonable nod, makes for a useful backup. At least your cheap end stuff isn’t annoyingly bad. Same stuff I got with one of your mini computers though.

– For this CPU a Ryzen 6700 option would be nice to pull up the ray tracing potential. 6600 is great frankly if you don’t do 4k or try to ultra everything out, but for a 2k presentation and the rest of the power curve, a 6700 or higther would have made more sense with this CPU.

I couldn’t build this config with that card on the site although all the pieces were floating around in various mixed rigs. For a 1920×1080 setup more than enough power for anything and everything but RT in my estimation.

Don’t expect RT, lowest RT support on market per reviews, but possible. Glad I didn’t want/need RT. – Packaging – really surprised and disappointed that the interior wasn’t protected with an inflatable travel cushion, a lot of the aftermarketers have learned to do that to protect the motherboard/connections from vibration damage.

HP could up this, but mine came in solid, well built, I didn’t detect any damage. The bracket on the viideo card may be seen as sufficient for this, it just seems that the inflatable padding is a sensible protection.

Comments: The CPU performs really well in Passmark. Wish the GPU were one series higher but I’m happy with its performance with my 2k monitors. GPU kills 2D stuff, knocks it out of the park but only hits about 83% or so on the 3D.

Your mileage might vary. It isn’t overheating and I’m driving them more than satisfactorily – that was my biggest worry coming in. CPU runs hotter than I want to see, but according to what I read it is by design by AMD.

Idle (varies by your use/setup) is running high 50’s C to Mid 60’s. GPU is hangin out in the mid 30’s C. (90 degrees is expected on full throttle by AMD. ) Most 3D games I tested against it don’t drive the GPU much over 50 degrees, RDR2 being an exception.

RDR on full Ultra with MSAA turned on does bottom it out though, downt to 5 to 6 FPS! Easy fix is to not use MSAA and things pop back up to 30fps pretty quick with everything else maxed. My high/ultra mix is very good averaging about 60fps, and of course I’m throttling it a bit as I noted.

Curiously, the OMEN desktop temps on CPU vary quite a bit from the Ryzen Master temps. I’m not tryint to OC anything, just being mindful of state, performance and temperature. I’ve been around electronics enough to know cool means longer life.

One bit of advice – all the blinky lights and monitoring stuff you turn on generally means that your system is being polled and may not drop to its most restful and cool state when idle. I haven’t figured it out on this box what that will look like as I turn stuff off, but it made a 5 degree difference to kill Corsair’s ICUE software and just go with default lights on my Pavilion.

Heat kills electronics over time, so for reliability, save the blinky lights for special occasions. Happy with the purchase, pretty good if moderately overpriced rig, but I think the quality was worth it, and when the video card market settles down I suspect price will drop a little.

Not a bad price considering in current GPU market and from what I could tell from my ressearch a far more solid build than the custom gaming shops in general. I’d give it 4. 5 if I could but 5 works as the annoyances are trivial and not subverting my goals and 4 isn’t fair, i’m really happy with it.

So far the best HP build I’ve encountered and I’m full on recommending. CPU is a beast.

I’ve had this PC for nearly two weeks now and I’ve never been happier. It’s beautiful, the white casing is clean looking, the RGB lights are vibrant and it has a decent amount of presets to choose from and I catch myself changing presets constantly (although the pink one is cute!).

The WiFi has a really strong connection (hits right at the 150-160mbps mark for me, I get 150mbps with my internet provider so it may vary!!). The delivery was on time, packaging was well done and PC was well protected.

I really love the “testing” card they include in the package to show you that it indeed does work and was tested prior to leaving Skytech’s care. This is the perfect starting PC for anyone that’s ready to ditch the laptops (ME!!!!) and I’m so happy my husband found this one for me! The mouse and keyboard doesn’t seem cheaply made, I have yet to try the keyboard but I am currently using the mouse.

At first the scroll wheel felt a bit too “firm” to push down, but it has seemed to have improved over the past nearly two weeks, the mouse lights change colors and it has a really nice braided-type cord to protect it.

the cursor speed has a CPI button as well which made me really happy as these two do not have a program with them.

This is a very alright pre-built computer. There’s a lot to like, and a fair bit to criticize but it’s all based on the users’ personal preferences. $1299 is a very compelling price and is what ultimately led me to purchasing this computer in the first place.

