HP has announced two desktop PCs for the United States ahead of CES next week: the Omni27, a 27" all-in-one that follows the general design of the TouchSmart lineup but excludes the touchscreen, and the Pavilion HPE Phoenix h9, a performance-oriented tower being marketed toward gamers and content creators.

The Omni27, pictured above, features a 27" 1920x1080 display, a 2.5 GHz Core i5 2400S quad core (four thread) processor, Intel's HD Graphics 2000, 6GB of RAM, two USB 3.0 ports, one HDMI-in port, HP's Beats Audio speakers, and a wireless keyboard and mouse for $1,199. Hard drive options up to 2TB are available, though it's not clear what comes with the base unit. The display is a bit low-resolution for a 27" screen (for comparison's sake, the 27" iMac uses a 2560x1440 panel, though it's a pricier machine), and most of you should be familiar with the limitations of the Intel HD 2000 GPU, which won't be able to run most recent games, especially not at the display's native resolution. With the exception of the hard drive and an optional Blu-Ray player, information about available upgrades was not available.

The Pavilion HPE Phoenix h9, previously available in Europe, sports AMD's Bulldozer-based eight-core FX-8100, an AMD Radeon HD 7670 graphics card, 8GB of RAM, a 160GB SSD, Beats Audio, surround sound capability, and a wireless keyboard and mouse for a starting price of $1,149. The HP press release boasts that the tower can accommodate 250 watt GPUs and features a total of 4 RAM slots and three internal hard drive bays. Don't get too excited about that Radeon HD 7670 - like some of the HD 7000M parts we've talked about, it's actually a rebranded Turks-based card available only to OEMs, with specs pretty much identical to the HD 6670 we reviewed last year. Some of the European HPE h9 models also ship with Intel processors, but it's not clear whether that will be an option for the American version.

Both of these systems are due to begin shipping on January 8.

Source: HP

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  • frozentundra123456 - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link

    Cant wait to get my hands on that 1150.00 pheonix that can barely play modern games at 1080p. Even if you want a prebuilt system, you could do much better from CyberPower or even someone like Digital Storm.

    Could they have made any worse choices for CPU and GPU? Even a Dell XPS with an i72600 and HD6770 can be had for less than 1000.00. Much faster out of the box, and a much better gaming CPU if you want to upgrade power supply and install better graphics card..
  • seamonkey79 - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link

    But... does it have BEATS audio!?

    That's worth at least $800.17 right there!
  • iSayuSay - Wednesday, January 4, 2012 - link

    LOL nice ...

    That HP phoenix is truly sucks for a claimed gaming class tower. Mediocre at best and I'd take AlienWare anyday (despite not the best bang for your buck too).

    And that new HP All in one ... Well as usual, iMac suprisingly remains give you the best value of all. A similarly priced low end 21.5" iMac already give you moar powaahhh compared to this ... Sorry ... Crap.

    It may be 27" .. But 1920x1080 gonna look bad on this monitor, this aint TV you know, and no discrete GPU, seriously? And 6GB RAM? You know it's really cheap to upgrade iMac into 12GB RAM today. The iMac already has OSX (super nice. Bonus) and if you use Bootcamp, surely there wont be any HP bloatware crawling within.

    But as above said .. It has beats audio that worth $800 alone, so yeah ... This computer is a bargain for the price of remaining $399.
  • Samus - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    like all OEM systems, is going to suck. 500-watt if we're lucky.
  • JALaraque - Thursday, January 5, 2012 - link

    I never understood some companies decision to name something a gaming PC, just because it can play an old game on low settings does not make it a gaming PC. Real gamers want to play the latest games like Skyrim and Old Republic on high settings and you need a real gaming PC like the Genesis from Origin PC as an example.

    It’s not just about using the term “gaming” and trying to sell some systems. Either you know what gamers want and your company is focused on that or you are just trying to fool some people into buying a substandard machine. Stick to e-Machines and leave gaming to the pro’s.

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