HP Omen 45L (2024) review: a pricey but seriously powerful gaming PC

Good omens, although this gaming PC won't go easy on your wallet

HP Omen 45L side panel
(Image: © Future)

TechRadar Verdict

The HP Omen 45L combines top-notch hardware with a sleekly designed case that makes further upgrades easy thanks to its toolless design. There are just a couple of build quality concerns stopping this gaming PC from achieving greatness.

Pros

  • +

    Striking design

  • +

    Cutting-edge hardware options

  • +

    Easy to upgrade

Cons

  • -

    Front panel and side panel can easily come loose

  • -

    This model has a previous-generation Core i9 CPU

  • -

    Port selection is mediocre

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HP Omen 45L: One-minute review

If you're considering a new machine then the latest take on the HP Omen 45L does enough to be mentioned in the same breath as some of the best gaming PCs out there. As far as prebuilt rigs from trusted manufacturers go, HP's latest effort maintains a straightforward approach with its design ethos and performance potential, albeit at a price which may be a little hard to swallow. 

Speaking of the design, there's a toolless approach to upgrading as both side and front panels can be removed without the need for a screwdriver, with ample room for tinkering. There's a total of four 120mm fans and a 360mm AIO for enhanced airflow, and this gaming PC largely delivers near-silent operation even when under stress. 

Pricing starts at $1,779.99 (about £1,415 / AU$2,689) for a configuration that gets you an Intel Core i7-14700K CPU, 16GB of DDR5 RAM, and an Nvidia RTX 4060 Ti GPU. Yeah, it's far from the cheapest given that more humbly specced hardware, and this extends to higher-end configurations, such as our review unit. This came equipped with an RTX 4090 and Intel Core i9-13900K with 64GB of DDR5 RAM, but costs a mammoth $3,399.99 (about £2,673 / AU$5,136). 

As you may expect, that large price tag comes with staggering performance. It's been nearly two years since the components inside the machine were first released, but they're showing no signs of slowing down. Make no mistake, this is a leading 1440p and 4K machine with excellent performance that should last you an incredibly long time. Then, when future RTX 5000 series graphics cards (or RDNA 4 lower down the GPU spectrum, if the rumors are right) hit the scene, it shouldn't be taxing to swap in a beefy upgrade. 

HP Omen 45L: Price and availability

  • How much does it cost? Starts from $1,779.99 (about £1,415 / AU$2,689) 
  • When is it available? It's on sale now 
  • Where can you get it? In the US, UK and Australia 

The HP Omen 45L starts at the mid-range with a base configuration featuring an Intel Core i7-14700K CPU coupled with either an RTX 4060 Ti or RTX 4070 GPU depending on the region you're buying in. This machine is priced at $1,779.99 (about £1,415 / AU$2,689) which is a touch high factoring in the 1440p GPU in question. 

My review unit featured the Intel Core i9-13900K, the previous-generation Raptor Lake processor, with 64GB of Kingston Fury DDR5 RAM and an Nvidia RTX 4090. Unsurprisingly, the latter comes at a premium. If you're buying brand-new directly from HP or certain other retailers, you may find this build available around the $4,507.99 mark (about £3,538 / AU$6,798), which is at the very upper-end of the spectrum. 

Simply put, there are cheaper RTX 4090 PCs out there, but this top configuration is priced at around the going market rate from a trusted manufacturer. It's about on a par with the recently released Corsair One i500, which is famed for its compact footprint and sleek chassis, at the cost of easy upgradability. 

  • Price: 3 / 5 

HP Omen 45L: Specs

Here are the specs for the HP Omen 45L at a glance. 

