HP OMEN - 35L Gaming Desktop - AMD Ryzen 5 8400F - 16GB DDR5 Memory - NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 - 1TB SSD - Panda Metal

While running the most current games while streaming and recording on medium/low settings, the Omen is the answer.

I’m taking a different approach with this review and skipping the usual looks and hardware intro to give HP some well earned kudos on their packaging. I’ve reviewed a lot of computers and devices over the years, and I honestly can’t recall another moment when I opened a box and genuinely thought, “Wow.” That said, the HP OMEN 35L makes a strong first impression - its streamlined Panda White profile, clean exterior, and neatly arranged interior all signal thoughtful engineering. The lower 16 inch stance and well executed design give it a sharp, purposeful presence in any environment. The HP OMEN 35L with the Ryzen 5 8400F and RTX 5060 is an impressive mid range tower, delivering solid real world performance and convincing 3DMark scores (pictured below), backed by smooth, reliable power and remarkably quiet operation. Hardware Notes • AMD Ryzen™ 5 8400F - 6 cores / 12 threads, Zen 4, 4.2 GHz base, up to 4.7–5.0 GHz boost, 16 MB L3, 65 W TDP, no NPU • Samsung MZVL81T0HFLB 00BH1 - PCIe 4.0 x4 NVMe SSD • NVIDIA® GeForce RTX™ 5060 Ti — 8 GB GDDR7 • Kingston HP60U40S8HA 16FRE 16GB DDR5 6000 expandable to 128 GB • RealTek RTL88552BE Wi Fi 6 (802.11ax) - upgradable to Wi Fi 7 • Cooling - The system stays impressively cool during sustained gaming sessions, a clear sign of efficient, well managed airflow. • RGB - Controlled via OMEN Gaming Hub A capable, solid performing mid range gaming platform built around a modern GPU and enclosed in a well designed, visually appealing, upgrade friendly chassis. AMD’s Radeon RX 5060 produces consistently smooth frame delivery, delivering excellent 1440p Ultra results and surprisingly capable 4K performance with ray tracing engaged. “Brilliant out of the box performance, needing little to no tuning to shine.”

