IF YOU DON'T READ MY WHOLE REVIEW, PLEASE SKIP TO THE NEXT ALL CAPS SENTENCE!
I'm going to be very honest with my review. I made a $300 mistake. I saw this on sale during the Cyber Monday deals and I held back from buying it because of some of the reviews about it overheating and throttling back the computer and running slower than it should. I quite frankly did not want to be dealing with a poor design, and trying to find a way to cool an overheating computer to get the full value from it.
So I decided to wait and look on my own later. A few days later, I couldn't find ANYTHING CLOSE to the specs on this computer for the price it was listed at after Cyber Monday. That's right, even after it went back up by $300, I couldn't get anything CLOSE to it for the same price.
I looked at all the big names, here on Amazon and elsewhere. Most of the computers I was looking at in this price range were coming in with i7-8700K processors and 16Gb of RAM. Many of them also had smaller SSD boot drives and a large conventional storage drive. Almost every spec was lower in some way unless I was willing to add ANOTHER $400 to the price of the computer.
So I bit the bullet and ordered this computer, fully expecting to send it right back to Amazon. I was expecting poor build quality. NOPE, it arrived and appears to be a well built, quality computer. I was expecting loud fans, and high temps. SO FAR - neither of the above. The fans are generally silent... and only crank up a little during Fortnite with all settings (except Shadows, my son doesn't like them turned on for some reason) set to EPIC he is getting 150 FPS, where he was getting about 95FPS before with his older computer.
The computer is crisp and fast, and things just happen instantly.
I have not had much time with the computer yet, to go through the BIOS and to see if all the cooling is working properly. When we get past Christmas, I will try to update the review with my experience of looking through the BIOS settings (and updating if necessary) and tweaking the machine to see if we can get anything more out of it with overclocking.
ONE POSSIBLE TIP: WHEN CONSIDERING OVERHEATING PROBLEMS, ONE THING WE NOTICED WAS THAT THE BOTTOM of the PC Case is perforated and has a FILTER on it - as though COOLER AIR IS SUPPOSED TO BE DRAWN THROUGH THE BOTTOM of the PC Case... So, we lifted the front and back of the computer off the ground with a couple of short, cut 2x4 slabs - which elevates the case 1 1/2 inches off the floor, and leaves the bottom of the case open to draw cool air up and into the case, while the fans circulate the hot air out the top of the case.
If you are putting the PC on the floor, it is stopping this air flow design. While I realize that is stupid of HP if that is what they did, and did not include feet to take it off the floor, or a stand - but if it is as simple as raising the computer a couple inches off the floor and leaving room for air to flow through the case, it is worth trying. I hope this may help someone out who is having trouble with overheating. SO FAR WE ARE NOT... so it could be our efforts to lift the case and leave the bottom able to circulate cold air into the case, or not?
I keep saying this, but SO FAR we are very happy with this computer. I sure wish that I had ordered it on Cyber Monday and saved $300, but I'm STILL happy with it at the higher price based on what we have seen up to now. I WILL change my review if anything happens to make me rethink my recommendation.
Go ahead and shop around. Look for a PC with:
i9 processor
32 Gb RAM
1 TB SSD
2080 Super Graphics Card
Liquid cooling on the processor
Z390 Mobo
and price it compared to this... if you find something better - please comment below. Because as of this date (Christmas 2019) I'm not finding anything even close.
I hope you find this review helpful. I take Amazon reviews very seriously and I try to make sure my reviews help other customers save money, avoid bad products and find good ones. So if I have gotten something wrong here, or if you can help me with information on how to make my review better - I welcome the correction!
You can contact me at my Amazon Profile page and I will try to get back to you right away! Thank you for reading my review!
| Standing screen display size | 0.01 Inches |
|---|---|
| Screen Resolution | 3840 x 2160 |
| Max Screen Resolution | 3840x2160 |
| Processor | 3.6 GHz core_i9 |
| RAM | 32 GB DDR4 |
| Hard Drive | 1 TB SSD |
| Graphics Coprocessor | NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 SUPER |
| Chipset Brand | NVIDIA |
| Card Description | Dedicated |
| Graphics Card Ram Size | 8 GB |
| Number of USB 3.0 Ports | 8 |
