HP Omen 45L Review - The Coolest 12th Gen i9 in the World?

After amount of testing i'm finally ready and excited to share with you my full and 100 honest review of the all-new 12th gen hp omen 45l now i've already created a fun more entertaining unboxing video of this beast but this video is the serious important one that you need to pay close attention to we maxed this computer out with an i-912 900k liquid cooled processor the super powerful nvidia geforce rtx 3090 gpu and 32 gigabytes of hyperx ddr4 ram now we've run all the most important benchmarks to give you the most relevant information to help you decide if spending thousands of dollars on this machine makes sense for your budget if you watch this entire video you will know if this machine is right for you or not whether you're using it for gaming or creative applications or just overall productivity we've pushed this machine to its max to show you what it's really capable of i honestly say a lot of good things about this computer in the beginning but please don't be too hasty and purchase this machine right away until you've weighed both the good and the bad that i talk about later in this video i'll be giving you my take on the design and build quality the internals a look at the thermals fan noise benchmarks and overall ease of use i'm also going to be showing you a budget friendly configuration that i recommend for those of you that understandably can't afford this one now if you have any questions after watching this entire video just shoot me a comment as i usually respond to most of them but if you're publicly subscribed not only do i guarantee a personal response but your comment gets replied to first now price wise this machine starts at 1900 but the maxed out configuration that we got cost thirty seven hundred dollars this is about three hundred dollars less than the closest equivalent alienware aurora r13 six hundred dollars less than a similar i buy power twelfth gen pc and seven hundred dollars cheaper than the closest 12th gen corsair machine now before you get all excited about that price there's a few key reasons for this that we're going to talk about here in a sec i really think that a 3090 with an i9 cpu is a little bit overkill and not that necessary for gaming i think it's going to be just a little bit more noticeable when you're using it for creative applications when you're the dad of a toddler sometimes recording just isn't as easy as you think it might be those were happy screams by the way so as i was saying with a 30 90 and an i9 cpu it's going to be more useful and more noticeable with 4k content and 3d rendering so honestly the sweet spot for me the most noticeable cost to performance benefit ratio would be the rtx 3080 gpu with an i7 cpu that's going to run you a thousand dollars less than what we spent on this machine and that's going to be a lot more in line with what most people can actually afford so the design and build quality hp has really stepped up their game when it comes to design and engineering on this machine at 50 pounds and 8 inches by 18.5 inches by 21.85 inches this case is a bit larger than last year and now it has this very creative very innovative cryo chamber on the top this new cooling system is dedicated to our new 12th gen cpu with its liquid cooling heat is transferred up through these tubes up into this 240 millimeter radiator at the top which is then cooled by fresh air from outside of the case this is pretty cool literally considering most cooling systems suffer from the fact that they're trying to cool the cpu with preheated air from other components especially the gpu from within the case due to this new technology the omen 45l does not have this problem aside from the engineering the aesthetic side of design is also very well done just beautiful animated rgb on the front fans an easily removable tempered glass panel on the front and even this front grille is just held on by magnets and the top panel pops out very easily as well actually every panel on this machine is incredibly easy to remove on the front tempered glass panel you just need to press this button right here at the top and it just pops right out removing the back panel is just as easy as the front tempered glass panel you just press that button and it pops right out you can see right here we've got two more bays for two and a half inch ssd storage so definitely room for storage upgrading now taking a closer look at the other internals you can see we've got our western digital pcie gen 4x4 ssd drive our hyperx ddr4 ram at 3733 megahertz both with rgb heatsinks and down below our massive and extremely powerful nvidia geforce rtx 3090 gpu then at the bottom we've got our 800 watt 80 plus gold certified atx power supply for the ports on the back we've got a microphone audio out and audio import two usb ports and an rj45 ethernet jack a usbc and a usb a super speed 5 gigabits per second port and beneath that an even faster usbc and usb a 10 gigabits per second port and then on the back of our 3090 graphics card we've got one hdmi 2.1 port and three display ports on the top we have a headphone and microphone combo jack a dedicated microphone jack two super speed five gigabits per second usb a ports with the ability to charge devices even when the computer is in sleep mode and two more regular usb a ports so with that new cryo chamber did it actually help improve thermals when it came to gpu temperatures this 3090 was pretty much neck and neck with the competition in the mid 70s but when it came to the cpu temperatures this is where we started to see some larger differences significantly cooler temperatures on six of these eight games compared to alienware and corsair i actually expected it to be lower considering it only had an i7 cpu that's the coolest 12th gen cpu that i've seen so far this year and when it came to the fan noise i'd say i was pretty impressed pretty quiet compared to the competition in quiet mode they were pretty silent at only 41 decibels and only two decibels more when gaming with a computer in performance mode but then with the fans at absolute full speed mode they were a little bit louder at 68 decibels this machine never actually had to push its fans to full speed when in gaming mode though the only time that it got a little noisy was during my crypto mining tests as you can see it beat the r13 but again the less powerful so less hot corsair was understandably the quietest of the three now the part that matters the most performance and gaming benchmarks for geekbench 5 we got a single core score of 1878 and a multi-core score of 14 451 that's just a hair lower than the others on the single core score but quite a bit lower on the multi-core score but stay with me because things get interesting when it comes to actual gameplay you can see here that the corsair isn't fairly matched with only an i7 and a 3070 ti gpu but i included it anyway because it actually held its ground pretty well i've included links below to that computer as well as the review that