I have planned, built, and configured many gaming rigs in the past and highly appreciate a well-designed, well-built and well-performing desktop or tower computer, especially one built for the budget conscious gamer and one that is highly upgradeable. Fitting the bill, the HP OMEN - 35L Gaming Desktop Model # GT16-0414 PC is configured with an AMD Ryzen 5 8000F Zen 4 (4nm) Architecture with 6-core / 12 Threads running at 4.2GHz to 4.7GHz at boost with 6MB of L2 Cache and 16MB of L3 Cache, with disabled integrated graphics and is unlocked for over-clocking. This CPU is the budget low-end of the AMD AM5 Socket CPU lineup, but still has the power, power efficiency, and performance to run high-end games at high frame rates while relying on a high-end discrete GPU for its video capabilities. The Graphics card that this OMEN 35L rig relies on is the highly-respectable NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 5060 with 8 GB of 28 Gbps GDDR7 memory, featuring 3840 shading units, 120 texture mapping units, 48 ROPs, 30 raytracing acceleration cores and supporting DirectX 12 Ultimate, ensuring that all modern games will run. The RTX 5060’s display outputs include: 1x HDMI 2.1b, and 3x DisplayPort 2.1b. As for the OMEN 35L’s DRAM, this rig comes with one 288 Pin stick of Kingston 16GB DDR5 6000MHz Desktop UDIMM (Unbuffered, non-ECC) RAM Model HP60U40S8HA-16FRE which is fully sufficient to support gaming and all standard business and school applications. Storage is provided by an excellently performing Samsung MZVL81T0HFLB-00BH1 1TB (953.8GB) NVMe m.2 Solid State Drive which provides a great balance of capacity, response speed, and reliability. All of this is amply powered by a 600W PSU (Power Supply). When I received my new OMEN – 35L, I went through the normal Windows 11 64-bit Home setup and then made sure to run all the Windows updates. After that, I opened the HP Support Assistant provided with the PC and ran updates from HP. These updates included the latest UEFI BIOS update for this model. (I highly suggest making sure that the latest BIOS and component drivers are installed to ensure you have all the latest features and bug fixes.) Once updates were completed, I went into the OMEN UEFI BIOS in the BIOS SETUP > F10 Advanced BIOS section, I initiated HP’s OGH which is designed to automatically ‘optimize, customize, and elevate your gaming experience on OMEN…PCs.” in addition to downloading and setting up the ‘OMEN Gaming Hub SDK Package’ through HP Support for the ‘OMEN 35L Gaming DT GT16-0014 PC (A75W8AA)’ page under Utility-Tools. This utility allows you to set power modes, to monitor system vitals, to tweak cooling profiles, to perform Advanced Performance Tuning, to set Lighting Options, to use Network Booster to increase your Bandwidth when running online gaming to run HP’s System Benchmarking, to set key assignments on your keyboard and more. Using the utility, you can even use AI to tweak your system (with caution as it in Beta.) Then using the OGH BIOS setting, I did bench-marking on all components using UserBenchmark. UserBenchmark reported that the unit’s GPU was “Performing above expectations (78th percentile) overall with the AMD Ryzen CPU performing “way above expectations at the 89th percentile with a ‘Great’ score of 105% out of 110%, and stating that it tested with a single core out of 6 cores, this “CPU is the cat’s whiskers: It demolishes everyday tasks such as web browsing, office apps and audio/video playback. Additionally, this processor can handle typical workstation, and even moderate server workloads. Finally, with a gaming score of 105%, this CPU’s suitability for 3D gaming is outstanding.” The RTX5060 GPU performed above expectations at the 84th percentile with a ‘Good’ 3D score of 66.3% stating that this “GPU can handle the majority of games at high resolutions and ultra detail levels”. The Samsung SSD came in at an exceptional 305% score, making this drive “suitable for heavy workstation use, it will facilitate fast boots, responsive applications and allow for fast transfers of multi-gigabyte files.” The Kingston 16GB DDR5 6000 performed ‘Great’ at 92.9%, but below expectations with top XMP profile needing to be enabled in the BIOS. In all, the OMEN 35L’s results were very impressive and will be better with some more tweaking. As for upgradeability, this OMEN 35L is thoughtfully designed to allow for installation of more and/or better components. HP put together a very comprehensive downloadable “Hardware Reference Guide (for the) OMEN 35L Gaming Desktop PC” stating that “This guide provides information about components, power management, security, backing up and more.” It goes over all the computer’s features in detail and gives step-by-step instructions on how to identify, disassemble, access, install or replace everything from the System DDR5 RAM, to the SSD m.2 drives, to the 600W Power Supply, to the Graphics Card, to the CPU and more. This is an awesome guide and really shows you how-to upgrade all these components when you are ready. This guide is downloadable from the HP site which can be accessed through the HP Support Assistant application. HP has gone above and beyond designing, building, configuring and supporting this OMEN 35L budget-conscious, high-performance and readily upgradeable gaming desktop. I highly recommend this desktop to any serious gamer who is on a budget or to anyone who wants a great performing computer in general.

I'm very, very new to PC gaming but I am happy so far with my experience with this HP Omen. I have a Mac and do not need another computer for productivity tasks. This machine is being solely used for gaming, and although I'm just dipping my toes into the water - wow. I've been out of the console world (save for a Nintendo Switch) for awhile now and it's insane the detail of visuals in cinematic scenes AND gameplay that exists even in games that are a few years old. So far, I've been playing Warframe, Game of Thrones: Kingsroad, Where Winds Meet and Sims 4 on Steam and everything runs wonderfully. I'm not a pixel peeper with games, but I am particular about image quality in general. I like my movies in Dolby Vision and I know a good image when I see it. I'll be the first to admit that I don't even know what all the in-game display settings mean on some of these menus, but I cranked everything up on Warframe to the highest setting and saw zero lag or hiccups. The only issue I have run into is that for some reason I am getting some cut outs when using HDR on my TV. This is a little confusing to me. The set is a Hisense U8 and has never given me any issues when using an AppleTV or running Dolby Vision or HDR movies and shows. I used the exact same HDMI cable, connected the Omen to my monitor, which is older and not as nice of a panel as my TV (but does have HDR support), and... zero problems. So, not sure what's going on there but it might be a me problem vs. a machine problem. Will have to do some research on that front. The machine itself is REALLY. nice looking, imo. I love the materials and the grate like holes. Where the lights run, if you look at it from the right angle the holes almost make the lights look like they're approximating an 8-bit retro look. Kinda cool. I love the window into the computer, even if I'm currently terrified at the idea of opening it up and ever changing anything. (I'll get there some day, ha. Baby steps.) It's just cool to see what's going on in there and nice to know that attention is being paid to design. Will I get tired of those RGB lights? Maybe. But you can easily turn them off or change their pattern in the Omen app. Speaking of, if you like to tweak things or monitor stats, you'll probably like that app. I will dig around it in more, but gotta say... it's a little disappointing but not unexpected to see ads in there. I've also been running Amazon Luna to play Indiana Jones and the Great Circle, Hogwarts Legacy and a few other games at no additional cost beyond my Prime subscription. My wifi connection is not the strongest in the room where the Omen is at the moment, but things are definitely playable and look great - though I have notice a little stutter here and there. I think that's the difference between streaming and playing off a download. Excited to try out the included free trial of Xbox Gamepass and see what all I can play there. Beyond that any frustrations I've had with this PC have solely been because of the Windows experience. So many pop ups. Also, this computer does not come with a keyboard or mouse and your life will be a whole lot better if you have a WIRED set of those two things laying around, because set up was a pain without them. All that said, I was up and running in a fair amount of time and it's been happy gaming ever since. The last PC I owned was an HP laptop and it was rock solid for a number of years. I'm hoping that will be the case for this Omen and that upgrading it over time will only be a pain in my wallet!

