We reviewed Lenovo's last mid-tower gaming desktop, the Legion T730, at the end of 2018. Now well into 2020, Lenovo is back with a redesign with the new Legion Tower 5i (starts at $1,029; $1,449 as tested). Its 10th Generation Intel "Comet Lake" processor and up to an 8GB Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super GPU (as seen in our test unit) make a superb combo for the latest games and esports, and it's all rounded out by a tidy design and user-controllable RGB lighting. Where it really does well, though, is pricing, coming in several hundred dollars under the competition with equivalent or better hardware. It's our new Editors' Choice holder for mainstream mid-tower gaming desktops.
A Refined Gamer Look
The Legion Tower 5i accomplishes one thing right off the bat: It looks very much like a gaming desktop. This is important in the mainstream market, where lots of towers tend to look rather samey. Not this one.
Lenovo didn't overdo it, though; the all-black case has a see-through window on the left and a backlit logo on the front. The glossy carbon-fiber pattern on the front panel adds a little flair, too.
The spoiler-like rear lip is actually a carry handle, which I found especially convenient for taking this 24-pound test unit out of its shipping box. It's on the stout side, as far as mid-towers go, at 17.9 by 7.3 by 18 inches (HWD) for a volume of 28 liters.
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The outside panels are relatively thick plastic. I’d like to see metal, but the plastic provides plenty of rigidity in conjunction with the case's metal structure. The window is also plastic. It's not as clear or reflective as tempered glass, but it still provides a good view of the interior thanks to the Legion Tower 5i's LED case lighting. Its four lighting zones are individually configurable within the Lenovo Vantage app.
The rear exhaust and processor fans support RGB lighting—up to 16.7 million colors. You can choose a static color or among preset patterns such as color cycling. The interior case lighting and the Legion logo on the front of the tower are pale blue only, though you can change their brightness and effects. There's no shortage of brightness, and the lighting can be turned off. Overall, the lighting is smartly implemented.
Simple, Organized Innards
The left panel is secured by two thumb screws for toolless access. Removing it reveals a spacious interior.
The blacked-out metal looks much better than the bare steel often found inside mainstream towers. The wiring is not as tidy and slick as it would be in a handcrafted tower from an aftermarket specialist like Origin (see our review of the 2020 Neuron), but nothing is haphazardly tied off.
At center is an ATX motherboard based on the Intel B460 chipset, so it's not for overclocking. (You would want a Z490 chipset for that, which isn't offered in this tower.) The eight-core Core i7-10700 processor in my unit is the top choice for the Legion Tower 5i. Lenovo pairs it with a 150-watt heatsink, which might seem like overkill considering the chip carries a 65-watt thermal design power (TDP) rating, but it can consume much more than that in its Turbo boost mode (up to 4.8GHz, from 2.9GHz base).
Two of the motherboard’s four UDIMM slots for DDR4-2933 memory are populated by 8GB modules (a total of 16GB, running in dual-channel mode). The motherboard also has not one but two onboard M.2 slots. The one above the graphics card (which is almost impossible to see in our photos since it’s overshadowed by the CPU cooler) is populated by a 512GB solid-state drive loaded with Windows 10 Home. The empty slot is located under the graphics card.
This unit also has a traditional 1TB spinning hard drive in one of the 3.5-inch bays at the lower right. Installing drives is a toolless affair.
Directly left is a 650-watt power supply, which is a bit more than the components in this tower need, but it’s nice to have the headroom for future upgrades. This unit’s 8GB GeForce RTX 2070 Super is the fastest graphics card offered in this tower. The green lettering on the side of the card is backlit.
The Legion Tower 5i's ample cooling power comes from two 120mm fans at the front and one at the rear.
The rear fans tend to kick into high gear while gaming, though the relatively closed nature of the case mutes the sound. The sound level won't be a conversation starter, even in a quiet living room.
Only Average Connectivity
The Legion Tower 5i's connectivity is status quo for a desktop of its size. The front is limited to two USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-A ports (supporting 5Gbps transfers) and an audio combo jack (headphone and microphone in one).
