A stealthily quiet prebuilt PC

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I don’t buy into the prebuilt PC hate. If I had opted for a prebuilt computer, or a modern mini PC, at the onset of my gaming journey, doing so would’ve spared me a lot of headaches and some money lost.




Plus, ready-to-use towers are becoming more and more of a sound investment, especially for beginner gamers, or simply those who don’t have the time, space, or extra capacity for DIY builds. Prebuilt PCs are staying competitive for longer, system integrators and first party brands are using higher-quality parts, and customization/add-on support is increasingly common. HP Omen’s new 35L, the Goldilocks of its prebuilt towers, offers most of what I want to see in an on-demand PC build.

About this review: HP provided the PC and accompanying peripherals for this review. The company had no input in this article, and did not see its contents before publishing.


The Omen 35L

HP Omen 35L

Take your play higher with the Omen 35L desktop, the first such PC built with Omen Components. It’s pre-tuned and optimized for all-out performance right out of the box. And with space and options to upgrade for the future, there’s no limit to how it can perform.​

Pros

  • AIO liquid cooler keeps things quiet as a whisper
  • Standardized ATX components
  • Easily upgradable
Cons

  • Why use a dedicated GPU and an APU?
  • No VRM heatsinks

Pricing, availability, and specs

Of course, the cost of your HP Omen 35L build varies widely based on the selected specs. The base model completely sans bells and whistles lands at $1,300 before adding on peripherals, taxes, and optional faster shipping (domestic economy shipping is free).

The 35L build that HP Omen provided for this review pulls out all the stops though, with the highest-end components available, plus some software packages like Microsoft Office and McAfee, landing this model at about $3,600. You’ll find a more detailed list of this build’s specs below.

Unless you opt to bundle in the HP 310 wired keyboard and mouse set, the 35L prebuilt PC won’t ship with any additional hardware besides the tower, components, and power adapter. The graphics unit comes installed and ready to go.


There are a number of software purchases you can bundle into the build, like McAfee, theft protection, and Microsoft Office, and if you choose to do so, the programs will be installed and ready to use. Omit the preloaded software, and the price drops by over $300.

Design

This prebuilt PC is essentially a debut of HP’s new collection of Omen-branded parts. The Omen 35L GT16-0000m PC is assembled in a black metal Omen tower, with a standard glass panel on the left-facing side for viewing the internals. It’s quite compact and unassuming but for the distinguished Omen branding throughout. My build included the optional glass bezel on the front, which you can incorporate into the build for $5. Don’t worry – there’s a good-sized gap for heat dissipation on the side of the panel, and dust screens on the front two 120mm fans.


Meticulously built and decked with RGB flair, the Omen 35L is a visual stunner. To highlight some aspects from the spec list, this particular build includes a 4080 Super and an AIO liquid cooling system. You’ll see five fans inside: two on the front panel, the AIO liquid cooler’s two fans on the top, and one on the backside.

Behind the all-metal right panel, there’s motherboard access and the fan hub, plus a slew of cables. I think HP did a good job snaking the cables together as best they could, but it’s still quite a thicket, one I wouldn’t mess with unless absolutely necessary.

Meticulously built and decked with RGB flair, the Omen 35L is a visual stunner.


A small note, but I didn’t love the power button on the 35L case. I can’t see the top of my PC towers from where they ordinarily sit and, sure, with enough muscle memory, finding and pressing the power button would be second nature. But on the 35L case, the power button is quite small, barely the size of a USB-A port, and, in my opinion, too flush with the case itself.


Inputs and power button on HP Omen 35L case

As a contrasting example, the power buttons on NZXT cases are much larger, round, and generally easier to blindly find. Another PC case I’ve used from iBuyPower put the power button on the lower edge of the front panel for easier access. Of course, this is incredibly minute in the grand scheme, so let’s move on.

The 35L’s ports and connectivity options did not leave anything to be desired, as someone who only games and doesn’t stream or create content. On the top of the tower, we have the power button, two USB-A 3.2 ports, one USB-C 3.2 port, and the headphone jack.


On the back panel, we have one row of three audio ports, an Ethernet port, two faster-transfer USB-A 3.2 ports, a row of four USB-A 2.0 ports, and one lone USB-C 10 gig port. Lower on the panel, connected to the graphics unit, are three DisplayPort slots and one HDMI. Interestingly, there does not look to be a video port directly rigged up to the CPU in order to use the processor’s integrated graphics.

