HP Omen Max 45L Desktop PC Review: Cool, Quiet, Brutally Fast
This data was captured while looping 3DMark Time Spy Extreme for over 30 minutes, which absolutely puts a heavy load on both CPU and GPU. Ignore the 54.8 decibel max; that's from me clicking the mouse once. The relevant number is the 49.0 decibel average, which as the app tells us, sounds similar to the noise you'd hear in a quiet office, or "moderate rainfall". You can definitely hear the system; there's a lot of airflow happening. It's very quiet, though, and the sound is absolutely not intrusive. A box fan on the lowest setting is considerably louder than this PC, which is very impressive.
So what about thermals? Well...
They're good! This result was captured while looping Cinebench 2026, which loads up all twelve cores of the CPU quite strongly. Despite that, CPU core temperatures never exceeded 86.1°C, which sounds warm, but is well within acceptable bounds for a modern CPU. Games don't hit the CPU as hard as Cinebench, so we're all clear here.
Similarly, the GeForce RTX 5090 GPU stays relatively frosty while working, too. This data was captured during the aforementioned Time Spy testing. Despite that the GPU is pulling some 610 watts from the power supply, the GPU core stays under 75°C while the memory gets a little spicier at 84°C. Both are completely acceptable temperatures, though.
There is one cause for mild concern, and that's the secondary SSD. Mounted directly under the GeForce RTX 5090, the card exhausts its heat right onto the SSD, and it gets pretty warm during our gaming testing. 82°C actually is above the Sandisk rated specification of 80℃, which is a little concerning. We might try to move that drive, if possible, but if you're not concerned about keeping the drive alive indefinitely, it's probably fine.
Finally, we have to talk about power consumption. With a 600-watt GPU in the mix, this machine was never going to sip power. Frankly, considering that, the Omen Max 45L is actually pretty efficient. Remember, we've got seven fans (four with RGB LEDs), we've got a built-in LCD screen, we've got a twelve-core CPU, we've got 64GB of RAM, we've got a pair of SSDs. We've also got a 1200-watt power supply, which, despite its high efficiency, still contributes. As such, we think this power result is actually perfectly fine. The idle number is a little higher than we'd like, but to be frank, if you're buying one of these systems, you probably don't care how much your power bill is.
HP OMEN Max 45L Gaming Desktop: Conclusions
After all of that testing, poking, and prodding, what do we think of the HP Omen Max 45L gaming desktop? It's great. It looks fantastic sitting on a desk, it stays cool and quiet, it delivers truly top-shelf gaming performance, and while the software situation is less than ideal, that's easily solved. Or you can simply ignore it, because games run just fine either way.Is this the greatest gaming PC of all time? Well, no. It could have a better CPU, and the memory is unoptimized at stock settings—though we'll give HP a pass on that one because of the current "RAM-ageddon" situation. The SSDs are merely "good enough," and we could do without some of the bloatware, like McAfee. But man, the performance is undeniable, and we can't say enough nice things about the machine's looks. Plus, we didn't have to build it ourselves, and that's worth at least one star from this old man.
Naturally, when we don't have much to complain about with a system, the conclusion turns to discussion of pricing. And this sytem is priced at...
That's a big number, but HP isn't being greedy. While $6,895 is a ton of money, we sat down to try and part out as close to equivalent of a system as possible using DIY parts, and we came out to just a hair under $6,000. A lot of it is the 64GB of RAM, the dual 2TB SSDs, and, the GeForce RTX 5090, which is going for upwards of $3,000 right now. In that case, you're basically paying $985 for the build and the extra niceties of the HP system here.
What does that $985 buy you? An exclusive chassis with cool cryo chamber cooling, a complicated build you don't have to do yourself, a case meant for mounting a seriously sturdy GPU support bracket, and of course, a one-year warranty from HP. You don't even give up the opportunity for system tweaking and tuning. As we demonstrated, the machine allows a measure of overclocking, and it can definitely help.
You may do better than the HP OMEN Max 45L searching for deals, but you ain't gonna beat it by much no matter what in the current market, and you surely could do a whole heck of a lot worse. In our book, that earns the HP Omen Max 45L an easy Recommended award.