Swipe to scroll horizontally
HP Omen 45L Specs
Header Cell - Column 0 Review configurationBase configurationTop configuration
Price$3,399.99 (£2,673 / AU$5,136)$1,779.99 (£1,415 / AU$2,689)$4,507.99 (£3,538 / AU$6,798)
CPUIntel Core i9-13900KIntel Core i7-14700KIntel Core i9-14900K
GPUNvidia RTX 4090Nvidia RTX 4060 TiNvidia RTX 4090
RAMKingston Fury 64GB DDR5-5200 RGBKingston Fury 16GB DDR5-5200 RGBKingston Fury 64GB DDR5-5200 RGB
Storage1TB WD Black PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD + 2TB 7200 RPM SATA SSD512GB WD Black PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD1TB WD Black PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD + 2TB 7200 RPM SATA SSD
PortsFront: 2 x USB-A (5Gbps), 2 x USB-A, 1 x headphone/mic combo, 1 x mic; Rear: 1 x USB-C (10Gbps), 1 x USB-C (5Gbps), 2 x USB-A (10Gbps), 2 x USB-A (5Gbps), 2 x USB-A, 1 x mic, 1 x Ethernet, 1 x audio in, 1 x audio outFront: 2 x USB-A (5Gbps), 2 x USB-A, 1 x headphone/mic combo, 1 x mic; Rear: 1 x USB-C (10Gbps), 1 x USB-C (5Gbps), 2 x USB-A (10Gbps), 2 x USB-A (5Gbps), 2 x USB-A, 1 x mic, 1 x Ethernet, 1 x audio in, 1 x audio outFront: 2 x USB-A (5Gbps), 2 x USB-A, 1 x headphone/mic combo, 1 x mic; Rear: 1 x USB-C (10Gbps), 1 x USB-C (5Gbps), 2 x USB-A (10Gbps), 2 x USB-A (5Gbps), 2 x USB-A, 1 x mic, 1 x Ethernet, 1 x audio in, 1 x audio out
WirelessIntel Wi-Fi 6E (2x2) and Bluetooth 5.3Realtek RTL8852BE Wi-Fi 6 (2x2) and Bluetooth 5.3Intel Wi-Fi 6E (2x2) and Bluetooth 5.3
Weight49.82lb / 22.5kg49.82lb / 22.5kg49.82lb / 22.5kg
Dimensions8.03 x 18.5 x 21.85-inches8.03 x 18.5 x 21.85-inches8.03 x 18.5 x 21.85-inches

HP Omen 45L: Design

  • Stylish overall look with space to upgrade 
  • Toolless design to open things up, but there are drawbacks 
  • Front and rear I/O leave a lot to be desired

The design of the HP Omen 45L is fairly standard fare for the company's lineup. In short, this means an illuminated square badge on the front, a triple front fan setup, and what's been described as a "toolless" upgrade path. The rig looks great with its fully metal frame and tempered glass panels, with enough space to be able to reach in and make changes where desired. 

However, said toolless design, meaning the front and side panels can easily pop out, can become a bit of a hindrance. My particular review unit has been around the circuit for some time and came in the box with the front and side panel popped off. It took a bit of effort to slide things back in, with a little flex on the front. It's possible this could have happenend in transit, but it's something to be aware of. 

What I'm not a fan of is the front and rear port panels which leave a fair amount to be desired. The former is top mounted and clean enough, sure, but the port selection is lacking. There's no USB 3.2 or USB-C, which means you're stuck with older USB 2.0 for your peripherals. The rear is better: here you get two USB-C ports, and three USB-A ports as well as Ethernet and 3.5mm jacks. There should be enough here to be getting on with but it's far from top of the class connectivity. 

  • Design: 4 / 5

HP Omen 45L: Performance

HP Omen 45L rear I/O

(Image credit: Future)
  • Excellent gaming performance 
  • Strong productivity chops with this CPU and GPU combo 
  • Included NVMe SSD is strong, but SATA HDD is fairly pointless

The performance of the HP Omen 45L is impressive, but that's not surprising when factoring in the combination of the Intel Core i9-13900K and Nvidia RTX 4090 with 64GB of DDR5-5200 RAM.

You have more than enough power under the hood to fuel today's games at max settings in 1440p and 4K with room to spare. That's made all the better when you can take advantage of Nvidia DLSS 3's Frame Generation to make the most out of the high refresh rates on the best gaming monitors

HP Omen 45L benchmarks

Here's how the HP Omen 45L performed in our suite of industry-standard benchmarks and demanding games. 

Geekbench 6:
2,853 (single)
18,523 (multi)

PCMark10: 9,302 (overall)
Essentials - 10,631
Productivity - 11,226
Digital Content Creation - 18,300

Cinebench R23:
Single - 2,181
Multi - 28,910

CrossMark: 2,135 (overall)
Productivity - 1,959
Creativity - 2,480
Responsiveness - 1,765

3DMark:
Night Raid - 89,961
Fire Strike - 41,073
Time Spy - 29,874
Port Royal - 25,501

CrystalDiskMark:
Read - 6,893MB/s
Write - 5,267MB/s

Red Dead Redemption II:
1080p: 169fps (Low); 165fps (Ultra)
1440p: 165fps (Low); 154fps (Ultra)

Total War: Three Kingdoms:
1080p: 503fps (Low) ; 240fps (Ultra)
1440p: 444fps (Low); 154 fps (Ultra)

Cyberpunk 2077:
1080p: 163fps (Low); 146fps (High)
1440p: 161fps (Low) ; 114fps (High)
RT Ultra + DLSS : (1440p) 143fps; (1080p) 212fps

Dubbed by the manufacturer as the "Omen Cryo Chamber," the cooling solution does a respectable job of keeping the core temperatures reasonable with the 360mm AIO and four 120mm case fans inside. What was notable was the lack of noise from the machine when under stress from heavy benchmarking, which is usually where these company-made gaming PCs start to struggle. With the Omen 45L, even moderate to heavy gaming is quiet.

