HP OMEN 30L Desktop: i7-10700K, 16 GB DDR4, 512GB SSD, RTX 3080 Expired

I bought one last week (has not shipped yet, but it being back on sale again gives me hope), so of course I've been using my Google-Fu to research this thing while trying to decide if I want to cancel or not. I usually build my own, but the prices on prebuilds these days are just too good to pass up.

The main complaints I've heard about this rig are:

-Poor thermals/airflow, leading to loud/overworked case fans (so you probably want to add a couple of extra case fans of your own)
-Only one PCI-E slot, and it's taken by the GPU (in my case, it means I have to give up my sound card)
-RAM is difficult to upgrade--most non-HP ram will default clock to 2666 (supposedly this can be worked around by using Intel XTU to manually set RAM clocks, otherwise you have to overpay for HP RAM)
-Locked BIOS (so no proper BIOS overclocking, you are limited to HP's software overclocks and fan controls, which are not great--I would not expect big/stable overclocks on this rig)

These are significant complaints, but certainly not deal breakers for most users. I plan to add my own fans, and I won't be trying to break any overclocking records. This HP is a few hundred bucks cheaper than any comparable deal right now, and most of the components are actually really high quality (750W 80+ Platinum Cooler Master PSU, 3-fan GPU, WD Black SSD, and HyperX 3200 memory). They just cheaped out on a tiny motherboard and have a stingy BIOS policy that hamstrings the "k" in the 10700k. You wouldn't really expect tremendous performance gains from overclocking a 10700k to begin with, and it will still utterly demolish anything you throw at it, but it's still annoying.

If anything on the list above is a deal breaker, then you just have to wing it on the slim chance that someone like Cyberpower gets close to this price on one of their BF pre-builds (they had a 5600X/3080 system for ~$1600, and a 10900k/3080 build for ~$1900), but either way this HP Omen is a hell of a price for the components. Even if you could find all the cheapest parts in stock and fudged your Windows license, you still could not build this for cheaper on your own.

Well I don't know how likely this bad boy is to ship, but I totally jumped on this deal. There's the PayPal chase 5% option too.
One of the cash back sites is up to 12% today too.

edit: I'd also recommend upgrading to wifi 6 option for $10 more.

The interesting thing about these "deals" is that it's only a deal because Nvidia and their partners are allocating RTX 3080 supply to OEMs. This is no better than Gamestop selling you an overpriced Xbox or PS5 "bundle" with all the accessories/games clocking in at MSRP.

If you need a 3080 right NOW, I guess this is the only way you're getting it even close to retail.