If a Desktop with soft RGB lighting If Glow wasn’t enough for you, Gamer with a capital “G,” HP’s latest desktop is bigger and comes with one of the weirdest internal cooling mechanisms that would make any HVAC engineer blush. At Gamescom on Tuesday, HP showed off how its Omen 35L desktop PC comes with a CPU cooler that features a small LCD display. Of course, you can use it as a static picture frame for family photos. You can also play videos or GIFs on it to turn your PC into a veritable meme machine.
As the Omen brand gaming laptopsI prefer the 35L in white rather than black, although with the optional 240mm CPU liquid cooling system you might want to frame it with the dark chassis for a cinematic effect. The liquid cooling cap contains an LCD screen connected to a 7th Gen Asetek pump. HP told Gizmodo that it can support videos or animated GIFs, or you can set it to display an audio visual or clock via the built-in Omen software. There are other large fans with plenty of RGB lighting running along the top and front of the PC to set the right mood for your gaming room, but I’d be very curious to see how gamers customize their machines.
You’ll have the choice of the most powerful Nvidia RTX GPUs. However, HP won’t ship the desktop with the latest AMD Ryzen 9000 series chips. You can buy the 35 L with an Nvidia GeForce RTX 4060 all the way up to a 4080 Super with 16GB of memory or a 4080 with 24GB of VRAM. That all sounds well and good, but the problem is the choice of CPU. AMD already has the Ryzen 9000 series chips, including the very gamer-specific Ryzen 9 9950X. The Omen 35L only goes up to an AMD Ryzen 7 8700G with a maximum clock speed of 5.1GHz.
You can also get it with the Intel Core i5-14400F or i7-14700F. That being said, there are good reasons not to trust the latest 13th or 14th generation Raptor Lake Intel chipsThese CPUs were plagued by crashes and blue screens due to faulty operating voltages. Intel has confirmed that the affected CPUs contain chips with a base power of 65W or more, so the 14400F and 14700F should not cause crashes. However, HP did not answer questions from reporters during a press conference about whether it would accept replacements for faulty Intel chips.
At least the motherboard supports the AMD B650 and Intel Z790H chipsets, so there is still room for upgrades. Alienware r16the Omen appears to use a proprietary motherboard, although it comes with four memory slots and options for up to 64GB of DDR5-5200 MT/s memory. You also only have the option for a 1TB or a 2TB SSD.
The HyperX Quadcast microphones are so full of RGB that they look like lava lamps
Streaming microphones aren’t meant to get in the way and distract viewers from the star of the show. HP didn’t get that memo, or they’re hoping the swirling lights on their screens might hypnotize viewers. The next step in the company’s Quadcast microphone lineup includes the Quadcast 2 and Quadcast 2S. The former is all red and features 24-bit audio resolution and a 96kHz sampling rate. What really stands out is the 2S with its over 100 aRGB LEDs that the user can personalize with patterns to take on a certain mind-controlling amphibian. Futurama’s (everyone pays homage to the Hypno Toad).
The Quadcast 2S also offers 32-bit audio resolution and a 192kHz sample rate for high fidelity sound. It has a rotary control to change the gain or volume, but you can also adjust it between four color patterns. If you want more control, you’ll need to use HP’s NGENUITY software to change the LED limiter or affect the 10-band EQ.
