Tucked away at the bottom of the case I was able to spot two hard drives – one SSD for the operating system, and a large XXXXrpm drive for programs and storage. This setup proves to be fairly effective as given the installation size of most PC games, you wouldn’t want your primary drive to be loaded down with gigabytes of game data.

HP bundles a very ordinary keyboard and mouse with this PC, which is a bit odd as you would think they’d like to include some sleek gamer kit instead. While the keyboard is average but usable, the bundled mouse is absolutely horrific and really cheap. Any serious gamer wouldn’t be caught dead using these peripherals, so make sure you have your swanky gamer hardware ready to plug in. Bundled software comes in the form of Norton Internet Security, Cyberlink Power DVD, as well as HP’s Magic Canvas software for touch-equipped monitors.

Specifications

Since the HP Phoenix is meant to be a gaming PC my review unit came packed with a fair amount of power under the hood, but you can order one with different specifications if you need to.

Benchmarks & Gaming Performance

Of course the truth lies in how the Phoenix actually performs, and since it’s dubbed as a gaming PC we threw in our gaming benchmarks as well.

The tests speak for themselves – the HP Phoenix was able to get through most of our tests with ease, clocking up some decent numbers on each of them. The machine has a Windows Experience Index of 7.7, so it was a no-brainer as to how the results would turn out. For gaming benchmarks, we ran through a series of games and customized tests to see how frame rates would turn out as well as whether or not the Phoenix stayed cool, which is especially important for overpowering games.

One of the important factors to consider with PCs is cooling, and the HP Phoenix did a fairly decent job at keeping things cool and quiet. The fan hardly made any noise during the stress tests, and even the GPU fan was quiet most of the time. Even though this system isn’t water-cooled, temperatures stayed between 28C on idle to 49C during the tests.

Conclusion

The important conclusion to draw here is whether or not the HP Phoenix PC is a worthy competitor to a rig that’s been built from the ground up. The answer is in short, yes. While the price tag may be a bit high, for an out-of-the-box gaming rig this is the perfect deal, and coupled with full HP support it’s an easy purchase. HP might have just hit the mark with the HP Phoenix PC, and for anyone who isn’t keen on building their own rig and looking for some basic overclocking functions, this is the PC to get.