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dave.james@futurenet.com (Dave James)
2024-11-26 09:54:00
www.pcgamer.com
Lenovo isn’t messing around with its Legion gaming PCs. They are resolutely, uncompromisingly just PCs. Sure, there’s the faintest nod to ‘gamer’ styling with the RGB-illuminated front panel and the see-through side, but the Legion Tower 5i is, without wanting to sound at all mean, pretty basic.
Which I think is grand. I am all for that when it comes to affordable gaming PCs, I don’t want to see money wasted on needless luxuries when I’m chasing down a good budget rig. And there certainly aren’t any of those here. Pull that side panel off and you’ll see what I mean; the CPU cooler is a no-name brand, there are no VRM heatsinks or SSD-cooling plates on the barebones motherboard, and the memory sticks are likewise bare PCBs, too.
The OEM Nvidia RTX 4060 graphics card (basically a non-branded one made for system builders) is similarly simple, but beautifully so. I’m into miniature cards where they make sense, and the low-end Ada Lovelace GPU is so efficient that it doesn’t need a massive dual-slot, triple-fan cooling array to keep it running to full effect.
Now, you might be getting a bit of the fear with all this talk of limited cooling options, basic CPU cooler, and a small GPU. I get it, you’re worried this thing’s going to overheat and get hella loud when you boot up any game more demanding than Solitaire. Bury that fear, because at this level we have components smart and efficient enough they don’t overly tax the cooling options available.
Legion Tower 5i specs
CPU: Intel Core i5 14400F
Motherboard: OEM B660M
Memory: 16 GB (2x 8 GB) DDR5-4400
GPU: Nvidia RTX 4060
Storage: 1 TB Samsung PCIe 4.0 SSD
Warranty: 1 year
Price: $900
In my testing neither the CPU or GPU go beyond the 76°C mark under heavy gaming loads, and, while the Intel processor will hit 95°C when all its cores are being hit at 100% processing load, that’s actually entirely standard. In fact, other systems we’ve tested will go all the way up to a throttling 100°C, so the fact the Legion Tower 5i doesn’t go that far highlights why it doesn’t need an expensive chip chiller atop its CPU.
But what is this processor of which I speak? Lenovo has gone for the Core i5 14400F, a ten-core, 16-thread Raptor Lake Refresh chip, that’s arguably one of the best budget CPUs around. We still recommend the Core i5 13400F as the best budget CPU but only because it’s around $10 cheaper if you’re buying it as an upgrade—they are otherwise the exact same processor.
It’s no productivity beast, I’ll be honest. Despite that effective ten-core labelling, what you’re getting are actually just six Hyperthreaded Performance cores, with a further four Efficient cores for lighter workloads. But for gaming those P-cores are the important factor, and are more than capable of delivering data to the GPU in a speedy enough manner to keep the good frames rolling.
And that GPU is the budget-focused RTX 4060. It’s the lowest-spec graphics card in the RTX 40-series, with a specs sheet that only serves to highlight that positioning. It’s an effective enough 1080p gaming GPU, though, and comes with all the DLSS 3.5 goodness, which includes Nvidia’s Frame Generation technology for some free fps in supporting games. It’s that extra GeForce frosting which slightly pushes Nvidia’s budget card ahead of the AMD alternative.
Alongside that well-balanced CPU/GPU combo, Lenovo has dropped in a 1 TB Samsung PCIe 4.0 SSD (and a pretty speedy one) and 16 GB of DDR5 memory. Sadly, that bare memory is running at 4400 MT/s, but as this isn’t exactly designed as a workstation beast, that slow RAM isn’t going to be a real hindrance.
So, how does it actually perform? Well, our benchmark suite for gaming PCs runs at 1440p to capture the performance at both ends of the market, both the high and low end machines. And while the native performance isn’t too hot—you can see why they call the RTX 4060 a 1080p GPU—as soon as you start to drop in DLSS and Frame Generation you can actually start to see properly playable frame rates.
Hitting a smooth 60 fps on average in Cyberpunk 2077 at 1440p, supported by that 49 fps 1% Low figure, is pretty impressive—especially given that running natively without Frame Gen and DLSS you’re only getting 24 fps. Still, even with the panacea of upscaling and interpolation, I wouldn’t recommend this Legion Tower 5i as anything other than a 1080p gaming PC.
You’re still well behind something like the RTX 4070 Super in terms of gaming performance, but you’ll only find that GPU in gaming PCs which cost well over the $1,200 mark. Which is, I guess, where we need to start talking about money.
When I first received this machine for testing it was on offer for $850 at Best Buy, and had been for a number of months, but despite there being a ton of Black Friday gaming PC deals around at the moment, the cheapest this rig is on offer for is $900 at Lenovo’s own store.
That is still a decent price, but there are RTX 4060 machines out there with the same spec discounted down to much less, such as the iBuyPower Scale. In general, non-silly season sales times, however, the Lenovo Legion Tower 5i remains one of the best budget gaming PCs from a known brand.
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The Legion’s simple setup works for me, and also means it’s an easy system to upgrade down the line, too. There’s a spare M.2 slot for an additional SSD to supplement the 1 TB drive already in there, and there are no clearance issues if you wanted to go for higher-spec memory. The only issue there is the OEM B660M motherboard is very basic, even down to the BIOS and that might cause some issues trying to get XMP on speedy RAM kits running. It’s also only got a handful of USB sockets, and only a solitary Type-C connection on the back panel.
Buy if…
You want a simple entry-level gaming PC: The Legion Tower 5i is a no-frills gaming PC, that does the basics rather well.
You want a machine from a big-name brand: Alienware’s obsession with proprietary parts means we’d rather have an equivalent Lenovo rig any day.
Don’t buy if…
You want extended future-proofing: It will be a great PC for right now, and there is a spare SSD slot, but that limited PSU will make it tough to upgrade the graphics card without also upgrading the power supply.
You’re happy shopping around: Such is the competition in the budget gaming PC space that there is a good chance you may well find similarly specced rigs from other system builders for less.
The other sticking point would be that 500 W PSU. You could probably stretch to an RTX 4060 Ti as an upgrade, but even that might be stretching things a little. Realistically, if you wanted a big GPU upgrade you’d need a new PSU alongside it. But, unlike something like an Alienware PC, the PSU inside the Legion Tower 5i is entirely standard, too.
I’ve got a real soft spot for the Legion Tower 5i, in fact for the other Legion Towers I’ve tested, too. They’re simple gaming PCs that don’t pretend to be something they’re not, and even that flowing RGB lighting can be disabled via a single physical button on the rear of the machine. But Lenovo has a lot of competition in the budget market, from the likes of Newegg’s ABS range, and upstarts such as Yeyian. That is a level of competition that seems to be far more aggressive than Lenovo is, or maybe more aggressive than it can be.
If you’re after a rock solid build from a known brand, then the Tower 5i will be a great shout, especially as you’ll be able to find it with a consistently solid discount If you’re purely chasing the best performance at the lowest price, however, there are better alternatives if you’re willing to shop around.
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