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With a wide range of configurations, HP’s Omen 35L mid-tower gaming desktop (starting at $1,099.99; $2,449.99 as tested at Best Buy) caters to entry-level and enthusiast PC gamers. This updated model flaunts a sleek case with tempered glass and striking RGB lighting. We find it impressively quiet and appreciate its industry-standard part selection, which simplifies future upgrades. Its only eyebrow-raiser is its AMD Ryzen G-series processor paired with a motherboard lacking an HDMI port (we also would prefer an X-series chip), but it doesn’t compromise the tower’s performance. For driving effective 1440p performance and serving a wide range of consumers, the Omen 35L earns our Editors’ Choice award for a mainstream mid-tower gaming desktop.
Configurations & Design: An Upscale Mid-Tower
HP’s Omen line focuses on more powerful hardware and more premium designs than its Victus and Pavilion series. The Omen 35L reviewed here is one of two Omen desktop models; the other is the full-tower HP Omen 45L, which has even greater performance potential.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The Omen 35L’s entry-level setup is aimed at 1080p gaming, with a six-core AMD Ryzen 5 8500G processor, an AMD Radeon RX 7600 graphics card, 16GB of memory, and a 512GB solid-state drive. Our review unit, priced more than three times higher than the base model, includes all available upgrades such as CPU liquid cooling, 64GB of RAM, three storage drives, and an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4080 Super. HP’s online configurator allows for nearly any configuration in between, and this model also has Intel processor options.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The Omen 35L gets its name from its dimensions: 16.1 by 8.3 by 16.1 inches (HWD), translating to approximately 35 liters in volume. The Alienware Aurora R16 is similarly sized at 16.5 by 7.8 by 18.1 inches.
HP’s Omen build quality is exceptional, crafting a robust metal case and both front and side tempered-glass panels. Our model comes in black, but HP also sells a white version with black accents. The RGB-lit fans and interior components not only look premium but are bright enough to illuminate a small room. Overall, the Omen evokes a more high-end feel compared with the Alienware.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
The case’s front ports on the top of the tower include a 3.5mm audio jack, a USB Type-C port (10Gbps), and two USB Type-A ports (5Gbps). The power button is on the right.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
HP’s motherboard I/O selection includes one USB Type-C port (10Gbps), two USB Type-A ports (5Gbps), four USB 2.0 connections, an Ethernet jack, and audio ports for line-in, line-out, and a microphone. A clear CMOS button, typically found on enthusiast aftermarket motherboards, is a notable inclusion. Weirdly, the motherboard doesn’t have any monitor outputs, rendering the AMD Ryzen G-series CPU’s integrated graphics moot. The GeForce RTX 4080 Super (of course, a vastly superior graphics accelerator to the Ryzen’s integrated silicon) provides one HDMI and three DisplayPort ports for monitor output. The Wi-Fi 7 and Bluetooth 5.4 wireless antennas are seamlessly integrated into the case, avoiding any protrusions.
The tempered-glass side panel (a tiny $5 upgrade over the steel panel) slides back and detaches after loosening its two retainer-style thumbscrews. Inside, the layout is standardized and straightforward, exactly as you might expect from an aftermarket tower. Two 140mm fans handle air intake, while the two 120mm fans on the CPU liquid cooling radiator and an additional 120mm fan at the rear handle exhaust duties. While gaming with the Omen 35L, I barely notice the fans.
(Credit: Joseph Maldonado)
HP aced serviceability in this desktop, ensuring every part is a standardized component that can be replaced in the aftermarket. It has a washable dust filter behind the pull-off front panel and another underneath. Cable management is decent: A shroud hides most of the wires coming off the motherboard. The Omen power supply is of high quality, with a modular design that allows only the necessary cables to plug in. The 3.5-inch drive cage in front of the power supply houses a 2TB drive in our review unit, although this configuration is not currently available from HP but instead from Best Buy for $2,449.99 with half as much RAM.
The RGB lighting from the CPU waterblock, the Kingston Fury memory sticks, and the fans illuminates the entire inside of the chassis. The GeForce logo on the graphics card is also illuminated. You can customize the lighting patterns and colors in the included Omen Gaming Hub app zone by zone, which also provides system updates and diagnostics. Settings can be saved in profiles.
Our review unit also has some unwanted software, namely a McAfee antivirus trial and many HP apps of varying usefulness. The Omen 35L comes with a one-year warranty.
Testing the HP Omen 35L: A Speedy But Odd Choice in Silicon
HP sent us an Omen 35L decked out with every option, including an eight-core AMD Ryzen 7 8700G CPU, a GeForce RTX 4080 Super GPU, 64GB of RAM, a 2TB SSD with Windows 11 Pro, and two secondary-storage drives (an additional 2TB SSD and one 2TB hard drive). It also has CPU liquid cooling and a 1,000-watt power supply. The Alienware Aurora R16 was $3,299.99, similarly configured to this Omen review unit, albeit with a Core i7-14700F processor.
