The HP Omen Obelisk is the best pre-built gaming desktop PC

Best Gaming Desktop PC Windows Central 2019

Best Overall – HP Omen Obelisk

HP’s Omen Obelisk is large, powerful, and ultra-impressive. In an era where building your PC is so common, many manufacturers are trying to think outside the box with their desktop rigs. However, HP just grabbed the box, made it look like the sort of PC you might put together yourself, then proceeded to stuff it with LED lighting and all the hardware you can shake a stick at.

On one hand, you might say the design is uninspiring, but to the PC gamer, this is a machine where function is the primary concern and ease of access is paramount. You simply pull the glass side panel off and you have free access to all internal components, all of which can be upgraded over time.

The Obelisk boasts the high-end of the NVIDIA RTX GPU lineup, CPUs from either Intel or AMD’s respective gamer-friendly desktop lineup, DDR4 RAM from HyperX, SSD storage, and Intel’s Optane memory if you wish. Literally everything is replaceable, including the case fans, and the bottom line is that this is a PC any enthusiast would be happy with. HP did the work for you, though.

Just like its parent Dell brand, Alienware has been making some amazing hardware recently. The Aurora is one such example, revived and reborn with a whole new design that’s both striking and clever.

Thanks to touches like the swing-out vertically mounted power supply, you get more space for other goodies. You can squeeze in a pair of graphics cards as well as a liquid cooler for the CPU. You also get plenty of space for additional drive bays. It’s a little awkward to work in, but there’s still a big opportunity for user upgrades. Or if you prefer, spec up an entry-level or beast mode build from the factory.

It isn’t even that expensive at the entry level. While you’re not getting the most powerful parts on the cheaper models, the ease of upgrade means you’re not limited by what you can initially afford. Adding more RAM or a new graphics card is completely tool-free and takes just a couple of minutes. What the Aurora offers is something for everyone: those on a tighter budget, those looking for ridiculous power, those hoping to upgrade in the future, and everyone else in between.

There is a fashion for large gaming PCs with mad cases and more RGB lights than a Vegas hotel, but not everyone wants or has the space for a colossal rig. It’s also not necessary any more, with some truly amazing and small gaming PCs like the MEK Mini.

It’s small enough to fit inside a backpack, and yet has a six-core i7 processor and an NVIDIA RTX 2070 GPU inside it. That’s pretty remarkable, and when you add 16GB of RAM and a mixture of SSD and HDD storage, you wonder why you’d ever want a large PC again. If you often take your PC on the go to LAN parties, this is the perfect option.

The RAM and storage are also upgradeable if you ever need more (although space is, of course, limited). Even though it’s tiny, there are all the ports you could ever want on the MEK Mini to connect all of your additional hardware.

PC gaming can get expensive, but if you were worried that you couldn’t engage without spending a fortune, worry no longer. For not a lot of money, you can get this excellent desktop PC from HP that serves as both a solid entry point to gaming as well as keeping your budget firmly in check.

With a combination of a Ryzen 5 and 8GB RX 580 GPU, both from AMD, you’re well placed for 1080p gaming, and the RX 580, in particular, is a good piece of kit to get at this price point. The only real drawback to it is that you’re limited to a single HDMI output, the only other option is DisplayPort which isn’t all that common on budget gaming monitors right now.

The Pavilion also serves well as a workhorse, with an understated design, a whole bundle of ports for connecting additional hardware and displays. The most affordable versions rely on AMD hardware, but HP now offers NVIDIA RTX GPUs as an alternative if you’re prepared to pay a bit more.

While RGB is all the rage these days in gaming PCs, such a thing isn’t suited to an office environment, at home or work. Some just want a powerful PC that can game without it screaming “I’m a gamer.” That’s where the superb Dell XPS 8930 comes in.

It’s pretty stylish to look at, although it’s a bit boring by the standard of most gaming PCs, anyway. XPS is Dell’s professional brand, and the 8930 fits right into that, except it’s also packing some serious horsepower for gaming.

Dell has a whole host of configurations to choose from, all of which offer dedicated graphics from NVIDIA, including the RTX 2060 or the GTX 1080. It has also been updated to offer 9th Gen Intel processors, and since it uses standard parts, much is upgradeable. Dell also uses superfast NVMe SSD storage, so this is a desktop PC that can hang with the best of them.

Conclusion

There are a lot of great pre-built gaming PCs out there but it’s hard to do better than the HP Omen Obelisk right now. You can either save money now and upgrade it down the line or spec it up out of the box with all the power you could ever want. It’s easy to live with and trades wild design for user-friendliness.

What’s also very apparent right now is that there’s a good selection of affordable gaming PCs, too. Even the Obelisk can be had for a very attractive entry level price. It’s no longer necessary to build your PC to get the best deals.

And the Obelisk is so well designed that beginners and enthusiasts alike will fall in love with it. It can be all the PC you need for many years to come.

Credits — The team that worked on this guide

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