Lenovo’s Erazer X315 is a $600+ desktop for gamers on a budget

By Konrad Krawczyk Published August 18, 2015

PC gaming systems are expensive, even if you decide to build one yourself. So if your PC buying budget is in triple digit territory, you can pretty much kiss Core i7 CPUs, and other high-end hardware, goodbye.

However, if your PC gaming needs are restricted to casual titles like League of Legends, DOTA 2, and other popular games like Starcraft 2 and Diablo 3: Reaper of Souls, you can get away with a lesser system and enjoy reasonably high frame rates without breaking the bank. These games are what Lenovo’s new Erazer X315 gaming PC is built to play.

The Erazer X315 will be available with a range of AMD APUs, featuring processors that go up to the company’s A10 series of chips. They’ll also ship with the company’s R9 line of Radeon graphics cards. Storage options max out at 2TB, which should be more than enough to hold your entire games library, and then some.

Related: Lenovo Erazer X510 review

Unfortunately, the Erazer X315 is probably too small to hold huge graphics cards like the R9 290 or R9 280 GPUs, so your upgrade options will be limited on this front. RAM will top out at 12GB, which is more than enough for heavy multitasking. In fact, even 8GB should suffice for just about anyone, we think.

The front panel contains a foursome of USB 3.0 ports, one of which is an always-on connection. That means that even if the Erazer X315 is off, you can plug a smartphone or tablet into it, and it’ll charge. The front panel also attempts to add some flair to the system, wearing some shield-like panels and edges, along with LED lighting.

The Lenovo Erazer 315 will be available starting sometime this November, and will start at $600.

Topics

Konrad Krawczyk

Former Digital Trends Contributor

Konrad covers desktops, laptops, tablets, sports tech and subjects in between for Digital Trends. Prior to joining DT, he…

Computing

I tested the Core Ultra 9 285K against the Ryzen 7 7800X3D — and it’s ugly

Fingers holding an Intel 285K.

Intel's new Core Ultra 9 285K is finally here, promising a boost in performance with a significant reduction in power requirements, at least according to Intel. As you can read in my Core Ultra 9 285K review, Intel's performance claims aren't as rosy as reality, especially when stacked up against what is unequivocally the best processor for gaming you can buy: AMD's Ryzen 7 7800X3D.

I threw both processors on the test bench to pit them head-to-head, looking at performance across productivity and gaming apps, as well as thermals and efficiency. These CPUs target different users, but there are still a lot of interesting comparisons we can look at between them.
Specs

Computing

Snag Lenovo’s ThinkPad X1 laptop with a $1,602 discount

Lenovo ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 12 front angled view showing display and keyboard.

While there are a lot of great business laptops on the market, one of the most iconic probably has to be Lenovo's ThinkPad lineup. Of course, they tend to be quite expensive, but luckily, this ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 has a substantial discount of $1,602 directly from Lenovo. That brings it down to $1,957 from its original $3,559, which is substantial, but it is also worth noting that Lenovo tends to overstate the estimated value of the ThinkPad X1 Carbons. That means that the real discount isn't really that high, although the price you end up with is still pretty solid for one of the best laptops on the market when it comes to business needs.

Why you should buy the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11
The ThinkPad X1 Carbon Gen 11 comes with a 14-inch screen, which makes the overall package very small, and with the 2.48-pound weight, it's pretty easy to carry around with you if you travel a lot. The screen runs a solid 1920 x 1200 resolution, but can hit 400 nits of peak brightness, so you can use pretty much anywhere that doesn't include direct sunlight. You'll also appreciate the 1080P FHD IR camera, which is perfect for those who need to have meetings regularly on the go or when working from home.

Computing

The launch of the Ryzen 7 9800X3D feels very close — and it might disappoint

AMD's Ryzen 9 7950X3D sitting in the box.

We may not talk about feelings much when discussing the best processors, but a mountain of leaks and rumors have been swirling about AMD's upcoming Ryzen 7 9800X3D -- and they're becoming too big to ignore. The most recent development is a post on the Chiphell forum (via Wccftech) that claims the processor will be announced on October 25, with a release in the first week of November.

On its own, this isn't anything too exciting. We see claims about hardware launches all the time, but the past two weeks have been riddled with murmurs about what is undoubtedly AMD's most-anticipated CPU this generation. Just a few days ago, a leaked slide from an internal MSI presentation pitted the Ryzen 7 9800X3D against last-gen's Ryzen 7 7800X3D, and showed anywhere from a 2% to 13% improvement. The slides were originally shared by HardwareLuxx, but the post was removed, suggesting the images were probably real (VideoCardz has the images archived).