A 3060ti, ryzen 7 3700x, and 16gb of ram sounds phenomenal on paper, and in practice isn’t all that shabby, either. Where the PC falls short in my experience is cooling performance, the lackluster components (with the exception of GPU and CPU) and the very unappealing case.

Starting from the top, as of writing this review in a relatively cool room, the GPU is averaging 50°c on idle under 1% load, where as the CPU is averaging a similar 54°c. For a case that is borderline comically large considering the components within it, it is quite concerning to say the least in regards to longevity.

For reference, my previous computer would idle around 30-35°c idle and ramp up to about 60-70°c under a relatively heavy load, at least in the GPU department, where was while just playing a game such as genshin impact, this computer easily hits the high 70s to low 80s.

Cooling is at the very least an issue to me, but your mileage my vary. In regard to lackluster components, the CPU is quite decent, but doesn’t come with the stock cooler but has a different cooler, which is a bit strange but it’s passable.

The GPU however is an ASUS 3060ti mini, which performs a bit worse than the average due to the smaller form factor which can be a non-issue to some users, but considering the case is a very large case that could fit a standard sized GPU, it just seems a bit strange.

The ram for me is 2400mhz at CL16, but there have been different reported ram speeds, so your mileage my vary, but my particular configuration is a tad lackluster considering the price. Lastly, I’ve touched on the case throughout the course of the review, but it needs to be emphasized that it is just.

not that great. It’s very large, it doesn’t cool well, and more-so on the subjective side but in my opinion just doesn’t look good especially in comparison to other options. If the case itself was smaller and or cooled significantly more efficiently then I would give it pass, but as it stands now it’s just a bit of an eyesore and doesn’t perform relative to its size.

Overall, I think the pre-built is workable at the very least but has some glaring flaws that at the very least need to be considered. I truly feel as though the only reason this computer is competitive at all is due to the GPU inside of it that is insanely over-inflated as of right now, and for some people that’s all that matters and if you are that person, by all means.

It’s a pretty nice performer, but I just can’t bare certain qualities of it. However, if you able to look past the issues that are within the PC, then I feel as though it is a fine buy.

Let me begin with this: this pc blew all my expectations out of the water! Value – Fantastic! If you were going to build this pc from scratch, and were able to buy the graphics card at msrp (functionally impossible at this point), you would still come out ahead by about $100 and if you bought this at $999 you’d come out about $200 ahead.

I bought this at $999 on sale, though it is now sold at its $1099 list price. In this current market (as of 1/11/2022), you’re probably saving between $300-$500 by buying this as a prebuilt. My Individual Specs Out-of-the-box: • GPU: GIGABYTE Radeon RX 6600 Eagle 8G Graphics – GV-R66EAGLE-8GD • Motherboard: B550M DS3H AC – Gigabyte Ultradurable • Ram: 1x8gb T-Force Vulcan Z DDR4 @3200MHz (PC4-25600) CL16 • Cpu Cooler: Coolermaster A71C (I think, but don’t actually want to remove it to check) • SSD: wdc wds500g2b0c-00pxh0 • Case: Functionally a Phanteks P360A – branded for Cyberpower • Power Supply: EVGA 600 GD, 80+ GOLD 600W – 100-GD-0600-V1 Performance: The performance of this machine is bafflingly good.

I used fortnite, SofTTR, and Witcher 3, for testing gameplay experience. Just looking at Fortnite on competitive settings, the best-case scenario for this hardware (no bottlenecks anywhere) is about 360fps on average.

Out of the box, this PC was cranking out an average of about 345 fps. I can also comfortably run SofTTR at 1080p ultra-settings with an FPS average of about 85fps and Witcher 3 1080p Ultra-settings with about 95fps on average.

Real world use will probably be lower as you’ll probably have other things running in the background, but this is a fantastic rig for the price. Biggest surprise was just how good the airflow on the case is.

Only downside is that dust management will probably need to be more rigorous, but that’s a small price to pay for good airflow. Take-away: This PC can be used for both competitive gaming and for an immersive 1080p experience for AAA games – especially if you limit it to 60fps for these demanding types of games.

