HP Omen Obelisk Review: Upgrade-Ready

chassmith

Honorable
May 14, 2013
167
0
10,710
Awww it’s ugly ??

At 2,300 I can and would build one myself. However a 3.5 that’s fare.
My college pc cost me 2,600 soo ?? not one to talk
 

PapaCrazy

Distinguished
Dec 28, 2011
311
95
18,890
Doesn't the RTX2080 have a 650w PSU requirement? This is the catch with pre-builts. Everything is spec'd by the skin of its teeth, which makes upgrades dicey.
 

Co BIY

Splendid
Would liked to have seen it compared to the Overpowered Gaming Desktop DTW3 recently reviewed.

RTX 2080 vs 1080Ti both on i7-8700 and 32 GB.

No comment about whether that cooling fan is adequate to get the most out of the 8700. Is it identical to the Intel stock cooler ?

What is the chipset on the board ? B360 or H310?

My biggest concern with OEM systems is the lack of BIOS support on the motherboards. I can't upgrade my current HP system because the bios is not updated for modern cards although peer boards from motherboard name brands would all permit it with updated Bios.

For $2400 I'd like all name brand parts except maybe the case.
 
Motherboard, while seemingly good data throughput, seems cheap as they can get away with.

Since I can build my own, and have on several occasions, I'd spend the money and ensure the parts weren't factory rejects or made so proprietary that they couldn't replace them.

I notice TH mentioned replace-ability of parts, yet I didn't see anything where they tried part swaps. Either I missed it, or we could have an unsubstantiated claim on our hands. HP has managed to produce some decent stuff under the Omen moniker though. (I have their HSA-D002K Omen keyboard w/mechanical blues, It's excellent for the price I paid and beats any of their cheap stuff they package with their systems.)
 
Jan 22, 2019
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10
I managed to pick up the 8700, 256 m.2 , 2080 config for 1500 plus tax during black friday weekend and it was a steal. To part together a similat system would have been 2k. The first unit had a defective 2080 that would artifact and overheat. The second one has been good since. I did install 4 one inch rubber legs on each corner to help with cooling as well as an h60 cooler for the cpu wich also helped the cooling for the gpu since it is not heating up the inside of the case anymore. I would recomment this hp system but the cpu cooler upgrade and the feet are a must!.
 
Aug 28, 2018
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10
If its anything like my HP their is 1hd and 1 dvd and thats all the sata connectors to upgrade you have to get rid of one. and don't get me started on the video card upgrade it can't be done without losing video performance and I know my HP is not an omen but the same memory problem exists with it but I only paid $300 for my non-upgradable upgradable PC and not $2300 so if you think a hp is upgradable you are pretty much mistaken
 


that sounds bad
I bought a 400 dollar HP desktop from Futureshop back in 2012 and I was able to upgrade almost everything from adding more ram to a gpu (it came with igpu) and even the psu
but then again every manufacturer nowadays want to be more like Apple...
 

Kona45primo

Honorable
Jan 16, 2021
523
143
9,890
This is a fast-ish & frustrating computer. It's under cooled, stock cpu fan is terrible. Only real way to cool it is a 120mm fan up top and wedging a 120mm fan on the bottom.

Upgradeable? Nope. If you've bought one with 16GB of ram, congratulations! You've got a single stick, running single channel. Easy upgrade right? No! Any aftermarket kit will most likely NOT run at the proper timings. The BIOS has NO RAM tuning options. So you can run your new dual channel ram at 2133 MHZ or lower with slow timings. Other option is to buy from HP which is DOUBLE the cost of anything else.

Want to upgrade the CPU Fan? Easy right? No not really. No cutout for the back of the motherboard so you have to remove the entire thing, gently pry off the backplate HP kindly glued on with double sided tape.

With a few tweaks this could have been a great deal, but with the locked down BIOS, thoughtless cooling & case design it's more trouble than it's worth. And not UPGRADEABLE like this fluff piece article describes. NO Case fan controls either, just to put the icing on the turd cake HP claims is awesome....