It is ironic to see how it is now, in the Post-PC era, where we are seeing spectacular desktop and notebook computers in both design and performance. Those gray and boring boxes have given way to more ambitious solutions in all sections, and the HP Omen X is a bestial proof.
HP lead giving us surprises with its proposals in this market time, but if there is one that stands in the territory of gaming is the HP Omen X surprises from the outset for its unique design, but it goes beyond that spectacular effect with An enviable configuration and performance. We have had the opportunity to analyze and enjoy it, and these are our conclusions.
A huge design
The first surprise of the team is how big it is. Although in gaming solutions this is not so strange, the HP Omen X is really huge in both dimensions and weight, but that does not prevent the overall design is spectacular.
The Omen X is shaped like a cube, but to support not profit one side, but has a support wedge makes on a table the cube seems to stand on one edge: facing him one witnesses a square rotated 45 degrees, but that this effect is joined by four “sub – squares” that make up the striking system configurable LEDs that give special personality to the team.
That design diamond offers peculiar advantages: access inside the equipment you can be performed by a back panel, which gives a more comfortable within the team access, but also have four removable bays for external units that make the storage section have sufficient options to cover all requirements.
The exterior of this cube is dominated by black, but in most of the equipment we find a curious grid pattern that helps the ventilation of the entire system, powered by 3 powerful 120 mm fans. The ventilation system is particularly striking, with three separate chambers cooled for better thermal management.
In fact in this case we had a solution HP own liquid cooling for the CPU, which is combined with said panels grid and is crucial to the temperatures at working equipment are always under control. This system also allows to make more use of the processor in overclocking tasks.
It should be noted that in our tests it was clear that when asked to work really, the team is noisier than we expected, with an evident fan buzz that was connected to the circuit liquid cooling. It was not particularly annoying, but clearly audible. The problem is not so much if we consider that when playing video games most users make use of helmets that avoid these annoyances, but it is something that we did not want to stop commenting.
Curious is the inclusion of a set of small tools as a “survival kit” behind one of the “sub – cubes” on the front, which allows you to open the computer and change components without having to resort to additional tools. The team itself already invites us to make those improvements and hardware upgrades.
HP OMen X, you have many lights
One of the most striking features in this team is its LED lighting system, consisting of nine lit areas (two for each square, plus additional for the logo), which can be configured as the utility Omen Control HP preinstalled on the equipment.
It is possible to use this system for more than just to get attention, because we can check the temperatures of equipment with color codes, or even make these LEDs light up to the beat of the music we’re playing at all times.
The effect is certainly striking but not necessarily gaudy, a success for a team that certainly offers this classic choice of gaming equipment with elegance.
Beast and invitation-to-update specifications
HP is interesting to note that not only sells the equipment with various hardware configurations: also can buy the box as such and enjoy both the lighting system and the thermal design. It is not a particularly cheap option (it costs $ 549 in the US), but of course construction quality could convince many users.
| CHARACTERISTICS | HP OMEN X (900-001NS) |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-6700K |
| RAM | 32 GB DDR4-2133 SDRAM |
| Storage | 512 GB SSD PCIe NVMe M.2 + 3 TB SASTA 3,200 RPM hard drive |
| Graphic card | NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 (8GB GDDR5) |
| Connectivity | WiFi 802.11ac, Bluetooth 4.0 |
| Connection Ports | 8 x USB 3.0, 2 x USB-C, headphone / microphone, optical audio output, RJ-45, card reader 3 in 1, 1 x DVI, 1 x HDMI, 3 x DisplayPort |
| Dimensions | 50.52 x 40.6 x 51.53 cm |
| Weight | 28.2 kg |
| OS | Windows 10 Home 64-bit |
The enormous size of the team (is an “almost perfect” half a meter in all its dimensions cube) deceives, because actually inside we find a motherboard Micro-ATX (HP Munich-S , Z170 chipset, Socket LGA 1151) That was chosen by those three compartments in which the interior is divided and that in spite of having dimensions smaller than the conventional plates ATX gives margin to spare to update.
