HP

The HP's storage is a standout, landing in the 87th percentile thanks to a massive 3TB HDD. However, the 4-core i5-7500 CPU is a real bottleneck, scoring at the 49th percentile and holding back the otherwise capable GTX 1660 Super. It's a better home office PC with light gaming chops than a true gaming rig.

Let's talk about that CPU first, because it dictates everything else. The Core i5-7500 is a 4-core, 4-thread chip, and in our database, it's about as average as it gets for desktops. In practical terms, this means it's fine for day-to-day tasks and older games, but it'll choke on heavily multi-threaded work like video editing or running a modern game while streaming. The 32GB of DDR4 RAM is a nice buffer, landing in the 65th percentile, which is more than enough for heavy multitasking and keeping dozens of browser tabs open. It's a smart pairing for a business or home office machine, but it's overkill for the CPU's actual capabilities in gaming.

The GTX 1660 Super is the real workhorse here for gaming. It's a 6GB card that's a solid performer for 1080p, hitting the 64th percentile. You can expect smooth frame rates in esports titles and 60+ FPS in most AAA games at medium to high settings. The storage setup is a tale of two drives. The 128GB SSD is just big enough for Windows 11 Pro and a couple of your most-played games, while the massive 3TB HDD is a great dumping ground for everything else. That combo pushes it into the 87th percentile for storage, which is a standout feature for a budget-friendly tower.

Stacked against something like the Acer Nitro N60, this HP offers way more RAM and storage for the money, but the Acer is likely running a much more modern CPU that will age far more gracefully. The Lenovo Legion Tower 5a is in a different league entirely for gaming, with a newer architecture that would run circles around this i5-7500, though you'd pay a premium for it. Even the MSI Aegis Z2 will have a more balanced spec sheet for gaming. The real trade-off here is storage and RAM versus core processing power. This HP wins on the former but loses badly on the latter to almost any modern competitor. It's a better fit as a home office PC than a dedicated gaming rig when you compare it to the field.

At $719, this HP desktop is a classic case of getting what you pay for. You're not buying cutting-edge performance; you're buying a cleverly configured older system. The value proposition hinges on that 32GB of RAM and the 3TB hard drive, which are genuinely expensive upgrades if you were to build a system yourself. The price per performance ratio is decent for 1080p gaming and excellent for a general home office PC that needs tons of local storage. Just know that your money is going into memory and storage, not the CPU. If you can find a similar renewed machine with a newer 6-core processor for $50-100 more, that would be a much better long-term value.

This HP desktop is a bit of a mixed bag, leaning heavily on its generous storage and connectivity to make up for an aging processor. The 3TB hard drive paired with a 128GB SSD lands it in the 87th percentile for storage, which is genuinely impressive for a machine at this price. You also get a surprising amount of ports, sitting in the 88th percentile, so hooking up all your peripherals won't be a problem. The real head-scratcher is the CPU. The 7th-gen Intel Core i5-7500 is a 4-core chip from 2017 that lands squarely in the middle of the pack at the 49th percentile. It's not a disaster, but it's the clear bottleneck in a system that otherwise tries to punch above its weight.

The 32GB of RAM and the GTX 1660 Super are solid mid-range components, but they're hitched to that older platform. The GPU sits in the 64th percentile, meaning it's a capable 1080p card that'll handle the games listed in the marketing blurb, like Fortnite and GTA V, without much fuss. Just don't expect it to be a streaming powerhouse despite what the description says. The CPU will struggle to keep up with modern games and a live encoding session simultaneously. This is a classic 'renewed' PC formula: stuff it with RAM and storage to make the spec sheet look great, while the core processing power tells a different story.

Anyone looking for a modern gaming or streaming rig should absolutely skip this. The CPU is the Achilles' heel, scoring in the 49th percentile, and it will leave you frustrated in CPU-heavy games or any multitasking scenario involving gaming and streaming. If you plan to play the latest AAA titles, or if you're interested in AI or LLM tasks where this machine scored a dismal 36 out of 100, you need a system with a newer, 6-core processor at minimum. This is a storage-heavy home office PC in gaming clothing.

This HP is a tough one to recommend without a very specific use case in mind. If you need a home office or student PC with a colossal amount of storage for media, documents, and light gaming on the side, the 3TB HDD and 32GB of RAM make it a compelling package for $719. For a primary gaming machine, the aging 4-core CPU is a dealbreaker that will only become more of a problem as games get more demanding. The data is clear: it's a storage and connectivity champ, but its processing power is strictly middle-of-the-road. Buy it for the hard drive space, not for the frame rates.