It’s puzzling why the Omen 35L has that Ryzen G-series chip inside, which is generally favored for its high-performance integrated graphics solution. That feature is redundant in this tower since every configuration includes a dedicated GPU. Moreover, even if you wanted to use the integrated graphics, the motherboard, again, lacks an HDMI or DisplayPort output. Nonetheless, the CPU portion of the G-series chip has ample performance on tap, so it shouldn’t hold back the Omen 35L in any way.
We’ve just rebooted with an updated PC benchmarking regimen, so our comparison systems for the Omen 35L are limited to the tiny Asus ROG NUC 970 (not yet reviewed) with laptop-style components, a budget MSI Codex R2 mid-tower gaming desktop, and the ultra-high-end MSI Vision Elite RS. If anything, the Omen 35L compares with the latter, though it’s quite outclassed on the CPU front.
Productivity & Content Creation Tests
Our primary overall benchmark, UL’s PCMark 10, puts a system through its paces in productivity apps ranging from web browsing to word processing and spreadsheet work. Its Full System Drive subtest measures a PC’s storage throughput.
Three more tests are CPU-centric or processor-intensive: Maxon’s Cinebench 2024 uses that company’s Cinema 4D engine to render a complex scene; Primate Labs’ Geekbench 6.3 Pro simulates popular apps ranging from PDF rendering and speech recognition to machine learning; and we see how long it takes the video editing tool HandBrake 1.8 to convert a 12-minute clip from 4K to 1080p resolution.
Finally, workstation maker Puget Systems’ PugetBench for Creators rates a PC’s image editing prowess with a variety of automated operations in Adobe Photoshop 25.
The Omen 35L finished behind the ultra-powerful MSI Vision Elite RS but well ahead of the others in PCMark’s primary test, though it performed just average in the storage portion. It also didn’t stand out next to the Asus ROG mini PC in the CPU-centric tests where it should have done better being a liquid-cooled, full-blown desktop. At least it did reasonably well in Photoshop. Expect decent productivity speeds out of this machine, but if you really need to crunch on CPU-centric tasks, you’ll need a higher-end chip.
Gaming & Graphics Tests
We challenge all desktops’ graphics with a quartet of animations or gaming simulations from UL’s 3DMark test suite. The first two, Wild Life (1440p) and Wild Life Extreme (4K), use the Vulkan graphics API to measure GPU speeds. The others, 3DMark’s Steel Nomad and Steel Nomad Light subtests, focus on APIs more commonly used for game development, like Metal and DirectX 12, to assess gaming geometry and particle effects.
We then turn to 3DMark Solar Bay to measure ray tracing performance in a synthetic environment. This benchmark works with Vulkan for Windows and Android and Metal for Apple devices, subjecting 3D scenes to increasingly intense ray-traced workloads at 1440p.
Our real-world gaming testing comes from the in-game benchmarks of Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3, Cyberpunk 2077, and F1 2024. These three games—all benchmarked at full HD (1080p or 1200p), 2K (1440p or 1600p), and 4K (2160p) resolution—represent competitive shooter, open-world, and simulation games, respectively. Each game runs at high detail or the highest available settings: “Extreme” for Call of Duty, “Overdrive” for Cyberpunk, and “Ultra High” for F1 24.
We run the Call of Duty benchmark at the Extreme graphics preset on desktops, but the test still aims to maximize frame rates to evaluate compatibility with fast displays. Our Cyberpunk 2077 test settings aim to push PCs fully, so we run it on the all-out Ray Tracing Overdrive preset without DLSS or FSR. Finally, F1 2024 represents our DLSS effectiveness (or FSR on AMD systems) test, demonstrating a GPU’s potential with frame-boosting upscaling technologies in play.
The Omen PC predictably lagged behind the GeForce RTX 4090-powered MSI Vision Elite RS in all tests, but it was significantly faster than the Asus (where it counts: gaming) and MSI Codex R2 desktops. As noted earlier, our comparison systems are limited to those included here. These results indicate that the Omen 35L, when equipped with an upper-end graphics card like the GeForce RTX 4080 Super, will excel in any modern game.
Verdict: A Gamer’s Near-Ideal Mid-Tower
Thanks to its diverse range of configurations, HP’s Omen 35L mid-tower caters to gamers, whether they’re just getting started or are deep-pocketed enthusiasts. The Omen 35L impressed us with its quiet fans, standardized components, and tasteful design. Although including a Ryzen G-series CPU is unusual since you can’t access its integrated graphics with the motherboard included, the processor still has ample power for gaming. Overall, we prefer the Omen 35L to the Alienware Aurora R16 for its superior build quality and design, and its use of all-industry-standard parts, so we give it our Editors’ Choice award for mainstream mid-tower gaming desktops.
The Bottom Line
HP’s Omen 35L pumps out more than enough frames at 1440p, and does it quietly in an attractive mid-tower chassis, making it an award-winning rig for mainstream PC gamers.
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About Charles Jefferies
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