Jim Sterlter
If you are thinking of building a new gaming rig in 2021, the bad news for us is – due to the supply chain constraint imposed by COVID-19 – it will be difficult for the impossible. But we also have good news: when you’re not able to build a gaming PC, you can almost certainly Shopping A.
Don’t get us wrong. If you have enough time and patience, you can still collect all the parts from the ground to make your own custom rig. But it will take weeks or months at this stage in 2021. So instead of picking a list of parts, our next system guide will focus on the latest rig from the three major gaming PC vendors pre-built.
HP and Lenovo provided us with the Omen 30L and Legion 5i towers, respectively. We were also supposed to review an Alienware ur Rora R11 – and although we couldn’t get a review unit from Dell, senior commercial editor Jeff Dunn please took a few pics and ran a somewhat limited test on his personal R11.
Even in large OEMs, the currently available hardware varies from week to week. But equipped with a component performance chart and a thorough review of these systems, you can make your own well-informed purchasing decisions.
Claimants
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The Legion 5i (left) has a very rear exhaust fan, which helps to contribute to its generally lower noise level. We also appreciate the overhead carrying / training of that big fan. The Omen (right) has an extra pair of rear-facing USB ports.
Jim Sterlter
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Oman (right) is a little nice to look at from its blank side, not suffering from the horrible sticker-itis from Legion (left).
Jim Sterlter
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Lenovo’s matte finish (left) requires a lot of compelling wet-rag-wiping to keep it natural, which I clearly failed even in its first half hour outside of the first X.
Jim Sterlter
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This is Jeff Dunn’s personal alienware ur Rora R11 from senior commercial editor.
Jeff Dunn
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This is the top view of the Alienware Aurora R11.
Jeff Dunn
HP Omen 30L
The HP Omen 30L and Lenovo Legion Tower 5i are mid-tower systems, with a slightly larger side but nowhere near the “full tower” bulk. Each is significantly heavier than expected in its size, but these machines are still well under anything you want to slap on a “team lift only” sticker. Oman is slightly larger, but unfortunately the Legion puts unnecessary whale-tails on the back-end for styling for it. Each provides more than enough cooling for the CPU and chassis and each of them Technically There are plenty of places to work inside. We’ll go further into that “technically” blue-word.
The HP Omen 30L came to us with a liquid-cooled Intel i9-10900K CPU and a single FORCERS RTX 3080 GPU. The Lenovo Legion came with a more modest air-cooled Intel i7-10700 and GeForce RTX 2070 Super. Both systems (along with Dell’s ur rora R10 / R11) are at least theoretically configured for the levels of performance you want, but again, the Covid-19-limited supply and demand unexpectedly limits your options from week to week.
Lenovo Legion Tower 5 i
Given CPU and GPU We widely expect similar performance from a given manufacturer in combination. But there are some other variables that affect performance – especially cooling. Still, in our experience, these gamer-targeted rigs are unlikely to under-specify cooling. That means the big thing we’re seeing here is the look of the system, how noisy it is, and what it’s like to work on it.
Fan sound
Legion Tower 5I is generally quieter than Omen 30L, despite the cold of Omen’s liquid. No machine is loud in normal operation, but Omen fans have taken a slightly larger part. The Legion fan voice has done a better job of fading vaguely in the background – I actually pressed my ear to the chassis when I operated it to make sure it was booting.
Alienware Aurora R11
The full Cinebench R20 run typically turns well-behaved Lenovo and HP rigs into ferocious beasts that seem likely to lift the desk under potential fan pressure. But both machines remain silent until the last third of the cinebench, and the same Ars reader described it as “webit-hunting quiet” a few seconds later, despite running “second threaded cinebench.” No machine was able to make a fan noise during the 3DMark Time Spy tests at 1440p, which is significantly more demanding than most AAA games.
