Lenovo Legion T5 gaming desktop
ZDNET’s key takeaways
- The Lenovo Legion Tower 5 is offered now for $1,880.
- This desktop excels at a variety of duties, from gaming to 3D picture rendering and graphic design.
- Nonetheless, due to the PC’s squat design, some customers might have problem discovering a cushty place for it.
extra shopping for decisions
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Constructing a gaming PC will be tough when you’re new to the pastime. Fortuitously, pre-built desktops take away many of the guesswork; you may anticipate them to ship dependable efficiency straight out of the field. Particularly since gaming desktops include more and more aggressive {hardware}.
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Lenovo’s Legion Tower 5 (or T5 for short) is a first-rate instance of a stable prebuilt desktop. It’s a gaming pc, however as I found over the previous couple of weeks, it’s versatile sufficient to reach content material creation.
Desktop footprint
Trendy PC circumstances typically have a vertically tall design, a method of pc known as a “tower.” This form is fashionable for a wide range of causes: they facilitate airflow for cooling parts, however extra importantly, they take up much less bodily area.
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The Legion T5 does issues somewhat totally different. As an alternative of increasing upward, it is stout. It measures 8.31 x 19.31 x 16.3 inches. Beneath is a picture of the Legion T5 subsequent to my Maingear MG-1 (16.88 x 19 x 8.12 inches) beneath my desk. Each computer systems within the picture beneath are according to one another. Discover simply how a lot the Lenovo pc stands out (and the way a lot decrease it’s).
Discovering an area for the Legion T5 might show tough due to its stout body — at the very least it was for me. I swapped out my private PC with the Lenovo desktop for a time, and infrequently discovered myself bumping the facet of the pc with my legs and chair. Fortunately, the sides and corners of the desktop are rounded, so I prevented something too painful.
All concerning the aesthetics
The selection between stout and tall tower PCs comes down to private desire. Admittedly, the Legion T5 seems to be fairly cool. I actually favored the bumpy warmth vent on the prime. I requested Lenovo if this design had any sensible functions, and so they advised me it was only for aesthetic functions. Both method, it was a superb name on their finish.
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Port choice is surprisingly restricted. A bulk of the inputs are situated across the again of the desktop. Simply to focus on a couple of, you will discover three DisplayPort inputs, an HDMI 2.1 for outputting 4K video at 60Hz, and three totally different audio ports. That is all nice to have, however I actually would’ve favored it if the entrance had extra as a result of it solely has three: a 5Gbps USB-C enter, a 5Gbps USB-A port, and an audio jack.
At finest, you will have sufficient room for a pair of headphones, a controller, and one accent. Extra ought to’ve been accessible inside arm’s attain, as there’s loads of room. Lenovo’s Legion Tower 7i, for instance, has three USB-A inputs on the entrance.
One other neat factor concerning the Legion T5 is its ARGB lighting. The “A” stands for “addressable,” which is Lenovo’s fancy method of claiming customizable RGB lighting. Through the Legion Area app, customers can activate lights over sure parts, just like the rear fan or GPU. You may combine and match no matter you prefer to create enjoyable mild arrays.
Dynamic desktop
Beneath the hood is an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card, and 32GB of RAM. Unsurprisingly, gaming on the Lenovo Legion T5 felt clean, even when working demanding titles. This configuration allowed fast-paced shooters like “Name of Responsibility” and stylized motion video games like “Hades 2” to run with out a hitch, retaining framerates persistently excessive. I used to be capable of keep targeted on matches as a substitute of worrying about sudden dips in efficiency. Any gamer will let you know that having good stability makes a world of distinction.
The highly effective {hardware} brings out the visible options that make fashionable video games shine. Lush environments, like these present in “Monster Hunter Wilds”, felt lifelike. Particle results had been explosive, and in-game lighting seemed true to life. The Legion T5’s capability to help a number of visible enhancers and nonetheless get principally clean efficiency permits the desktop to separate itself from the typical prebuilt pc.
I say “principally” as a result of I bumped into some visible glitches taking part in “Ultimate Fantasy 15” at its peak settings. Characters would spaz out, limbs flailing round as the sport struggled to run at such a excessive decision. To be honest, it is seemingly these glitches are the results of some type of driver problem, not essentially the {hardware} struggling to maintain up.
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Nonetheless, I needed to focus on this second as a possible situation you may encounter. Whereas the {hardware} is actually highly effective, you may all the time run into a couple of efficiency troubles.
Past gaming, the Legion T5 proved to be a powerhouse for inventive duties. Workloads like 3D rendering in Blender profit tremendously from the highly effective {hardware}. They cut back rendering wait instances, permitting customers to fast hop between preview renders and initiatives. The workflow accelerates significantly. On Adobe Premiere Professional, video enhancing felt seamless. I uploaded my very own 4K recording, and because of the {hardware}, I used to be capable of seamlessly navigate by way of the video timeline, making use of varied results with out slowdown.
My foremost gripe with the {hardware} is that it solely comes with 1TB of storage. After putting in seven video games from Steam, I used up many of the SSD. At present’s AAA video video games take up dozens of gigabytes of area, so 1TB simply would not fairly lower it. In case you do not thoughts paying somewhat further, I like to recommend buying an external drive.
ZDNET’s shopping for recommendation
Lenovo’s Legion Tower 5 is at present accessible at Finest Purchase for $1,880. That is a fairly good worth. I used to be actually anticipating to be over $2,000. In case you want the additional area, you may head over to Lenovo’s web site and buy the Tower 5i Gen 10, which has a 2TB SSD for $1,980. It has the identical graphics card, though the Tower 5i swaps out the AMD processor for an Intel Core Extremely 7 265F CPU.
For players on the go, I like to recommend the 10th-generation Lenovo Legion Pro 7i. It is a gaming laptop computer with barely higher {hardware} and a vibrant 16-inch 250Hz OLED display.