The Little Things: Now, I knew what I was paying for when I bought this PC, so these comments won’t impact the rating I give the PC as a whole. • 8gb of ram isn’t enough. 1 open game, one chrome tab for music, and a discord call, and it is completely used up.

I almost immediately added another stick of ram to this for about $40 and it helps considerably. • The CPU cooler leaves a lot to be desired. It can adequately cool the CPU up to about 70% utilization – which is fine for gaming but just won’t cut it if you’re thinking of using this as a workstation for video editing or 3d rendering.

• The cable management could be better. Unless they know something that I don’t, I’ll never understand why they decided to daisy-chain the case fans when there were available headers. • Really little one – the thumb screws on the case are so bad! I really never imagined I would have so much difficulty with screws until I bought this computer.

Overall Rating 4. 8/5.

Due to the gpu market being absolutely bonkers, I decided to try the pre-built market. I’ve been using this now for about a week. According to PC part picker, the current value of this machine should be somewhere around ~$1400, and using CyberPowerPC’s custom shop, a hundred or so more than that.

Overall, this was a good spot to start a build with. The parts picked off the shelf in my build were of good quality. I should state that beforehand, but 8gb of ram, single channel especially, is not the best, as is the 500gb storage on it.

Those will be replaced once my wallet recovers from this initial purchase. That being said, here is the list of components not specifically named that mine was built with (keep in mind, SI’s like cyberpower use what’s available, so this is likely to change on upcoming builds) * ASRock RX 6600 XT * T-force VulcanZ ram (will be likely changing though, as its hard to find one stick of 8gb * EVGA 600W non-modular power supply (was pleasantly surprised by this) * ASUS B550+ HES motherboard * Coolmaster CPU cooler Benchmarks yielded good results for this setup.

I havent ran anything too demanding, but very rarely do I see the temps rise up above 55c. I do keep my house fairly cold in the winter, so I imagine in the summer it might get a bit hotter. Frames are consistent, and it runs like it should.

The case has mesh lining as opposed to those stupid closed off cases that restrict airflow on both the top as well as the front of the case. As for the build quality, cable management was satisfactory.

Thermal paste didnt go all the way to the corners, but oh well – that’s probably a small thing to ding them on. I needed to reseat the ram once in order to get it to boot, which is a few points dinged off, as I doubt ram would dislodge during shipping, and QA should be able to find that out.

Pretty happy overall. Especially given I got it within two days of ordering, I’d value this much higher than building one from scratch given you win the part lottery with whatever they have on shelf currently.

Picked it up on sale, and am incredibly impressed. With current GPU prices, going for a Prebuilt isn’t a bad idea. The 3070 is a beast of a card running demanding games with ease. For example, on Flight Sim, I’m hitting good frames on high-end graphical settings.

The cooling while is very barebones isn’t terrible, just be sure to allow for ventilation at the base of the chassis, its only been three days however I am experiencing excellent temps for an air-cooled pc.

The case is fantastic, the light effects are a nice touch. My only complaints are that it comes preinstalled with a lot of HP bloatware which rly doesn’t enhance the experience, in fact hinders it. Also, 1tb ssd alone doesn’t seem like too much storage for gaming.

The case, while is beautiful doesn’t have many USB ports at the back, for someone like me who plays Flight Sim in VR, might be tricky to hook up my oculus, throttle, mouse, keyboard, microphone, and wired mousepad all at once.

This is a well-built system with outstanding specs. The performance of the GeForce RTX 3070 is just as great as I’ve read and is the best GPU I’ve ever used. The 5800X is also incredible and I haven’t found anything that has been too much for this combo to handle.

There is only 16GB of RAM included so I’m probably going to top that off with two more 8GB for the open slots, but that is the only change I would make to this machine. The fans are usually quiet, but during gaming, the whole thing gets a little loud in general, which is to be expected.

It isn’t louder than any other PC I’ve used for gaming, and that is really the only time you hear anything from it. The included Nvme 1 TB drive is fast and has more space than I would ever need. There are plenty of USB ports on the front and some on the back, but no USC-C on the front which would be nice.

The lighting is a nice touch, as this build is actually very well done and nice to look at. Overall, this is without a doubt the best PC I’ve owned and I’m very happy with the Omen 40L.