Performance and benchmarks

Gaming

Benchmarks

HP Omen 35L, AMD Ryzen 7 8700G

Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 8, Intel Core i9-14900KF, RTX 4070 Ti Super

Maingear MG-1, Intel Core i9-14900K, RTX 4080 Super

3DMark Time Spy

27,770

22,506

28,036

Cinebench 2024 (single/multi)

102 / 954

120 / 1,933

132 / 1,866

Crossmark

1,781

2,173

N/A

Geekbench 6 (single/multi)

2,710 / 13,750

2,863 / 17,958

3,054 / 21,899

DirectX Raytracing Feature Test (3DMark)

86.33 FPS

71.6 FPS

88.39 FPS

Nvidia DLSS Feature Test (3DMark, 3840×2160) DLSS OFF/ DLSS ON

83.29 FPS / 119.45 FPS

35.7 FPS / 105.1 FPS

40.96 FPS / 149.59 FPS

3D Mark Steel Nomad

6,363

N/A

N/A


I can summarize the 35L’s performance in two words: quiet and capable. It doesn’t quite have the horsepower of the Maingear MG-1, an i9-powered prebuild that XDA gave high marks for its performance, but its numbers are still impressive. Overclocked to 5,200MT/S, the system’s frame rates surged to peaks of over 250 FPS (while gaming in 2K), so assuming that you have 240 Hz displays, the Omen 35L could give you some truly stunning visuals. My current monitors cap out at 160 Hz, and the Omen 35L pushed these two displays to their limits with constant average frame rates near 160.

I can summarize the 35L’s performance in two words: quiet and capable.


Game

Average 1440p FPS

Average 4K FPS

Battlefield V

200+ FPS

90 FPS

GTA V

180+ FPS

70 FPS

Fortnite

125+ FPS

60 FPS

Baldur’s Gate 3

180+ FPS

90 FPS

The Omen 35L’s performance is bolstered by the Omen Gaming Hub, a thorough and well-refined PC management software that encapsulates all things PC management, from utility monitoring, to optimization and boosting, to RGBs.


While not a particularly unique or uncommon feature, I especially enjoyed the Gaming Hub’s in-depth manual boosting. Here, you can hand-pick applications, Windows services, and background processes to be automatically closed when the Hub detects a game being launched. This function helped clear up two to three gigs of RAM when I launched a game by shutting down programs I’d often forget to close myself, such as Adobe Creative Cloud, peripheral software, and more nitty-gritty things like printer protocols.

Cooling

An AIO liquid cooler supports the Omen 35L’s performance. I’ve primarily used air-cooled towers before testing the 35L, and didn’t realize how numb I’d become to the noisiness of air-cooled systems. On the other hand, I used a sound level meter next to the PC while it ran a score of benchmarks, and its fan noise output danced between a soft 40-43 decibels.


During my standard daily use of the PC, the GPU stayed relatively cool. The highest GPU temperature I ever recorded on the 35L was while running it overclocked in the Time Spy benchmark, when the GPU reached a peak of 66.42 degrees Celsius. The unit stayed closer to the lower-to-mid-50s during standard, non-overclocked, non-benchmarking use.

CPU temps, on the other hand, were a tad more concerning. During overclocked benchmarking, the processor’s max temperature crested 73 degrees Celsius. Standard use, without overclocking, put the CPU temp at an average of upper 30s to lower 40s. The Omen 35L would almost be neck and neck with another XDA-tested prebuild, the Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 8, if it weren’t for this weaker CPU cooling under load.


Peripherals

HP provided a keyboard, mouse, headset, and monitor for this review. The monitor gets its own dedicated review, but I’ll share thoughts on every other peripheral below. Note that these products are separate purchases from the 35L PC build; the keyboard and mouse are not what would be included with the HP 310 bundle offered when customizing your PC.

HyperX Cloud III Wireless Headset

With powerful 53mm drivers and a low-latency 2.4GHz connection, the Cloud III possesses the speed and performance that gamers expect in their budget-friendly audio gear. There’s nothing particularly dissatisfactory or remarkable about the headset’s sound quality. Its bass notes are noticeably less heavy than those of the Cloud II, but this contributes to a more balanced overall sound, especially when using the Cloud III for music.


I wanted to gush over this headset’s long-term fit, especially since “signature comfort” is half of its elevator pitch. But I couldn’t. Bear in mind that I’m not normally plagued by headset discomfort; my daily driver before the Cloud III, the Turtle Beach Atlas Air, never caused any pain at all, and neither have the Corsair, JBL, and Philips headsets I’ve used for gaming.