We've gone into detail extensively about the RTX 4090 over the years and it remains a powerhouse. There's nothing on the market now that can make it sweat as the card's 24GB GDDR6X VRAM is seemingly endless for even the most demanding of software. To say the Intel Core i9-13900K is a bottleneck isn't exactly fair, but that's what's ultimately holding things back (but not to much of an extent).

That's because you can expect frame rate averages of well over 100fps in all the demanding games on the market such as Red Dead Redemption II, Cyberpunk 2077, and more CPU-bound titles such as Total War: Three Kingdoms, and that's running natively (with no DLSS). This is echoed in 3DMark's range of tests as well as in CrossMark as mentioned above.

HP says the Omen has a WD Black PCIe 4.0 NVMe SSD but doesn't specify which one. In my testing with CrystalDiskMark, I logged sequential performance of 6,893MB/s and 5,267MB/s reads and writes respectively. That's on par with the quoted performance for the WD Black SN850, which is a rival to the best SSDs, despite being usurped by more powerful Gen 5.0 options in recent years.

What's odd to me is the 2TB 7200 RPM SATA HDD included with the HP Omen 45L. It's not just HP that goes for a hard disk as a secondary drive, as Alienware tends to as well, but I would rather have had a larger primary NVMe SSD instead of a fairly mediocre storage drive. Not only does it take up space in the case, but with sequential rates of around 300MB/s apiece, you can't really use it for gaming.

Lastly, there's the Omen Gaming Hub which comes included as a one-stop-shop for customizing your rig's lighting, overclocking your components, balancing power options, and optimizing games. While seasoned PC gamers are largely going to ignore this app, those new to PC gaming may find some use for it. The Hub is easy to understand, colorful, and powerful, but unnecessary for those who know what they're doing.

  • Performance: 4 / 5

Should you buy the HP Omen 45L?

HP Omen 45L side panel opened

(Image credit: Future)
Swipe to scroll horizontally
HP Omen 45L Scorecard
AttributesNotesRating
ValueWhether you're thinking of getting the HP Omen 45L at its base configuration or the highest-end model, you'll be spending a touch more than with some of the competition.3 / 5
DesignThe HP Omen 45L looks the part with its sleek black chassis and RGB lighting, backed up by a toolless design - but that design does have a couple of quirks.4 / 5
PerformanceThere's no getting over the fact that the 13th-gen Core i9 and RTX 4090 are a powerful combo when backed up with 64GB DDR5 RAM, even if it's not all that surprising in 2024.4 / 5
TotalThe HP Omen 45L gets a lot of things right with an easy upgrade path, powerful performance, good looks, and minimal bloatware, so it can be recommended with confidence.4 / 5

Buy it if... 

You want a high-end gaming PC
The HP Omen 45L's top specification includes a seriously powerful Nvidia RTX 4090 GPU and an Intel Core i9 CPU backed up with some of the best DDR5 RAM on the market, so it has performance in spades. 

You want a machine that's easy to upgrade
While some gaming PC manufacturers make it difficult to upgrade with quirky or small cases, the HP Omen 45L case is toolless and has enough room to easily swap out components when the need arises. 

Don't buy it if... 

You want the best value for money 
Even when factoring in the high-end components inside, the HP Omen 45L is far from a budget gaming PC. You may get a better deal going for an alternative. 

You want a smaller gaming PC 
The HP Omen 45L is unsubtle at 49.82lb / 22.5kg with a sizable footprint. If you're looking for something to sit under a TV or on top of your desk, you may want to consider another gaming rig. 

  • First reviewed June 2024
Aleksha McLoughlin
Contributor

Aleksha McLoughlin is an experienced hardware writer. She was previously the Hardware Editor for TechRadar Gaming until September 2023. During this time, she looked after buying guides and wrote hardware reviews, news, and features. She has also contributed hardware content to the likes of PC Gamer, Trusted Reviews, Dexerto, Expert Reviews, and Android Central. When she isn't working, you'll often find her in mosh pits at metal gigs and festivals or listening to whatever new black and death metal has debuted that week.