HP EliteDesk Tower

The HP EliteDesk Tower pairs a GTX 1660 Super and 32GB of RAM with a dated i5-7500 CPU. It scores 74.5 out of 100 overall, with standout port selection and social proof. But the weak AI performance and tiny 128GB SSD hold it back, and the $719 price tag is steep for a renewed machine.

Let's talk about that GTX 1660 Super with 6GB of VRAM. It's a solid 1080p card, landing in the 65th percentile for GPUs. You'll hit 60+ FPS in Fortnite, Valorant, CSGO, and most esports titles without breaking a sweat. The 32GB of RAM is overkill for gaming but great for multitasking, sitting at the 65th percentile. The real bottleneck is that i5-7500. Four cores at 3.4GHz base, boosting to 3.8GHz, just doesn't have the legs for modern AAA titles like Hogwarts Legacy or Elden Ring at high settings.

The storage situation is a mixed bag. The 128GB SSD is enough for Windows 11 Pro and maybe one or two games, but you'll be installing everything else on that 3TB HDD. Load times will suffer. The storage overall ranks at the 87th percentile, but that's mostly thanks to the sheer capacity of the HDD, not the speed of the SSD.

Stacked against the Lenovo Legion Tower 5a Gen 10, this HP gets smoked in raw performance. The Legion has a much newer CPU and better GPU options. The Apple Mac Studio M4 Max is in a completely different league, though it's also way more expensive. The Dell Tower ECT1250 and MSI Aegis ZS are closer competitors, but both offer newer processors. The Acer Nitro N60-180-UB33 is probably the closest match in terms of price and performance, but even that has a more modern CPU. The HP's only real advantage is the 32GB of RAM and the 3TB HDD, which are nice but don't compensate for the dated processor.

At $719 USD, this is a tough sell for a renewed machine. You're getting a lot of RAM and storage capacity, but the CPU is seven generations old. The GTX 1660 Super is a capable 1080p card, but you can find newer prebuilts with better processors for similar money. The 1-year warranty and lifetime tech support are nice touches, but they don't make up for the aging core components. If you're on a tight budget and need lots of RAM and storage, it's not terrible. But you're paying a premium for the HP name and the RGB accessories.

The HP EliteDesk Tower is a bit of an odd duck. It's got a 7th-gen Intel Core i5-7500, which is a processor from 2017, paired with a GTX 1660 Super and a generous 32GB of DDR4 RAM. The storage setup is a tale of two drives: a tiny 128GB SSD for your OS and a massive 3TB HDD for everything else. Our database puts the overall score at 74.5 out of 100, which is decent but not going to blow anyone's socks off.

The social proof is where this thing shines, landing in the 93rd percentile. People are clearly buying it and talking about it. The port selection is also a standout at the 88th percentile, with 10 USB-A ports, HDMI, DisplayPort, and even a serial port for the retro crowd. But that CPU is the anchor dragging this ship down, sitting at the 49th percentile, right in the middle of the pack.

Skip this if you're planning to play modern AAA games at high settings or do any serious content creation. The i5-7500 CPU is the weak link, sitting at the 49th percentile, and it will bottleneck the GTX 1660 Super in demanding titles. The 128GB SSD is also a dealbreaker if you don't want to constantly manage your storage. And if you're interested in AI or machine learning, the 38.4 out of 100 score in that category should send you running. You'd be better off with a newer budget build or a different renewed PC with a more recent processor.

The HP EliteDesk Tower is a decent budget gaming PC if you stick to esports titles and older games. The GTX 1660 Super and 32GB of RAM will serve you well for 1080p gaming and multitasking. But that i5-7500 is a real limitation, and the 128GB SSD is frustratingly small. The 3.8 out of 5 customer rating tells the story: some people love it, some people regret it. If you can find it on sale for under $600, it's worth considering. At $719, you're better off saving a bit more for something with a newer CPU.