HP’S CURRENT RANGE of Omen desktop cases are imposing black monoliths that genuinely do look like something out of a science fiction movie. We’re referring to the type that’s about unknowable alien technology indistinguishable from magic, rather than the affable uncle who makes an airship out of old gears and his wife’s underwear, but sci-fi nonetheless. That it wears its CPU cooling system, known as a ‘cryo chamber’—but actually just the usual radiator and fans—as a hat only enhances this feeling.
Luckily, the innards of the Omen 45L aren’t fictional; they’re functional. And with a 13th-gen i9, an RTX 4090 and 64GB of RAM, this one’s very functional indeed. There may be newer chips emerging onto the market, but the i9-13900K is not to be argued with, and matched with the RTX 4090, it becomes a dominant combination for 4K gaming or the creative arts—highres video editing or Lightroom’s AI noise reduction are no bother with this kind of processing power on board.
But back to that case. You’re going to have to look at this thing every day if you set it up in your gaming space, so it’s a good thing it’s rather handsome. While it ticks all the usual boxes of having a window in the side so you can see everything within not moving about, there’s also a lot of lighting. It’s on the CPU cooler pump, the tops of the RAM sticks, GPU, and the very ceiling of the case itself. There’s also a diamond-shaped Omen logo on the front which lights up, along with three fans which, you’ve guessed it, emit bright rainbow hues. All of this is controlled by the HP Omen Gaming Hub, meaning you can have solid colors or turn it off if the pulsing becomes too much.