Lenovo's Legion gaming PC is a solid, if rather uninspiring, system to start your PC gaming experience. However, if you are looking for your first gaming PC, we recommend purchasing a full system from a reputable company. But don't start with the most exciting component list; there are many other options available, including.

Lenovo, the world's leading supplier of systems, uses many parts that are not necessarily widely available when building a PC from scratch yourself; Lenovo deals with many suppliers, so you may find a bare-bones memory module from the Chinese company Ramaxel or, Samsung's non-consumer SSDs.

In other words, the parts should be a bargain, but in reality, the prices you pay for machines like Lenovo and NZXT or iBuyPower are very similar.

Nevertheless, their buying and manufacturing power means that the current price of this AMD Legion Tower 5 is around $1,400, which is a lot to pay for an RTX 3060-based system, but Lenovo machines are regularly on sale. There are other Legion rigs with similar specs that I have found online at discounted prices, and I am surprised these are not selling in the $999 range sooner.

The key specs, a Ryzen 7 5800 and RTX 3060 CPU/GPU combination, are very standard in this price range, but don't really excite me; the AMD processor is impressive in terms of its productivity, as an 8-core, 16-thread chip is impressively powerful. But if you want the best gaming performance, Intel's 12th and 13th generation single-core prowess means that even a low-spec 6-core CPU can be an excellent gaming chip.

The RTX 3060 is a good mainstream GPU, but Newegg's ABS Master and Build Redux (DigitalStorm's mainstream brand) sell the more powerful RTX 3060 Ti for about the same price The same price point is also available at Newegg's ABS Master and Build Redux. Sadly, we have yet to see a system builder shun a GeForce GPU in favor of a more powerful AMD card in the same price range.

If Lenovo had included an RX 6700 XT in this build instead of an RTX 3060, the performance would be much higher than what Legion Tower 5 can offer here.

Gaming Performance

System Performance

Our benchmarks bear this out, with the CPU cores showing excellent multi-core performance, but ranking far behind in single core. This means that the RTX 3060 is not overtaking other machines with similar specs and is clearly lagging behind machines with superior graphics cards.

The single-fan tower CPU cooler makes it a bit toasty, but it never felt noisy during gaming or under productivity loads.

However, while the CPU and GPU are necessarily important, they do not tell the whole story. Storage is one place where many pre-assembled gaming PCs falter, and where system builders seem to think they can save a little cash: the 256GB Samsung SSD on the Lenovo is a solid performer, but it's too small a drive to run a modern gaming PC. It's too small a drive. 75GB of it is already in use right out of the box. Sure, it has a 1TB data drive, but that's a spinning platter hard drive, and you shouldn't be running games on that old technology in 2023.

These days, with other systems offering half-terabyte drives and full 1TB models like the WD Blue SN570 in the NZXT and iBuyPower rigs we tested (open in new tab), there is no excuse!

Also, the iBuyPower rigs are not only the best in the market, but also the best in the world.

There is also no excuse for the poor connectivity of the basic B550 Lenovo motherboard that is the heart of this rig. With only four USB ports on the rear panel (five if you include the Type-C connection), the Lenovo looks utterly shabby. The large gap in the back plate looks almost comical.

The actual build, however, is very good. It is clean, well laid out, and has plenty of room for upgrades. Of course, there is RGB illumination inside, but interestingly, it is shipped in stealth mode and must be turned on with the installed Vantage software. It's not too intrusive, and McAfee can uninstall it at any time.

The Lenovo Legion Tower 5 comes from a reputable manufacturer, making it one of the "my first gaming PCs" built that will work comfortably. However, the one-year mail-in warranty (you pay Lenovo for shipping and Lenovo pays for return shipping) seems a bit weak for $1,400 worth of hardware.

There are a few Lenovo-branded but otherwise unbranded motherboard, RAM, and GPU components are all standard parts; unlike Alienware's system, once you gain confidence as a PC gamer, you can build your own-specification system to integrate into your system, you can upgrade parts incrementally without any difficulty.

While it would be nice if they were cheaper than their competitors, Legion machines maintain a pricing structure similar to that of more boutique PC builders. For this reason, I recommend the beloved NZXT DIY BLD kit (opens in new tab) as the best way to immerse yourself in the hobby, especially if you like to tinker. And even if you are familiar with PC self-building, this kit is well worth the purchase.