The first 30 minutes of wearing the Cloud III flew by without issue. I settled in with its memory foam and leatherette cushions and headband, confident that this was a headset I could wear without discomfort – HyperX promises that it is, after all.


The ear cans themselves proved remarkably comfortable. Oval in shape and plenty big enough to accommodate a variety of ear sizes, there was no discomfort caused by the actual earpieces. All of my pain was in the headband. Before a full hour had lapsed, the headband’s squeeze started a dull, uncomfortable pressure pain on my temples, radiating down to the area just above the ear.

Again, I don’t historically struggle with headset discomfort, but given the Cloud III’s generally positive reputation for its fit, my experience could be an anomaly.


HyperX Alloy Rise 75 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard

Compact and efficient, the HyperX Alloy Rise 75 is one of my favorite budget-friendly mechanical keyboards. That’s because it’s not only usable but exceptional in its out-of-the-box configuration, or you can further tailor it to your liking with custom switches. My keyboard preferences live in a funny medium territory where I enjoy nerding out about switches and custom keycaps, but I also know that, for most users, minute details may not actually make much of a difference.

Visually speaking, there’s not a lot that screams “gaming hardware” about the Alloy Rise 75. Of course, there’s the customizable RGB lighting, but the only other hint to this being a gaming peripheral comes from the small magnetic tag on the right edge, which can be swapped out for different designs. My keyboard, for example, came with a wizard’s hat, a pair of potions, a loot chest, and a life counter. I do wish the tags were more visible on the keyboard, and I ended up displaying mine somewhere else where I could actually see them.


The HyperX Alloy Rise 75 is a mechanical, hot-swappable keyboard that you can put to use right out of the box, or customize with your preferred switches. Sitting on a solid, durable chassis, the Alloy Rise 75 feels and performs like a quality keyboard. I especially like the textured PBT keycaps, with the stability and grip that they provide.

The Alloy Rise 75’s compact form factor won’t be suitable for everyone, though. Multimedia controls are absent except for a singular rotary knob. I missed the number pad, and the absence of a wrist rest is disappointing, although I personally didn’t experience any hand/forearm discomfort or strain using the keyboard without a wrist pad.


Should you buy it?

HP Omen 35L PC tower, side view

HP Omen’s reputation in the PC gaming realm is largely positive, but not perfect. User complaints about build quality and serial overheating in Omen laptops are not rare. I originally started my run with this Omen setup feeling neutral, and ended it pleasantly surprised by the Omen 35L’s build integrity and performance.

You should buy the HP Omen 35L if:

  • You have high standards for your gaming PC, but aren’t interested in building your own
  • You might dip your toes into the DIY build waters at some point in the future, and want a PC that can support some component upgrades and swaps
  • You want a killer video card, but don’t need the best of the best
  • Quiet PC cooling matters to you


You should NOT buy the HP Omen 35L if:

  • You put a lot of multi-thread computing strain on your PCs, like editing video
  • You don’t need to pay big bucks for lots of storage and 64 GB of RAM
  • You’re nervous about longevity and maintenance of liquid coolers

I started my run with the Omen setup feeling neutral, and ended it pleasantly surprised by the Omen 35L’s build integrity and performance.


You may get hung up on HP’s choice to put the Ryzen 7 8700G in this PC. Why does an over $3,000 build get a processor with an integrated graphics unit? Sure, this chip has power efficiency going for it, but is that really the priority here if I’m looking for something with a $1,000 graphics unit and highly efficient liquid cooling? The build’s Kingston Fury RAM modules are capable of overclocking to 6,000 MT/S, but, presumably for the sake of the CPU’s stability, you’re capped to 5,200 MT/S.

If you chose to look for a build that incorporates the Ryzen 9000 series instead, I wouldn’t blame you. But I also would say that, if you’re a casual gamer who wants a powerful PC, dropping the cash on a 9000 series processor probably isn’t worth it. You could replace the 8700 G with a 9000 series processor, if you’re up for constantly monitoring the temperature given the lack of heat sinks. However, I have to lament that all of my needs were met with the 35L, strange CPU choice and all.


As for the peripherals that HP included in this review, I’d enthusiastically recommend the Alloy Rise keyboard, but if you find 75% form factors cramped or annoying, you’d need to go with a full-size instead. As for the mouse and headset, the HyperX’s peripherals may work for your needs and budget, but there are a lot of others out there to choose from.

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