I Found A Gaming Desktop That Balances Gaming And Creative Tasks (for Less Than $2k)

1 day ago

Lenovo Legion T5 gaming desktop

ZDNET's cardinal takeaways

The Lenovo Legion Tower 5 is disposable now for $1,880.
This desktop excels astatine a wide scope of tasks, from gaming to 3D image rendering and schematic design.
However, because of nan PC's squat design, immoderate users whitethorn person trouble uncovering a comfortable spot for it.

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Building a gaming PC tin beryllium difficult if you're caller to nan hobby. Fortunately, pre-built desktops region astir of nan guesswork; you tin expect them to present reliable capacity consecutive retired of nan box. Especially since gaming desktops travel pinch progressively competitory hardware.

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Lenovo's Legion Tower 5 (or T5 for short) is simply a premier illustration of a coagulated prebuilt desktop. It is simply a gaming computer, but arsenic I discovered complete nan past mates of weeks, it is versatile capable to win successful contented creation.

Desktop footprint

Modern PC cases often person a vertically gangly design, a style of machine referred to arsenic a "tower." This style is celebrated for a assortment of reasons: they facilitate airflow for cooling components, but much importantly, they return up little beingness space.

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The Legion T5 does things a small different. Instead of expanding upward, it's stout. It measures 8.31 x 19.31 x 16.3 inches. Below is an image of nan Legion T5 adjacent to my Maingear MG-1 (16.88 x 19 x 8.12 inches) underneath my table. Both computers successful nan image beneath are successful statement pinch each other. Notice conscionable really overmuch nan Lenovo machine sticks retired (and really overmuch little it is).

Finding a abstraction for nan Legion T5 whitethorn beryllium tricky because of its stout framework -- astatine slightest it was for me. I swapped retired my individual PC pinch nan Lenovo desktop for a time, and often recovered myself bumping nan broadside of nan machine pinch my legs and chair. Thankfully, nan edges and corners of nan desktop are rounded, truthful I avoided thing excessively painful.

All astir nan aesthetics

The prime betwixt stout and gangly building PCs comes down to individual preference. Admittedly, nan Legion T5 looks beautiful cool. I really liked nan bumpy power vent astatine nan top. I asked Lenovo if this creation had immoderate applicable purposes, and they told maine it was conscionable for artistic purposes. Either way, it was a bully telephone connected their end.

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Port action is amazingly limited. A bulk of nan inputs are located astir nan backmost of nan desktop. Just to item a few, you'll find 3 DisplayPort inputs, an HDMI 2.1 for outputting 4K video astatine 60Hz, and 3 different audio ports. That's each awesome to have, but I really would've liked it if nan beforehand had much because it only has three: a 5Gbps USB-C input, a 5Gbps USB-A port, and an audio jack.

At best, you'll person capable room for a brace of headphones, a controller, and 1 accessory. More should've been disposable wrong arm's reach, arsenic there's plentifulness of room. Lenovo's Legion Tower 7i, for example, has 3 USB-A inputs connected nan front.

Another neat point astir nan Legion T5 is its ARGB lighting. The "A" stands for "addressable," which is Lenovo's fancy measurement of saying customizable RGB lighting. Via nan Legion Space app, users tin move connected lights complete definite components, for illustration nan rear instrumentality aliases GPU. You tin operation and lucifer immoderate you for illustration to create nosy ray arrays.

Dynamic desktop

Under nan hood is an AMD Ryzen 7 7800X3D processor, an Nvidia GeForce RTX 5070 graphics card, and 32GB of RAM. Unsurprisingly, gaming connected nan Lenovo Legion T5 felt smooth, moreover erstwhile moving demanding titles. This configuration allowed fast-paced shooters for illustration "Call of Duty" and stylized action games for illustration "Hades 2" to tally without a hitch, keeping framerates consistently high. I was capable to enactment focused connected matches alternatively of worrying astir abrupt dips successful performance. Any gamer will show you that having bully stableness makes a world of difference.

The powerful hardware brings retired nan ocular features that make modern games shine. Lush environments, for illustration those recovered successful "Monster Hunter Wilds", felt lifelike. Particle effects were explosive, and in-game lighting looked existent to life. The Legion T5's expertise to support aggregate ocular enhancers and still get mostly soft capacity allows nan desktop to abstracted itself from nan mean prebuilt computer.

I opportunity "mostly" because I ran into immoderate ocular glitches playing "Final Fantasy 15" astatine its highest settings. Characters would spaz out, limbs flailing astir arsenic nan crippled struggled to tally astatine specified a precocious resolution. To beryllium fair, it's apt these glitches are nan consequence of immoderate benignant of driver issue, not needfully nan hardware struggling to support up.

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Still, I wanted to item this infinitesimal arsenic a imaginable script you mightiness encounter. While nan hardware is surely powerful, you tin ever tally into a fewer capacity troubles.

Beyond gaming, nan Legion T5 proved to beryllium a powerhouse for imaginative tasks. Workloads for illustration 3D rendering successful Blender use greatly from nan powerful hardware. They trim rendering hold times, allowing users to speedy hop betwixt preview renders and projects. The workflow speeds up considerably. On Adobe Premiere Pro, video editing felt seamless. I uploaded my ain 4K recording, and acknowledgment to nan hardware, I was capable to seamlessly navigate done nan video timeline, applying various effects without slowdown.

My main gripe pinch nan hardware is that it only comes pinch 1TB of storage. After installing 7 games from Steam, I utilized up astir of nan SSD. Today's AAA video games return up dozens of gigabytes of space, truthful 1TB conscionable doesn't rather trim it. If you don't mind paying a small extra, I urge purchasing an external drive.

ZDNET's buying advice

Lenovo's Legion Tower 5 is presently disposable astatine Best Buy for $1,880. That's a beautiful bully price. I was honestly expecting to beryllium complete $2,000. If you request nan other space, you tin caput complete to Lenovo's website and acquisition the Tower 5i Gen 10, which has a 2TB SSD for $1,980. It has nan aforesaid graphics card, though nan Tower 5i swaps retired nan AMD processor for an Intel Core Ultra 7 265F CPU.

For gamers connected nan go, I urge nan 10th-generation Lenovo Legion Pro 7i. It's a gaming laptop pinch somewhat amended hardware and a vibrant 16-inch 250Hz OLED screen.