While HP brand products are far from my first choice (not for a good long time), I am well-acquainted with their home office electronics, having owned many of them over the years, and for the most part, they have served me quite adequately. That being said, every time I visit my local Best Buy and find myself wandering through the computer section of the store, my gaze invariably strays towards the HP Omen Gaming Desktop on display. It just looks so cool! But what matters are the parts which comprise the PC itself, and of course, how good (or bad) it performs. So, I finally got my hands on one. Okay, okay … the Omen isn’t all about having clean lines and a stylish looking chassis, or those flashy RGB lights on the inside. No sir, the components are pretty impressive too; good enough for my gaming needs, at least. And it’s a definite upgrade from my gaming laptop, which I love so much (not an HP). Onto the usual Windows setup. All went well. During the process, I found myself eager to finally “get in there” and test this bad boy out. However, gotta do all those Windows updates first. Then came connecting my peripherals to the many available ports. Also, the removal of certain undesirable ‘pre-installed’ software. I do, however, recommend and use NVIDIA GeForce App, AMD Software Adrenalin Edition, as well as, the HP Omen Gaming Hub which allows you to customize fan lighting, check CPU/GPU performance, etc. Notable specs: Panda metal tower - ceramic white/shadow black, showcases a sweet, visually appealing, contrast Glass side door to view all those lovely RGB’s on the fans and memory stick AMD Ryzen 5 8400F NVIDIA GeForce RTX 5060 WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.3 Kingston Fury Beast 16gb DDR5 RAM, upgradable, with 3 more expansion slots 1TB SSD, which imo, should be the bare minimum for any and all gaming computers Oodles of Ports, including key ones up top towards the front of the case Multi-display capable, for those wanting to set up more than one monitor Now, onto how this HP Omen performs. I admit it, I’m a Ryzen girl. Not that I don’t still appreciate Intel. But AMD has come a long way over the years, since I began gaming on PC. The games I currently play include - Where Winds Meets, World of Warcraft, Diablo IV, FFXIV, and various other less graphics intensive Steam client games. For the most part, I was able to play most of my games on medium (and sometimes high) graphical settings. They ran at optimal fps, loading fully on screen with no noticeable lag or pixelation. The fans were whisper quiet, even during extreme graphics intensive battle sessions. Gaming on this machine is truly fun. Oh, one other thing I wanted to mention … The packing box and inside materials were made from extra sturdy cardboard, which was good since the unit is heavy but it needs to be for what this desktop PC is, especially as the chassis is made of metal not plastic. Yet the computer was easy enough to get out of the box, even without help. Final thoughts - I’m actually really pleasantly surprised by my new HP Omen 35L Gaming Desktop PC. It’s been fun fine tuning the PC settings, and playing my favorite games on it, knowing that I’ll likely not be needing to think about an upgrade any time soon, for the foreseeable future. I’d recommend this HP Omen model for those wanting a solid low to mid-range prebuilt gaming computer.