I don’t have the Alienware ur Rora R11 on hand, so I can’t compare it. Toms’ guide described it as loud and warm, which I can’t call either Lenovo or HP Riggs. I asked Ars Senior Commerce Commerce Editor Jeff Dunn to put through his i9-10900K / RTX 3090 powered ur Rora R11 similar tests. During Time Spy, Dunn said his R11’s fan speed has increased significantly. He described it as easily audible from four feet away without making it “ruthless”. He never went into the kind of ragging beast mode that was done by Omen and Legion during the Cinebench R20.
By spinning more aggressively before and after the Omen or Legion, R11 manages to avoid accumulating enough thermal buildup for the more urgent need of emergency on the fans. Due to its low cooling capacity, it probably does not have much choice in this regard. Omen and Legion, too high-capacity, gamble that heavy thermal spikes will not last long for the speed and noise needs of fans. The fact that they don’t spin until the end of the cinebench and then quickly become inactive – argues that they are True Even about that.
Users who prefer the R11’s “now a few more fans, then a lot less fans” can adjust the fan curve in any large system to match the style tuning – which would be a really good idea if you plan to use your gaming A system for long-term 100 percent CPU output, such as protein folding, hour-long coordination jobs, etc.
The bling
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– Probably – Oman 30L entertaining debut in balls in every category except desktop wallpapers.
Jim Sterlter
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HP’s Omen 30L Disco Fever-RAM, fans, GPU, and anything that didn’t actively and vigorously defend itself got a glow-up.
Jim Sterlter
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Check the LED “rope” lighting around the liquid cooler radiator mounted on the top of the chassis.
Jim Sterlter
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Legion 5I is more possessive than Omen 30L. The Legion icon in front isn’t even light … or does it?
Jim Sterlter
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The Legion 5i has an orange tinted glass side panel, and a rather radioactive green-up for its RTX 2070 Super GPU.
Jim Sterlter
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Remember how we said the Legion 5i logo doesn’t shine? Turns out we were wrong. When the machine enters Windows sleep mode, that giant icon will glow bright blue, on a cycle of about six-seconds. Um. # Liked.
Jim Sterlter
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The LED ring on the front panel – and the mildly odd overall shape – is all the bling you get in the Rora R11.
Dale
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Unlike HP and Lenovo gaming rigs, the Ora Rora R11 has no glass side panels – a couple of hexagonal hole clusters through its plastic shell.
Jeff Dunn
If bowling is your thing, HP’s Omen 30L Mid Tower is ready to be the ruggedness of your choice. HPA never misses an opportunity to glitter any individual part of this system, and the result is a noble but fun discotheque vibe that you just need to add some bass. The HyperX gently glows its way through the rainbow on the RGB RAM loop, throws the chassis intake fan and Omen Diamond logo into the room at the front, the GPU announces itself with more LEDs, and even the radiator of the liquid cooling system has a rope LED around it. Wrap.
That level of purpose is not to my personal taste, but the overall effect is well done. The light of the various elements of the system blends nicely, producing a soft, cool glow that feels cool to a sci-fi movie.
Next to the Omen 30L, Lenovo’s Legion 5i seems very restrained. The Legion 5i has a yellow-colored glass side panel, but the only light-up component inside is a custom GeForce RTX2080 Super GPU cap. The large Legion logo appears white and unlit on the front of the case – until the machine goes to sleep. With 5i in sleep mode, the large Legion logo has a bright blue glow in about six-second on / off cycles that I found both meaningless and vague.
I doubt there is control, Somewhere, To change the behavior of those LED illuminated legion lions. But that doesn’t reveal itself in the casual search of a Lenovo app already installed in the system tray, and I can’t burn more time finding it.
The Alienware Aurora R11 is a simple system of flour. The only light-up billing on the R11 is a thin LED trim ring on the front and “Alienware” branding on the right; No side panels, and the entire outer shell is plastic, available in “Moon’s Dark Side” (dark, charcoal gray) or “Moonlight” (somewhere between pale gray and pearls). It is also the smallest in the interior – the R11 is a micro-ATX system, while the other two are full-size ATX.
