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Lower-cost prebuilt gaming desktops don’t grace PC Labs as often as we might like, and the latest is from HP, the Omen 40L. As the name suggests, it sits inside a chassis with around 40 liters of internal space—in other words, a mid-tower chassis. Priced at $1,479.99 (or $1,249.99 on sale at Best Buy), the Omen 40L is a mainstream prebuilt gaming desktop, but don’t underestimate what it can do. Packed with a capable midrange AMD processor and an Nvidia graphics card, it’s a competent 1080p gamer that can punch up to 1440p in many games. The HP Omen 40L showed decent performance, but the default configuration left some meat on the bone, keeping the Editors’ Choice crown with the Alienware Aurora R16 for now.Design: Black Is the New WhiteThe HP Omen 40L’s mid-tower chassis shows off a premium aesthetic with its all-black exterior and tempered-glass front and side panels. You’ll find quick latches at the top for easy access to the internals, and while it’s not configured for high airflow, it won’t leave your parts starving for cool air, either. Those looking for RGB lighting are in luck because, as configured, the two front fans and CPU heatsink include RGB effects, along with a fan hub for easy management.
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(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The mid-tower Omen 40L measures about 18.4 by 8.0 by 18.5 inches (HWD) and could be stowed under your desk or shown off on top. The front of the Omen 40L features a sleek, smoked-glass panel with inlets for the air along the sides and the fans set behind it. You’ll find three mounts for 120mm fans, and HP filled two of them with RGB-ring fans.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Many of the desktop’s I/O bits are on top of the chassis. The 40L case gives you four USB ports: two 3.2 Gen 1 (5Gbps) and two 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) ports. Sadly, this model has no USB Type-C port up top, but it does contain two on the rear I/O panel. The case also has separate 3.5mm headphone and microphone jacks for audio and, of course, the power/reset button.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
To access the internals, the top of the chassis has two buttons that pop off the side panels. Once you remove the side panels, the front will come off. On the backside of the motherboard, you’ll find plenty of room for cables, and HP did a decent job routing and organizing them. You’ll notice a removable dust filter, as well.On the software front, like in most prebuilt PCs, HP includes software to ostensibly help users; here it’s a mix of partner apps and its own utilities. You get McAfee antivirus (a one-year subscription), the Omen Gaming Hub application, and several other HP utilities (among them HP Support Assist and Hardware Diagnostic). It’s not the cleanest Windows setup we’ve seen, but I also can’t say it’s intrusive or full of bloatware.The Omen Gaming Hub application has a ton of functionality, including overclocking, RGB lighting control, optimizer/system cleaner, and system monitoring. The biggest issue is making your way through the abundance of advertisements and menus to access relevant system functions. But if you like having a single application hub that can access your game library and show community-based content, you’ll like Gaming Hub.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
On the back of the case, you see seven expansion slots, which is plenty for HP’s motherboard and any other you may upgrade to. The rear I/O loadout is sparse compared with that of almost any enthusiast-class motherboard. You get a total of eight USB ports, including the two Type-C, but of those, none is 20Gbps. You’ll find a DisplayPort output for integrated video, a 1GbE network port (versus 2.5GbE for most B650-based motherboards), and the audio stack housing three 3.5mm jacks.Configurations and Ease of Use: Easy Access, Clean LooksGetting inside the 40L is as easy as pushing the button on top to release the tempered-glass side panel and pulling up to remove it. Once it’s open, you have full access to the internals. HP does a fine job of cable management using zip ties to route them behind the chassis. You’ll find plenty of room in the mid-size tower for just about anything. A larger graphics card? Done. Do you want to change the AIO or water cooling? No big deal.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
Our test system arrived with an air-cooled AMD Ryzen 7 7700 CPU running with eight cores and 16 threads, 16GB of DDR5-5200 RAM, a 1TB PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 Ti graphics card. You’ll find room for additional storage on the back to the tune of two 3.5-inch and two 2.5-inch bays. You’ll also come across an additional PCIe 4.0 x4-capable M.2 socket for another M.2 module and three available SATA ports. The motherboard is from HP and has enough ports and slots to be useful, but you won’t find a lot of extras, especially on the USB port count and speed.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
This specific model comes with an RTX 4060 Ti with reference clock speeds; this is the fastest GPU option from Best Buy. On the HP website, you can configure up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super in the same chassis for high-frame-rate 1440p or 4K gaming. Of course, that, and any other upgrade, raises costs. The difference between a 4060 Ti and a 4080 Super is $500 on the HP website.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The audio implementation, a basic Realtek 7.1 channel solution, is sufficient for most users but won’t impress audiophiles. You won’t see high-end integrated DACs and amplifiers at this price point. But the good news is that the board has one PCIe expansion slot to add a sound card or another compatible expansion card.In the end, the chassis looks appealing on the outside and inside, and it has plenty of room for expansion to keep the system up to date. The flat black color and numerous holes and slots for wires keep your desk setup tidy.Testing the HP Omen 40L: Adjustments Required for Best PerformanceCurrently, our best comparisons with this desktop are against more expensive systems with high-end processors and video cards. While the charts show the Omen to be slower, keep in mind some test systems cost several hundred dollars more than our 40L. For what it is, the eight-core, 16-thread AMD Ryzen 7 7700 processor charged through productivity and content creation tests and did fine in gaming, though again, you’ll want to make sure your RAM is set to the optimized profile for best results.
