10 PCWorld FEBRUARY 2020NEWS HP’S ENV Y 32 AIO
HP opted not to offer touch support on the
screen. Officials said their research indicates
touch is preferred on laptops, but many
consumers don’t care for it on desktops.THIS RTX GPU IS NOT FOR
GAMING
The second “first” is HP’s use of Nvidia’s
GeForce RTX graphics, with options from
RTX 2060 to RTX 2080. Despite this GPU
firepower, the company said the Envy 32
AiO is not a gaming-focused PC. Instead, it
caters to creative types who need access to
the state-of-the-art RTX GPUs, which feature
Nvidia’s newest encoding cores and
hardware support for ray tracing. The Envy
32 AiO is actually part of Nvidia’s RTX Studioprogram (go.pcworld.com/stio), which
helps PC vendors develop hardware
optimized for the company’s highest-end
graphics technology.
Given that HP reaches for the stars in
graphics, the company’s choice of CPU is
interesting. You’d think HP would use the
top-end, 95-watt 9th-gen Core i9 “K” parts
(go.pcworld.com/kprt) introduced in late
2018 and actually positioned for creators.
Instead, HP took CPUs from the second
round of 9th-gen Core desktop chips (go.
pcworld.com/9gen) announced last April,
mostly 65-watt parts, and most without
Hyper-Threading (including the ones used by
the Envy 32 AiO).
HP hasn’t said why one was chosen over
the other. For most creative
uses, however, an 8-core is
usually plenty even if it lacks
Hyper-Threading. While an
AMD Ryzen 7 3000-series of
CPUs would be a nice
option, HP’s Envy 32 AiO
was likely too far along when
AMD introduced the CPUs
last summer.BRING THE NOISE
All-in-One PCs usually have
inadequate to average audio.
HP reverses the trend by
basically tucking a
soundbar into the chin of