Lenovo’s latest cheap gaming PC sports a surprising legacy biz tech – from the 1980’s
The latest from Lenovo LOQ gaming pc, the Tower 17IRB8, features a connector that was very popular with businesses, the venerable VGA connector. Yes, a gaming PC released in March 2023 has a connector that was released in 1987 when a resolution of 640×480 pixels was considered modern.
As a legacy port, video graphics array is still popular with businesses and organizations of all sizes for a number of reasons, mainly because of the saying If it ain’t broke, don’t try to fix it. No reliable data is available, but there are still thousands of working CRT or LCD monitors and business projectors that have a VGA connection (and still have an aspect ratio of 4:3), up to a resolution of 2048×1536 pixels.
However, it remains to be seen whether Lenovo is targeting this specific target group. We don’t think that’s the case; it is likely that it is just a matter of using what is available, a motherboard determined for business PCa belief further reinforced by the fact that the Tower supports 17IRB8 Windows 11 procan accommodate two full size hard drives (Remember these), has four USB 2.0 ports (yet another technology from the last millennia) and what looks like standard audio capabilities (a single audio port).
Lenovo has also bundled two software applications that prosumers and SMBs will find helpful: Vantage and Smart Storage; the first is a driver updater combined with a System Utilities and a basic Internet Security Software while the second is one backup software for your smartphone or tablet, one that mimics Cloud storage but uses your PC to store data (maybe you use it for hosting a website but we haven’t tried that).
A boring workstation disguised as a gaming PC
Looking more closely at Lenovo’s portfolio, the Tower 17IRB8 is quite similar to the SMB-friendly Intel-based IdeaCentre 5i, albeit larger and heavier; the IdeaCentre 5i is also known as the 14IRB8 – 14 stands for 14 litres. Both accept 13th Gen Core i7 processors but combine them with DDR4 memory (not DDR5). Both use HDMI 1.4b (which only supports 4K at 30Hz) alongside VGA.
It makes perfect sense for Lenovo to buy mainboards with as many features as possible and to use them in as many models as possible. That’s what economies of scale are all about, and underscores the cold, hard reality of a depressed global computing market. Business and consumer audiences overlap more than ever: only customer service, warranty, and the bundled operating system often separate the two.
Expect more models to hit the market with this split personality syndrome.