HP Envy Phoenix h9-1420t review: Gaming power in a subtle form

By gaming standards, the HP Envy Phoenix h9-1420t's appearance is positively subdued. This midsize tower PC has some red backlighting and a clear pane so that you can gaze at the liquid cooling unit, but aside from that it could easily pass for a conventional HP desktop. Although it doesn't have much in the way of bling, the Phoenix delivers better-than-average performance at a cheaper-than-boutique price. Down-the-road upgrade options, on the other hand, are limited by its decidedly nonenthusiast motherboard.

Components and performance

Our $1840 h9-1420t test configuration sported an unlocked 3.5GHz Intel Core i7-3770K processor. Thanks to the liquid cooling unit, the system had no problem maintaining 4GHz, and it likely has at least a little more headroom. The Pegatron (that’s Asus’s OEM arm) 2AD5 motherboard offers minimal overclocking controls in its BIOS, but it isn't completely locked down. You can set each core's maximum frequency multiplier separately, but you get no provisions for tweaking the operating voltage, for instance. The board also has just a single full-size PCIe slot, so you can forget any dual-card graphics upgrade via SLI or CrossFire.

Fortunately, HP picked a strong graphics card, inserting an Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 with 2GB of GDDR5 memory. With that card in place, the Phoenix managed a playable frame rate in Dirt Showdown right up to the 2560 by 1600 resolution of our 30-inch test display. The game wasn’t as silky smooth at that resolution as it was at lower ones, but it was certainly playable. Should you decide to buy an h9-1420t online, HP allows you to customize the configuration to a degree, but your options don’t include Nvidia’s best GPU, the GeForce GTX 690.

The other core components on our test machine included 12GB of DDR3-1600 memory and a 2TB, 7200-rpm hard drive, which helped the h9-1420t produce a very good WorldBench 8 score of 87. A solid-state drive would have boosted the score even more, but that option wasn’t available when we ordered our evaluation unit. HP has since corrected that omission, but there’s no getting around that single multilane PCIe slot, which is a puzzling design decision in a PC whose primary reason for existence is performance.

Power, expansion, and ports

While you can’t add a second video card, the system has lots of room for other components, including one open 5.25-inch drive bay and two free 3.5-inch drive bays, all of which are accessible from the front panel. The graphics card and the liquid cooling unit dominate the area over the motherboard, leaving only two x1 PCIe slots exposed (a third x1 PCIe slot is blocked).

Even though the h9-1420t doesn't have a lot of free slots, it does boast a ton of exterior ports. Slide down the front panel, and you'll find four USB 2.0 ports, as well as the usual array of memory card slots. On top of the front panel, facing rearward, are two USB 3.0 ports plus audio-in and -out. The PC has rear audio outputs to support up to a 7.1-channel surround system, plus an additional four USB 2.0 ports, two more USB 3.0 ports, a single gigabit ethernet port, and an optical S/PDIF port.

You also get two DVI ports, an HDMI port, and a DisplayPort connection on the back of the GTX 680, plus two capped DVI ports off the motherboard that are supported by the integrated Intel HD 4000 graphics (should you ever ditch the discrete GPU).

Input ergonomics and software

Most gamers will already have their favorite gaming peripherals, but HP does bundle a keyboard and mouse with the Phoenix. Both input devices are relatively lightweight with a serviceable feel, but no one would ever mistake them for gaming- or even business-grade models.

HP includes Adobe’s Photoshop Elements for editing photos and Premiere Elements for editing videos, but you’ll need to pay extra for Blu-ray player and disc-burning software. The company’s Quick Start app is provided to mimic the Start menu that Microsoft dumped from its latest OS. If you're looking for an even better Start replacement, check out Stardock's Start8 or Iobit's Start Menu 8; the former is $5, while the latter is free.

Price, configurations, and warranty

Our test configuration, with its upgraded video card, unlocked CPU, and midrange storage and memory options, costs $1840, but you can get into the h9-1420T for as little as $1150 with a slower GPU and a locked CPU. At the other end of the scale, you can configure the machine with 32GB of memory and a 4TB RAID 5 setup (three times 2TB, minus 33 percent for redundancy) and hit your bank account to the tune of $2740.

The Envy Phoenix series carries a healthy two-year parts-and-labor warranty, and HP offers extended warranties for up to four years, with on-site service, for less than $200.

Bottom line

If you're not dead set on your gaming PC looking as if it had just escaped from a sci-fi movie, and if you’re sure you’ll never want to upgrade to a dual-video-card setup, the HP Envy Phoenix h9-1420T will give you excellent overall performance and darn good gameplay. The warranty is comforting as well, but we're still wondering why the hardware options stop just shy of state-of-the-art.