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.
- Nevertheless, due to the PC’s squat design, some customers might have problem discovering a cushty place for it.
extra shopping for selections
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Constructing a gaming PC might be troublesome should you’re new to the passion. Luckily, pre-built desktops take away a lot of the guesswork; you’ll be able to count on 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 primary instance of a strong 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 instances usually 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 elements, however extra importantly, they take up much less bodily house.
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The Legion T5 does issues slightly totally different. As an alternative of increasing upward, it is stout. It measures 8.31 x 19.31 x 16.3 inches. Under 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 under are according to one another. Discover simply how a lot the Lenovo pc stands proud (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 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 perimeters and corners of the desktop are rounded, so I prevented something too painful.
All in regards to 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 informed me it was only for aesthetic functions. Both means, it was a great 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 just a few, you may 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 may 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 in regards to the Legion T5 is its ARGB lighting. The “A” stands for “addressable,” which is Lenovo’s fancy means of claiming customizable RGB lighting. By way of the Legion House app, customers can activate lights over sure elements, just like the rear fan or GPU. You possibly can combine and match no matter you wish to create enjoyable gentle arrays.
Dynamic desktop
Underneath 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 easy, even when operating demanding titles. This configuration allowed fast-paced shooters like “Name of Obligation” and stylized motion video games like “Hades 2” to run with out a hitch, protecting framerates constantly excessive. I used to be in a position to keep centered on matches as an alternative of worrying about sudden dips in efficiency. Any gamer will inform you that having good stability makes a world of distinction.
The highly effective {hardware} brings out the visible options that make trendy video games shine. Lush environments, like these present in “Monster Hunter Wilds”, felt lifelike. Particle results have been explosive, and in-game lighting seemed true to life. The Legion T5’s skill to assist a number of visible enhancers and nonetheless get largely easy efficiency permits the desktop to separate itself from the common prebuilt pc.
I say “largely” as a result of I bumped into some visible glitches enjoying “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 truthful, it is possible these glitches are the results of some form of driver difficulty, not essentially the {hardware} struggling to maintain up.
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Nonetheless, I wished to focus on this second as a possible situation you would possibly encounter. Whereas the {hardware} is actually highly effective, you’ll be able to at all times run into just a few 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 tasks. The workflow quickens 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 in a position to seamlessly navigate by way of the video timeline, making use of numerous results with out slowdown.
My major gripe with the {hardware} is that it solely comes with 1TB of storage. After putting in seven video games from Steam, I used up a lot of the SSD. At the moment’s AAA video video games take up dozens of gigabytes of house, so 1TB simply would not fairly lower it. Should you do not thoughts paying slightly further, I like to recommend buying an external drive.
ZDNET’s shopping for recommendation
Lenovo’s Legion Tower 5 is at the moment accessible at Finest Purchase for $1,880. That is a fairly good worth. I used to be actually anticipating to be over $2,000. Should you want the additional house, you’ll be able to 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.
