A Closer Look

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Lenovo certainly has a unique case design when it comes to the Legion Tower 5i. The Legion logo is prominently displayed on front, illuminated by LEDs for the quintessential gamer look. For added visual interest, the center panel has a carbon fiber appearance for good measure. Turning to the left side, you will find the side panel, which does have a window. However, unlike the in vogue tempered glass panels seen on other cases, you get a Lexan or acrylic panel. It does the job just fine by letting you see the internals, but does lack that more premium feel of a TG panel. It should also be noted that Lenovo did add some vents to the side of the front fascia for improved airflow, which is never a bad thing. A quick look at the back reveals a standard layout with a 120 mm exhaust fan. Rear I/O looks sparse, but we will get to that momentarily. The most interesting aspect of the chassis here is the rear handhold because Lenovo decided to include a spoiler, or at least that is how I view it.


The right side of the chassis is your bog-standard steel panel. The front fascia also has vents on this side, which is again nice to see. Meanwhile, the top of the chassis has your front panel I/O and, of course, the huge rear spoiler with the Lenovo brand prominently displayed. Other than that, there are no vented openings for top exhaust fans or radiator mounting. Finally, the chassis bottom has no openings either and is instead just a large flat slab of metal with large rubber feet to keep the chassis stable.


A closer look at the system I/O reveals it to be rather barren compared to a DIY build, with Lenovo providing 1x USB-C 3.2 Gen 1, 2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1, 2x USB 2.0, and 1x RJ45 Ethernet. When it comes to audio output, you don't get much with just a 1x Mic-in, 1x L/R line in, and 1x L/R line out. Finally, the front panel has 2x USB-A 3.2 Gen 1 ports, a headphone jack, a microphone jack, and a power button. While the I/O as a whole is adequate, a few extra USB ports and a better audio configuration would have been appreciated, as well as at least an HDMI port for the Intel IGP. Some of these inclusions can be truly useful in the event of a hardware failure down the road.


When it comes to ARGB lighting, Lenovo missed the mark as well. The rear fan and CPU fan are ARGB and can be controlled with Lenovo's included Vantage software. However, the ambient lighting at the top of the chassis and the front logo have a blue hue and cannot be controlled. This means if the ambient lighting is turned on, it washes out any other color choice. So for this system, it's basically blue or nothing if you want the ambient lighting to look good. Even then, the green-glowing side of the RTX 2700 means nothing really meshes together well out of the box. It feels more like it's included for another checkbox on their marketing list.