HP's new cases have a separate 'Cryo Chamber' for cooling

(Image credit: HP)

PC cases are having an interesting showing at this years’ CES with offerings like this one with automatically opening and closing vents. HP recently debuted its new Omen 27u monitor, and also showed off a new PC gaming case with a different, less cool looking but also likely much cheaper, innovative way of keeping cool.

The new Omen 45L ATX case features a patented Omen Cryo Chamber that sits on top of the main case. It can support up AiO liquid coolers up to 360mm in size, and works by pulling cooler air from outside the tower into this chamber. It makes sense that this would be cooler than using air from already inside the case, and there’s a similar intake on the front too.

Chip chillers

CPU Coolers — (Image credit: Corsair, Noctua)

Best CPU cooler: keep your chip chilled in style
Best PC fans: super-silent and plastered in RGB
Best PC cases: big, little, and everything in-between.

HP claims keeping this Cryo Chamber nicely separated results in CPU temperatures 6C cooler than they’d otherwise be and also acts as a nice handle for moving the tower around. The side panels are also easy to remove without any tools required. It’s set to be available for purchase soon but no date was given.

When it comes to buying the best PC case, there are a bunch of factors to consider. First of course is whether or not it’ll fit your parts, but a 45L makes that fairly likely. Other considerations are usually around cooling, keeping things quiet, and the ease of access to what's inside. On those fronts, the Omen 45L ATX case looks set to be a winner. The last point most people are after is aesthetics, and this is a nice clean case design. The tall black boxy design is simple and quite familiar. The front gives a nice window to three fans, and the side is a clear panel so you can get a good look at the guts, when you work out what they are.

If an empty case isn’t quite what you’re after, HP also offers the Omen 45L desktop which utilises the same design. It comes in configurable models with up to a 24GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 3090 or AMD Radeon RX 6700 XT paired with an 12th gen Intel i9 12900K or AMD Ryzen 9 5900X. Top of the line variants also feature 64GB of DDR4 as well as 2TB of SSD storage, and will retail for around $5,000.

Thankfully cheaper and less powerful options will also be on offer, and there are even choices between components and most are known name brands.

Hope’s been writing about games for about a decade, starting out way back when on the Australian Nintendo fan site Vooks.net. Since then, she’s talked far too much about games and tech for publications such as Techlife, Byteside, IGN, and GameSpot. Of course there’s also here at PC Gamer, where she gets to indulge her inner hardware nerd with news and reviews. You can usually find Hope fawning over some art, tech, or likely a wonderful combination of them both and where relevant she’ll share them with you here. When she’s not writing about the amazing creations of others, she’s working on what she hopes will one day be her own. You can find her fictional chill out ambient far future sci-fi radio show/album/listening experience podcast right here.

No, she’s not kidding.