Productivity and Content Creation TestsWe run the same general productivity benchmarks across both mobile and desktop systems. Our first test is UL’s PCMark 10, which simulates a variety of real-world productivity and office workflows to measure overall system performance and includes a storage subtest for the primary drive.Our other three benchmarks focus on the CPU, using all available cores and threads to rate a PC’s suitability for processor-intensive workloads. Maxon’s Cinebench R23 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene. At the same time, Geekbench 5.4 Pro from Primate Labs simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning. We then use the open-source video transcoder HandBrake 1.4 to convert a 12-minute video clip from 4K to 1080p resolution (lower times are better).Finally, we run PugetBench for Photoshop by workstation maker Puget Systems, which uses the Creative Cloud version 22 of Adobe’s famous image editor to rate a PC’s performance for content creation and multimedia applications. It’s an automated extension that executes a variety of general and GPU-accelerated Photoshop tasks ranging from opening, rotating, resizing, and saving an image to applying masks, gradient fills, and filters.
The HP Omen 40L displayed appropriate performance for its configuration. The small air cooler allowed the midrange AMD Ryzen 7 7700 CPU to stretch its legs. We expect that if you configure the system with a more powerful processor, it will do the same, but you may need better cooling (which is also an option on HP’s website).Compared with several midrange models we’ve tested recently, the Omen 40L runs slower, but that’s expected as the hardware configuration isn’t as stacked. It was also tested using reference clocks on the graphics card. The closest competitor is the Alienware Aurora R16 performance-wise, but it’s also nearly $2,000 as configured, with the others even higher.Graphics and Gaming TestsFor gaming desktops, we run both synthetic and real-world gaming benchmarks. The former includes two DirectX 12 gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark, the more modest Night Raid (suitable for systems with integrated graphics) and the more demanding Time Spy (suitable for gaming rigs with discrete GPUs). We then run two OpenGL exercises, rendered offscreen by the cross-platform GPU benchmark GFXBench 5; more frames per second (fps) means higher performance.Our real gaming benchmarks are those built into F1 2021, Assassin’s Creed Valhalla, and Rainbow Six Siege, tested at higher resolutions and quality settings than on gaming laptops. These three represent simulation, open-world action adventure, and competitive/esports shooter games. We run Valhalla and Siege twice each at Ultra quality (at both 1080p and 4K), while F1 2021 is run at 4K only, with and without AMD’s and Nvidia’s performance-boosting FSR and DLSS features turned on.
In our gaming and graphics tests, we’re again blessed by a system that performs as expected with an RTX 4060 Ti using reference clock speeds. As configured, it’s not 4K-capable without a significant reduction in detail settings, but the Omen 40L is a more-than-capable 1080p gamer. For those running a 1440p monitor, you can still play many games at native resolution. However, sacrifices in detail may be needed in some titles. If you need more than this, the 40L accepts up to an Nvidia RTX 4080 Super, which is better suited for higher-frequency and higher-resolution gaming.Looking at the comparison data sets, the HP Omen 40L was again slower than the rest, which is again expected due to the hardware configurations. An RTX 4060 Ti is never going to keep up with the more powerful (and more expensive) RTX 4070 or RTX 4080 that the other systems included. But again, they cost several hundred dollars more. Regardless, this is a competent 1080p-to-1440p gaming machine.Verdict: Capable HD Gaming Chops and Luxury Looks for a Low Midrange PriceHP’s Omen line of gaming PCs presents a wide range of performance levels and pricing, with Omen models (like the 25L) starting at way less than $800 and reaching well into the thousands for the 45L. This 40L is a specific model (GT21-1324) sold at Best Buy, and you can find it on Amazon. At the time of this writing, the 40L costs just $1,249.99 at Best Buy, down from the $1,479.99 it was previously. It’s a decent deal, considering if we bought the parts in the wild, you’re looking at around $1,000, give or take. With the warranty, support, and other extras, the “prebuilt premium” isn’t as off-putting as expected.Our biggest concern with the product is how it comes configured to your door. The HP Omen arrived in the lab without the optimized memory profile enabled (as it did with another review). If you’re buying a prebuilt PC, it should be set up to take advantage of the hardware you bought without manual adjustments. It’s an easy fix, enabling it in the BIOS, but people buy a prebuilt machine because they want something without the hassle of part selection, building, and configuring the PC. It doesn’t mean a whole lot performance-wise, but you want to get what you paid for out of the box. Another consideration is the GPU in our Best Buy model. The GeForce RTX 4060 Ti isn’t our favorite from the GeForce RTX 40 series by a long shot, as we found in our initial review, based on its pricing and positioning in the line. As an aftermarket card, it’s not a stellar value; baked into a basic midrange PC, it’s fine, but we would like the value and pep of an RTX 4070-class better (or otherwise, maybe the savings associated with an RTX 4060 non-Ti).In the end, though, we like what the Omen 40L brings to the desktop as a whole package. You get a cool-looking chassis and, as configured, a reasonably priced and capable machine. Since everything is industry standard, you can replace and upgrade parts as if it were a full custom build or choose a different-model Omen from HP. If you can find this model for less than $1,300, it’s a good deal in the prebuilt arena. The best part about this is being able to take it home off the Best Buy shelf, if you have a store nearby, instead of ordering online and waiting.
Cons
Optimized memory profile not applied out of the box (but easily remedied)
Lacks front-panel USB-C port
GeForce RTX 4060 Ti, as tested, not our favorite-value GPU (though other options available)
The Bottom Line
HP’s Omen 40L comes in at a decent midrange price for such a luxe, quiet, and upgrade-friendly chassis. Our main quibbles are with a lack of USB-C on front, and with memory settings that could use tweaking out of the box.
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