HP Pavilion 2022 Gaming Review

For $940, you get a 1080p gaming PC with a huge 3TB of storage and 32GB of RAM. The catch? The Intel i5-10400F CPU is a major weak link, landing in the bottom 22nd percentile. It's a good deal if you just want to game and don't plan on multitasking heavily.

The HP Pavilion Gaming Desktop with an RTX 3060 and 32GB of RAM is a solid budget gaming tower that scores big on value and storage. For around $940, you're getting a system that lands in the 90th percentile for social proof—people are buying and reviewing this thing in droves. It's a straightforward package: a six-core Intel i5-10400F CPU, that RTX 3060 GPU, and a generous 1TB SSD plus a 2TB hard drive for a massive 3TB total storage pool right out of the box.

Let's be clear about what you're getting. The RTX 3060 GPU puts this system in the 55th percentile for graphics performance. That means it's perfectly capable for 1080p gaming at high settings, but it's not breaking any records. The real story is the CPU, which sits in the 22nd percentile. The i5-10400F is fine for gaming, but it's a clear bottleneck if you try to stream while you play or run heavy multi-threaded workloads. The 32GB of RAM is a nice surprise, landing in the 71st percentile and giving you plenty of headroom for multitasking. Storage is another win, hitting the 77th percentile thanks to that huge 3TB combo.

At $940, the value proposition is pretty clear. You're paying for a complete, no-fuss system with above-average RAM and storage. The trade-off is the older, slower CPU. Compared to building your own, you'd likely save a bit of money on the Windows license and the convenience fee, but you could probably source a slightly faster CPU for a similar total cost if you went the DIY route.

Stacked against its peers, this Pavilion sits in an interesting spot. The HP Omen 45L will crush it in CPU performance but costs significantly more. A similarly priced DIY build could net you a newer Ryzen 5 or Intel 12th-gen CPU, but you'd likely sacrifice that 32GB of RAM or the 3TB storage to hit the budget. Compared to something like a Dell Alienware Aurora, you're getting far better raw storage and RAM for the dollar, but giving up the brand prestige and often better cooling solutions. It's a trade of raw specs for polish.

Skip this if you're a content creator, streamer, or need serious CPU power for work. That 22nd percentile CPU score is a deal-breaker for multi-threaded applications. Also, look elsewhere if you want a small form factor—this thing scores in the 30th percentile for compactness and is a hefty 5.94kg tower.

We'd recommend this to a budget-minded gamer who wants a plug-and-play experience and values storage space over cutting-edge CPU power. If your main goal is to play games at 1080p and you don't care about streaming or heavy productivity work, this is a sensible buy. Just know that CPU is going to feel its age sooner than the other components.