Lenovo LOQ Tower Gaming Desktop Review: Budget(-ish) Alternative to the Legion

Lenovo Loq Tower 17IRR9 desktop review

advantage

Nice 1080p performance
Fast and lively daily calculations
Compact, 20 liter design

shortcoming

Very limited upgrade options
Limited airflow
Several ports

Lenovo Loq Tower 17IRR9 is an interesting gaming desktop proposition. On the one hand, it is small, with amplitude of less than 20 liters. Inside, it has hardware similar to the larger ones Lenovo Legion Tower 5i Gen 8 26IRB8 I reviewed it, love that desktop, which has considerable 1080p gaming performance. On the other hand, Lenovo does not offer many limited upgrade paths in terms of high-quality port methods, and the overall value is uncertain.

And the price able Stay decent, since my test configuration is sometimes under $900, it can also be expensive above the premium and the aforementioned Legion Tower 5i, and occasionally has its own deep discounts. So unless you really hurt space, I’ll skip the LOQ and grab the Legion Tower.

Lightweight…but considerable price

The Lenovo Loq Tower 17IRR9 starts at $899, but Lenovo keeps discounting its listing price, so I see this tower price as low as $599. This price is used for basic configurations with Intel Core i5-14400f CPU, 16GB DDR5-4800 memory, 512GB PCIE SSD and 6GB NVIDIA GEFORCE RTX 3050 graphics card. Apart from that, only other listed configurations hit the graphics card to the 8GB RTX 4060. This upgrade configuration (tested here) is priced at $1,149, but it was discounted as low as $835 during my testing period. Can also be in Walmart Bid for $949.

The Lenovo Loq Tower 17IRR9 isn’t suitable for high-powered gaming or demanding content creation, but its modest internal devices do provide solid performance. In all our gaming benchmarks, the small desktops are over 100fps at 1080p. It’s the slowest of the desktops I tested last year, but it’s also by far the cheapest.

Little Loq holds tight Lenovo Legion Tower 5i Gen 8 26IRB8it has a sleeker design and better I/O, but also uses a similar configuration. The smaller performance advantages of the Legion model can be attributed to its more substantial cooling. Given that the level of moderation of the cooling assembly in the LOQ tower is so impressive, it can also be like keeping in sync. Its performance is stable and passes the 3DMark stress test of the steel nomads and time spy limits. Thanks to its closed design, it even maintained a rather silent attitude, reaching only a faint hum at full load.

CPU performance is perhaps the most LOQ left on the table. In the Cinebench R24, it’s not too far, but in the Geekbench 6, the Lenovo Legion Tower 5i Gen 8 Gen Gen 8 is using the same CPU, but the appearance may also be the same CPU cooler.

A little too plain

Lenovo Loq Tower interior — Josh Goldman/CNET

Lenovo’s LOQ brand emphasizes budget, while its Legion sub-brands tend to be more performance. So, I don’t expect much from the Lenovo Loq Tower 17IRR9. Even so, I was still amazed at how basic it was. The box is small, measuring just 6.7 inches, 14.8 inches tall and 12 inches deep, reaching a 19.4-liter footprint. Pop-up open, it’s very similar to the Lenovo Legion Tower Tower 5i Gen 8 26IRB8, with a basic CPU cooler, a small single-span graphics card with little customization. Again, it doesn’t need to be beautiful inside because the case is completely black. There is no side panel as clear as many gaming PCs. It’s also incredibly simple, except for the herringbone look along the front panel.

While the interior looks negligible, there are still a lot of disappointments. Only a small intake fan pulls fresh air to the lower half of the system, in the lower half of the system, a 500-watt power supply (impressively over 80 platinum certified), and the graphics card will see most of it. The CPU gets some fresh air. Another small exhaust fan sits next to the CPU and its radiator/fan. There is no 120mm visible, and there is no dust filtering, so it is hoped that limited ventilation will limit how much dust enters.

The system has not yet provided many potential upgrade options. There is only one M.2 slot on the motherboard, and it fills up. A 3.5-inch hard drive cabin with a small sled sits at the bottom of the system and can be used for use, but that’s all. Even if you have a backup drive using the second free SATA port on the motherboard, there is no second SATA power cable for the power supply. The power supply also has only one 8-pin connector, although it may not have the power margin to add a demanding graphics card.

Lenovo Loq Tower rear panel — Josh Goldman/CNET

One upgraded Lenovo does allow for another upgrade: memory. There is a free memory slot, which means you can easily upgrade to 32GB of RAM without having to give up on the original memory. However, this is possible because Lenovo ships the system through single-channel memory.

Then there is the port. Using three 5Gbps connections from the front, which is not bad: two USB-A and one USB-C. There is also a headphone/microphone combo jack there. Although the graphics card offers a standard array of DisplayPort connectors and HDMI ports, the motherboard’s I/O would be disappointing a decade ago: There are only four USB 2.0 ports, a Gigabit Ethernet jack, and a VGA connector. There isn’t much connectivity at all. Even Wi-Fi isn’t exactly right, as Lenovo lists Intel Wi-Fi, but it includes a Realtek Wi-Fi card. However, this is good.

Lenovo LOQ tower front panel — Josh Goldman/CNET

So, the reason for skipping the Lenovo Loq Tower 17IRR9 stacking, especially considering that the Lenovo Legion Tower 5i Gen 8 26IRB8 won’t suffer too many of the same pitfalls. Nevertheless, the Lenovo Loq Tower 17IRR9 is still a powerful budget machine. That is, as long as it stays high at a competitive price of $879. This is its good value for performance and hardware at that price. But for $1,149, it lags behind the all-around better Lenovo Lenovo Legion Tower 5i Gen 8 26IRB8.

Geekbench 6 (single core)

Alienware Aurora R16 3092Lenovo Legion Tower 7i Gen 8 34irz8 3062Dell XPS 8960 2948minisforum atomman g7 ti 2833HP Omen 35L 2656Lenovo Legion Tower 5i 26irb8 (90ut001aus) 2427Lenovo Loq Tower 17IRR9 (90WY0000US) 2273