HP ProDesk 400 G9 2022, Core i9-12900K, 32GB, 1TB SSD

A 16-core beast crammed into a business box with a GPU that can barely draw a straight line. Buy it for the CPU, not the graphics.

The CPU here is a genuine standout, landing well above average in our database. 16 cores split between 8 performance and 8 efficient cores means multitasking and heavy spreadsheet work fly. But the Intel UHD Graphics 770 is a weak spot, sitting in the bottom half of what we've tested. Don't expect to do anything beyond light photo editing or very old games. The 1TB NVMe SSD and 32GB of RAM are solid, middle of the pack specs that keep things snappy for office work.

The Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 10 and Dell Aurora will absolutely smoke this thing in gaming and graphics workloads, but they're full-sized towers with dedicated GPUs. The Apple Mac Studio M5 Max is the real competitor here if you want compact power, though you're locked into macOS and a higher price. The ASUS ROG GM700 is another gaming-focused option that makes the ProDesk look silly for anything involving a GPU. For pure CPU-heavy business tasks in a small box, the ProDesk holds its own, but it's a niche pick.

At $1,450 USD, you're paying a premium for that i9 in a tiny box. For pure office work, you could spend less and get 90% of the experience. But if you need serious CPU crunching in a compact footprint and don't care about graphics, it's not a bad deal. Just know you're paying for the form factor as much as the silicon.

HP stuffed a Core i9-12900K into a small form factor business PC, and honestly, it's a weird flex that mostly works. You're getting 16 cores and 32GB of DDR5 in a box that won't eat your desk. The catch? That 180W power supply and integrated graphics mean this is a productivity monster, not a gaming rig.

If you want to play games, edit video, or do any 3D work, this isn't it. Go get a Lenovo Legion Tower or Dell Aurora with a real GPU instead. You'll spend similar money and get dramatically better graphics performance.

If you need a compact Windows 11 Pro machine that chews through CPU-intensive business workloads, this is a solid buy. Just don't expect to play games or do any serious graphics work. The i9 is wasted on the integrated GPU, but for Excel, coding, and multitasking, it's a quiet little workhorse.