i did for it for cinebench r23 it came in at 23 812 on the multi-core and 1809 on the single core you can see here that the alienware aurora r13 actually came in on top when it came to these render tests but for 3dmark which is a better representation of game ability if that's even a word we got an overall score of 18 417 a graphic score of 18908 and a cpu score of 16 058 the hp omen 45l is the clear winner here in every category except for that cpu which we'll get to here in a sec when it came to actual gameplay in hd it had pretty decent numbers it had the highest fps on three of these games that we tested on the first 12th gen desktops that we were able to get our hands on so far and then moving up to 1440p and 4k we started to see the hp omen flex its muscles a little bit more getting the highest fps on all of these games except for surprisingly the two games that had the highest fps on our 1080p tests alright so how about creative benchmarks our pugen benchmark score for premiere was 1002 for after effects 111 and for davinci we got a 1630. The r13 actually slightly beat this computer for every one of those programs in each of these tests and the lower spec corsair machine even beat it for premiere as well for actual export times while this machine was fast the other two were faster at rendering video edits and premiere while this machine took less time exporting with davinci and almost identical export times and after effects to the alienware machine and again pretty impressed that the lower spec corsair machine was just as fast as the alienware machine at adobe premiere and actually the fastest one in after effects and when it came to web browsing browser bench speedometer which measures the speed of web applications also had a pretty solid score of 253. the hard drive speeds were pretty impressive as well 6900 read 5200 right that's pretty fast needless to say copying files can be done at lightning speed crypto mining was also very efficient with this computer giving us similar hash rates to what we got with the r13 at 120 mega hashes per second now when it came to overclocking the overclocking tools gave the appearance of giving us a lot of control and the ability to push this computer further but after a lot of tests i discovered that they really don't help that much at all unfortunately regardless of those tools hp is still holding the cpu back from what it's really capable of now there's quite a few options in the bios as well but the only part that you'll probably care about is this advanced section right here this is where you can push the ram frequency speeds past that 3200 megahertz that it weirdly caps you at or if you're feeling extra dangerous you can push it even further if you want to so getting into the software taking a look at the omen gaming hub in the system vitals tab you can see our cpu gpu and memory usage and then network booster for setting which programs or games get priority over the internet bandwidth pretty basic settings in the lighting tab but if you go into the omen light studio much more interactive settings in here if you've got any other devices you can put them in here and also get all the animation to sync up with each other now this performance tab right here is probably what you're going to be using the most here you can actually boost your performance for gaming as well as tune your fans to cool the computer better and then we've got a booster and cleaner tab which we most likely really won't need to use until our computer starts showing signs of slowing down when it gets a lot older now the second most important app that you're going to want to know about is the hp support assistant this tab right here makes it super easy to keep up to date with all of the latest software and driver updates under fixes and diagnostics you've got a plethora of troubleshooting tools to help you assess any issues you may be having and determine the best course of action going forward now my overall top reasons you should not get this computer number one is no ddr5 now this isn't a huge deal compared to the competition right now but as we start to see faster and faster ddr5 sticks becoming available this pc is going to be missing out on that extra performance boost my next one is no pcie 5.0 without this this machine is most likely not going to be ready for the next generation of gpus so upgradability is not what i think it should be for a computer released in 2022. my next one is the locked motherboard and bios when it came to overclocking this computer hp is holding this machine back from what it's reallycapable of my overall top reasons to get this computer number one is the thermals these cpu thermals were very impressive considering it's the latest and greatest i9 processor it's a really impressive really genius design and i'm not quite sure why other cases haven't implemented something like this my next pro is performance it was very interesting to see that with actual gameplay this machine underperformed when it came to hd but as soon as we cranked that resolution up to 1440p or 4k it actually shined above the competition when it was challenged it didn't let us down definitely a fast machine for sure and if they just didn't power limit that cpu there's no telling how fast this machine would be my last pro is the fan noise it's not that these fans are super quiet or anything but that frequency the frequency was lower pitched and clean so it sounded less noticeable and less annoying than many other gaming desktops so do i actually recommend this machine well right now it costs less than the competition but it's just slightly less future proof without ddr5 and no pcie 5.0 that being said if you do buy this machine you're not going to have to upgrade for quite some time and if you max it out with a 3090 you're really not going to miss the fact that upgrading to a 40 series gpu is probably not going to be feasible with this motherboard if you've got the money and you've already been waiting for six months or more to get a performance machine i would say go ahead and get it but if you just started shopping and can wait till September when the 40 series gpus should be released then i would wait and if you do decide to purchase this if you could please use my affiliate links in the description below as i get a small commission at no cost to you for every single purchase made or if you just want to support this channel and help keep it growing please consider to become a channel member by clicking on the join button below guys remember every Friday i do a giveaway that randomly selects someone who's interactive with this channel so make sure to like comment and subscribe with notifications turned on to keep an eye out for that as well as keeping up to date with all of my latest gaming pcs and the winner of the amazon.com e-gift card giveaway for this week is mild sauce if you want to check out my latest gaming pc reviews then click up here and if you still haven't subscribed then click on this button right here thanks for watching