You may also like to read another article on improtecinc: Alienware celebrates its twenty years of life with a laptop with OLED screen and a new Alpha
That will not be necessary in the medium term, because the configuration with which the equipment came to us was difficult to criticize: the HP team does not walk with minutiae, and has some of the most powerful components on the market. The Core i7-6700K processor Intel is a good choice for precisely that “K” which reveals that we realize its full potential with overclocking, for example. And if you wanted memory, three cups, because in this configuration the computer comes with 32 GB of DDR4 memory.
Although we have not been able to enjoy the model with two GTX 1080 in SLI, that option exists … if you can afford it. The liquid cooling system is a perfect companion for the Intel Core i7-6700K which gives plenty of scope for overclocking.
However one of the protagonists of this hardware configuration is the graphics card, GTX 1080 as we have found in our tests fulfills all that could be expected of it. Its performance is simply bestial, and there is no video game that resists the most popular resolutions currently.
This configuration is also a guarantee if we want to enjoy virtual reality games and we have the Rift Oculus or Live HTC: in both cases will have performance more than enough to move those experiences without problems, although we have not evaluated that And we have focused on “traditional” videogames.
Connectivity is ensured both by its Gigabit Ethernet port and by the WiFi 802.11ac or Bluetooth support, but we also have a large number of connection ports between which two USB-C ports stand out unfortunately (one of the few he can put the team) do not offer Thunderbolt 3 interface, but USB 3.0.
To compensate that section HP offers attractive options. The first is a series of four removable bays for additional SATA storage units in case we need more capacity in this area. This is obviously one of the reasons why it is so huge that huge cube: four bays need your own camera if we were to take them.
The second, singular surprise is the presence of a CD / DVD “hidden” on one side of the cube, an element that probably not going to use a lot but it certainly can be very practical in certain scenarios, Especially when many games continue to be distributed with physical copies on DVD.
Performance: faster, higher, stronger
Gaming teams are distinguished by offering the best that the market offers at any given time, and the HP Omen X is no exception. That configuration is certainly improvable (there are more powerful micros and SLI configurations that could combine two 1080 GTX), but we have a commitment that guarantees a performance outstanding.
That is checked first in the synthetic tests that allow us to evaluate the gross yield to have that first perception of what you can offer us this configuration. In these results it is clear that this equipment does not tingle before anything.
We wanted to compare the HP Omen X with something different teams approach: HP Envy 34 Curved – a All-in-One with a very popular acceptable performance for that format-, a laptop like the Dell XPS 13, and a portable gaming the ASUS RoG GX700, that we could try this year. The evidence makes clear the focus of each product benefits, and certainly this HP Omen X behaves fantastically in all fields, but it does particularly well in graphics tests.
To complete these analyzes conducted a series of additional performance tests in five different games in which analyzed thanks to FRAPS- the minimum rate of frames, maximum and average that were reached in each of them.
Testing ‘Battlefield 1’, ‘Rise of the Tomb Raider’ and ‘Dirt Rally’ were performed in all cases with resolution 1440p and quality ‘Ultra’ and all graphics settings set to high to try to embarrass the GTX 1080, and we also wanted to evaluate the behavior of two somewhat older games, ‘Crysis 2’ and ‘Tomb Raider’, the previous installment of the saga.
As you can see, the average frame rate per second did not fall below 60 frames per second, and we repeated: we did the tests with full stop and in 1440p resolution. Yields varied slightly by activating for example DX12 titles that support this new version of DirectX (in ROTTR there was an increase of less than 1 FPS on average).
Of course, they increased notably if we played at 1080p resolution (in Crysis 2 for example we were going at an average rate of 122 FPS). We could not perform tests at 4K resolution for not having a test monitor for this scenario, but these data point to a yield still down sensitively will make many of these games are playable at this resolution as long as we lower quality graphic and let ‘s not play with the preferences ‘Ultra’ that give the highest level of detail in all sections.
The conclusion is obvious: if you are looking for a team to play, the HP Omen X will not be disappointed. The combination of that processor that memory and especially that graphics card make it difficult to find a situation in which this equipment is not going to behave as one would expect. And yet, there is a fundamental link in all this review. We speak of it in our conclusions.
Tags: HP Omen X
Leave a Reply