If you need more proof that AMD’s modern Ryzen processors are on a streak, consider Lenovo’s latest move. This week, the company added Ryzen options to five different Legion game systems, spanning laptops and desktops alike. That would have been unthinkable just a year or two ago, but AMD’s current line of Ryzen CPUs go head to head with the best Intel chips on offer. Not all will be available in North America, unfortunately.
Lenovo Legion 5
Let’s start with laptops, as AMD only became competitive on laptops with this year’s game-changing mobile processors. The Lenovo Legion 5 is leading the charge. Available in 15- and 17-inch flavors, the Legion 5 will be available with up to the Ryzen 7 4800H, offering 8 cores and 16 threads with clock speeds of up to 4.2GHz.
LenovoThe back of the Lenovo Legion 5. (Front in the photo at the top).
It will be offered with graphics options up to an Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060: Few Ryzen gaming laptops from any company come with a more powerful GPU, unfortunately. You’ll be able to take full advantage of that graphics firepower on its ultra-fast 144Hz displays, and you can round out the package with up to 16GB of DDR4 memory and 1TB of PCI-E SSD storage.
Beyond the inside, Lenovo gave the Legion 5 some nice extra touches. The TrueStrike keyboard offers deep key scroll, white backlight, 100% anti-ghosting, and soft-landing switches, the company says, while its technology Coldfront 2.0 helps keep thermals under control. Audio shouldn’t drop either, thanks to the inclusion of Dolby Atmos technology and Harman Kardon speakers.
The 17-inch Lenovo Legion 5 should start at $ 1,090 when it launches in September, while the 15-inch Lenovo Legion 5 will cost $ 760 with a GeForce GTX 1650 Ti inside or $ 1,020 with a GeForce RTX 2060 inside when it launches in August. If you want to play real-time ray tracing in next-generation games, you’ll need to go for the more expensive RTX option.
Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3
LenovoThe Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3
The 15.6-inch Lenovo IdeaPad Gaming 3 offers more modest (but still solid) hardware at a more affordable price. It still includes the 8-core Ryzen 7 4800H, but it comes with Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 1650 Ti paired with “up to” a 1080p 120Hz display. Watch out for slower, lower-resolution displays in the initial settings, in other words: if you can’t help it, you really don’t want to dive below 1080p resolution on a 15.6-inch display.
You can equip the IdeaPad Gaming 3 with up to 32GB of DDR4 memory, more than the Legion 5, oddly enough, and a 1TB PCI-E SSD. This laptop comes with blue keyboard backlight and on-board Dolby Audio. Look it up for $ 660 when it launches in July, a very attractive price for an entry-level gaming laptop.
Lenovo Legion Tower 5
LenovoThe Lenovo Legion Tower 5
Moving on to a more stationary system, the Lenovo Legion Tower 5 fits the AMD Ryzen 9 3950X, a monstrous 32-core, 16-core overclockable processor we call “an epic end-zone dance on Intel.” It’s probably overkill for a gaming tower, and GPU options outperform on a GeForce RTX 2070 Super instead of Nvidia’s more powerful RTX 2080 and 2080 Ti options, making it a somewhat odd setup. If you’re looking to get the maximum gaming frame rate from a high-end system, you’d be better off with a lower-cost processor and those more expensive RTX 2080 graphics cards.
However, Lenovo does not offer that. The Legion Tower 5 also comes with up to a pair of 1TB PCI-E SSDs, a pair of 2TB hard drives, 128GB of DDR 4 memory, and Wi-Fi 6. Considering its configuration, this could be a powerful platform for video editors and other content creators.
The large 26-liter desktop ships with “bigger fans” that can be configured at three different speeds using Lenovo’s included Q-Control software. It ships with an air tower CPU cooler with capacity up to 150W, but the company also offers a 200W liquid cooling solution as an upgrade. The Legion Tower 5 also includes a transparent side panel as an upgrade option, and the jet black chassis is enhanced by blue LED lighting.
Lenovo’s gaming desktop will start at $ 830 when it launches in October, but don’t expect to get any of those high-end hardware options for close to that price. The Ryzen 9 3950X costs $ 750 on the street alone, for example. Hopefully, it includes plenty of configuration options so you can create a more balanced load for games, rather than increasing the core count that most gamers need.
Lenovo also announced a new Legion 5P laptop and IdeaCentre Gaming 5 desktop computer with AMD inside, but those systems won’t be coming to North America.