As these ports are on the top panel, you might have wires cascading down from there should you put the tower on top of a desk. Also, I always miss having a media card reader, and this tower doesn't have one. They're becoming uncommon on desktops, full stop.
The back of the tower has another two USB-A ports, two retro USB 2.0 ports for input devices, a USB 3.2 Gen 1 Type-C port, Ethernet, and a trio of audio jacks: line in, line out, and microphone.
My unit's GeForce RTX 2070 Super provides one HDMI and three DisplayPort video outputs plus a VirtualLink port (USB Type-C connector) for future virtual-reality headsets. The last is not always present on GeForce RTX-class cards, so it’s nice to see.
The Legion Tower 5i comes standard with the latest Wi-Fi 6 (802.11ax) and Bluetooth 5 wireless standards courtesy of an Intel AX201 card.
The wireless antennas are conveniently built into the case so you don't have to deal with the awkwardness of external ones.
Priced to Compete
As a quick recap, the $1,449 Legion Tower 5i I’m reviewing includes a Core i7-10700 processor, a GeForce RTX 2070 Super, 16GB of memory, a 512GB solid-state drive for the Windows 10 operating system, and a 1TB hard drive for storage. A one-year warranty is standard.
It's a pretty good deal with those components compared to the HP Omen 25L, which went for $1,659 with just a 6GB GeForce RTX 2060 Super as I typed this. I also configured a Dell G5 Gaming Desktop on Dell’s site for $1,685, albeit with a faster Core i7-10700KF processor. Boutique builders are still more expensive; the Digital Storm Lynx rang up at $2,159, a hefty premium for its Core i7-10700KF with liquid cooling and larger 2TB storage drive. (Admittedly, it comes with a better case and a higher level of craftsmanship.)
A slight against this Lenovo is that it isn't factory customizable, though there were at least a half-dozen configurations on Lenovo's site at the time of this review. The base model's six-core Core i5-10400F and 6GB GeForce RTX 2060 is a fine combo for 1080p gaming and esports.
All Legion Tower 5i configurations include a wired keyboard and mouse.
They're plastic and lacking for special features, but they will tide you over until you can step up to a better set. (See our gaming keyboards guide.)
The Legion Strikes Back
I compared the Legion Tower 5i to a diverse crowd of gaming desktops, both budget and high-end, for our benchmark testing. Their basic specifications are as follows.
The cube-like Corsair Vengeance Gaming PC (6182) is the only one to tout an AMD Radeon RX 5700 XT, which goes head to head with the GeForce RTX 2070 Super in the Legion Tower 5i. More powerful yet is the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti in the HP Omen Obelisk (Late 2019), the fastest gaming-focused graphics card as of this writing. At the budget end, the CyberPower Gamer Xtreme GXi11400CPG is about half as expensive ($769) as the Lenovo I'm reviewing. Let’s get benching.
Storage, Media, and CPU Tests
Our first test is UL's PCMark 10, a holistic performance suite that simulates different real-world productivity and content-creation workflows. We use it to assess overall system performance for office-centric tasks such as word processing, spreadsheet work, web browsing, and videoconferencing. PCMark 8, meanwhile, has a storage subtest that we use to assess the speed of the system's boot drive. Both tests generate a proprietary numeric score; higher numbers are better.
The Legion Tower 5i nosed ahead of the others with an exemplary 7,043-point showing in PCMark 10. (Our internal reference point for high-performance PCs is 4,000 points.) Meanwhile, the PCMark 8 storage scores were a tight grouping since these desktops all employ fast solid-state boot storage.
Next up is a pair of CPU-crunching tests: Cinebench R15 stresses all available processor cores and threads while rendering a complex image, while in our Handbrake test, we transcode a 12-minute 4K video down to 1080p.
