HP Pavilion Gaming TG01-2003W 2021, Ryzen 5 5600G, 8GB, 256GB SSD, Radeon RX 5500, Black

A budget gaming PC with a fatal flaw: the power supply is a ticking time bomb. Save yourself the headache and buy literally anything with standard parts.

The Ryzen 5 5600G is a solid mid-range CPU, but pairing it with an RX 5500 and just 8GB of RAM is like putting a four-cylinder engine in a sports car. In our database, the RAM and storage scores are abysmal, sitting in the 17th and 16th percentiles respectively. You'll be playing storage Tetris after installing a couple of modern games, and that single stick of RAM is a bottleneck that causes stuttering in anything demanding. What surprised us most was the sheer number of users reporting crashes during gaming, directly tied to an insufficient and unreliable power supply that can't keep up under load.

Stack this up against a Lenovo Legion Tower 5, and the HP's flaws become blindingly obvious. The Legion line typically uses standard ATX parts, making future upgrades a breeze, and they don't skimp on the power supply. An Acer Nitro N60 is another common alternative that offers a much clearer upgrade path and generally better build quality for a similar price. The HP's proprietary motherboard alone makes it a dead end compared to these more flexible competitors.

This is a trap. The entry price might seem tempting, but you're buying a project, not a product. To make this machine reliable and enjoyable, you'll need to immediately factor in the cost of another 8GB RAM stick and a larger SSD. And that's before you even address the power supply that multiple owners say dies within months. You're better off saving a bit more for a prebuilt with standard parts that won't leave you stranded.

The HP Pavilion Gaming TG01-2003W is a classic case of a spec sheet that looks okay on paper but falls apart in the real world. It's an entry-level gaming PC that can handle lighter titles like Minecraft and Fortnite right out of the box, but it's hamstrung by a measly 8GB of single-channel RAM and a tiny 256GB SSD. The real story here isn't the performance, it's the reliability. Our data shows user sentiment is in the gutter, landing in the 9th percentile. Multiple owners report catastrophic power supply failures within months, turning this budget-friendly rig into a very expensive paperweight.

If you're looking for a reliable, upgradeable gaming PC that will last more than a year, this isn't it. Go get a Lenovo Legion Tower 5 or an Acer Nitro N60 instead. If you're a tinkerer who loves a project and finds this for a deep discount, maybe, but for everyone else, just walk away.

Don't buy this PC. The HP Pavilion TG01-2003W is a gamble on reliability that you're almost guaranteed to lose. The combination of a failure-prone power supply, a proprietary motherboard that kills your upgrade path, and a criminally low amount of RAM makes it a poor investment. The only scenario where this makes sense is if you find it for a steal and are prepared to immediately swap the PSU, add RAM, and add storage, but at that point, you've built a whole new computer around a mediocre graphics card.