Lenovo Legion Tower 5i (Gen8) review

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.

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