The Legion Tower 5i’s excellent scoring continued in these tests. It had no trouble keeping pace with the 95-watt Core i9-9900K in the HP despite its Core i7-10700 being only a 65-watt part. That said, it couldn't quite match the efficiency of the 65-watt Ryzen 7 3700X in the Corsair, making me wish Lenovo offered a Ryzen version of the Legion Tower 5i.
Nonetheless, the Core i7-10700 still has the edge for situations where clock speed reigns supreme, like our Photoshop test where the Legion Tower 5i clinched the lowest time. We use an early 2018 release of Adobe Photoshop Creative Cloud to apply 10 complex filters and effects to a standard JPEG image, timing each operation and adding up the totals. This test is not as CPU-focused as Cinebench or Handbrake, bringing the performance of the storage subsystem, memory, and GPU into play.
Graphics Tests
Now onto the 3D-focused tests. We use two benchmark suites to gauge the gaming performance potential of a PC. In the first, UL's 3DMark, we run two DirectX 11-driven subtests, the mainstream Sky Diver and Fire Strike, which is more suited to gaming rigs. Our other graphics benchmark is Unigine Corp.'s Superposition, which uses a different rendering engine to produce a complex 3D scene.
The Legion Tower 5i’s numbers look good. The Corsair edged it out in Fire Strike, but the Lenovo more than compensated for that in the graphics card-focused Superposition 1080p test. The Dell wasn't anywhere close with its 6GB GeForce GTX 1660 Ti, though it is a much less expensive card.
Last but perhaps most important, we'll try some real games. We use the built-in benchmarks in Far Cry 5 (at its Ultra preset) and Rise of the Tomb Raider (at its Very High preset) at 1080p, 1440p, and 4K/UHD resolutions. Far Cry 5 uses DirectX 11, while we flip Rise of the Tomb Raider to DirectX 12. The results are measured in frames per second (fps); we look for at least 60 for smooth playability.
The Legion Tower 5i's 65-watt processor didn't hold back its GeForce RTX 2070 Super at all. In fact, these numbers are just as good or slightly better than what we recorded when we reviewed the card in our 95-watt test rig. Gaming tends to not put a full (i.e., 100 percent) continuous load on the processor, so the Core i7-10700 is able to reach its Turbo clock without much in the way of power limitations.
The Legion Tower 5i would even be usable for 4K gaming with slightly lowered detail settings. Though it's something of a moot point since the GeForce RTX 2070 Super is its top choice, I'd argue that card is the peak of value for high-fps 1080p and 1440p gaming. (Reference the GeForce RTX 2080 Ti-equipped HP's numbers to see what you get for dropping a lot more cash.)
A Mid-Tower Gamer That's Easy to Recommend
Lenovo has a compelling mid-tower gaming rig on its hands with the Legion Tower 5i. It's well designed, easy to service, and looks the part without overdoing it. Its standard features are impressive, including user-configurable case lighting, Wi-Fi 6, and 16GB of memory.
The topped-out Legion Tower 5i we tested makes a great platform for cinematic gaming and undercuts the competition on price while doing so. Esports players will find the base model an even better value. We'd like to see Lenovo offer it with AMD Ryzen processors (which would arguably make it an even better value), but this tower's faults are otherwise few and far between. It earns our top honors for a mainstream mid-tower gaming desktop.
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i
Editors' Choice
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The Bottom Line
Lenovo undercuts the competition with its new mid-tower gaming desktop, the Legion Tower 5i. It's a top-notch performer at a great price.
Lenovo Legion Tower 5i Specs
| Desktop Class | Gaming |
| Processor | Intel Core i7-10700 |
| Processor Speed | 2.9 GHz |
| RAM (as Tested) | 16 GB |
| Boot Drive Type | SSD |
| Boot Drive Capacity (as Tested) | 512 GB |
| Secondary Drive Type | Hard Drive |
| Secondary Drive Capacity (as Tested) | 1 TB |
| Graphics Card | Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070 Super |
| Operating System | Windows 10 Home |
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Further Reading
The Link LonkSeptember 04, 2020 at 03:25AM
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Lenovo Legion Tower 5i Review - PCMag
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