Lenovo IdeaCentre Y900 RE Gaming Desktop And IdeaPad Y900 Gaming Notebook Preview

‘Tis the season to stomp on your enemies with the help of new gaming hardware, so we jumped at the chance to fire up a couple of Lenovo’s top gaming machines, a burly 17-inch gaming laptop and a gaming desktop PC designed in conjunction with Razer.

Just a small side note: we're actually giving away these machines in the days ahead to a couple of lucky individuals participating in our Lenovo HOT Holiday Giveaway. We thought it might be interesting to preview these to beasts before we gave them away, though. 

Regardless, the maker of the ThinkPad line has been fighting its way into the gaming market with the Y900 series, and as bold and powerful as these systems are, they have Lenovo’s DNA all over them, from the killer keyboard on the IdeaPad to the understated, slick design of the IdeaCentre; let's introduce you to two of the most no-nonsense gaming systems on the market currently. 

Lenovo rounded up a complete desktop package for this review, including a 27-inch Lenovo Y27g RE curved monitor featuring NVIDIA G-Sync technology. The PC maker also offers its own gaming mouse and a mechanical keyboard, but relied on Razer for peripherals this time around. A Razer Blackwidow Chroma keyboard and a Razer Mamba Tournament Edition mouse shipped with this desktop PC.


The IdeaPad Y900 notebook arrived without any extras, but the only peripheral you likely need to pick up to complete the package is a gaming mouse. The laptop has everything else you’ll need to get into the thick of it, including a GeForce GTX 980M discrete GPU. Let’s take a look at the hardware behind these two systems, then we'll dig into a few particulars with respect to design and performance.

Lenovo IdeaCentre Y900 Razer Editon Specifications & Features

OS	Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Processor	6th Generation Intel Core i7-6700K 4.0GHz (Max 4.2GHz) 8MB Cache
Graphics	Nvidia GeForce GTX 1080 8GB
Memory	16GB 2133MHz DDR4
Storage	256GB SSD, 2TB HDD
Optical Drive	DVD Recordable
Networking	Killer Double Shot Pro 802.11ac, BT 4.0
Display	27-inch Lenovo Y27g RE Curved Display IPS G-SYNC
Keyboard	Razer Blackwidow Chroma Mechanical Keyboard
Mouse	Razer Mamba Tournament Edition
Warranty	1-Year
Price	$2,499.99

IdeaCentre Y900 Razer Edition: Graphics muscle is key to gaming performance, so Lenovo armed our IdeaCentre Y900 RE with one of NVIDIA’s flagship Pascal cards: a burly GeForce GTX 1080. It matched that GPU with a 6th Generation Intel Core i7-6700K processor (Skylake) and 16GB of 2133MHz DDR4 RAM. That ought to give the system some serious firepower in the gaming benchmarks.

As for storage, a 256GB SSD handles Windows 10 Home 64-bit, while a traditional hard drive provides 2TB of bulk data storage. That should be plenty of room for games and downloadable content, but the IdeaCentre Y900 RE has bays for additional hard drives to ensure your game library never outgrows the PC.


Lenovo also added an optical drive for old-school games. Network connectivity comes by way of Rivet's Killer networking technology with support for Double Shot Pro, which can employ both the Gigabit Ethernet port and the 802.11ac wireless connection simultaneously. This sort of gaming muscle isn’t cheap, though: the IdeaCentre Y900 RE, as configured, will set you back $2,499.99. The Lenovo Y27g RE gaming monitor adds another $649.99, which is on the higher end for a 27-inch monitor like this, but then again, it's G-Sync enabled.

Lenovo IdeaPad Y900 Specifications & Features

OS	Windows 10 Home 64-bit
Processor	6th Generation Intel Core i7-6820HK 2.7GHz 8MB
Graphics	Nvidia GeForce GTX 980M 8GB
Memory	16GB 2133MHz DDR4
Storage	128GB SSD, 1TB HDD
Networking	Killer AC Wireless (2x2); Gigabit LAN, BT 4.1
Display	17.3-Inch LED IPS AntiGlare 1920 x 1080 w/ NVIDIA G-Sync
Keyboard	Backlit Mechanical
Mouse	Touchpad
Warranty	1-Year
Price	$1,999.99

IdeaPad Y900: Lenovo’s top gaming notebook is large, thanks to its 17.3-inch, 1920 x 1080 G-Sync display. But all that bulk means the laptop has plenty of room for serious gaming hardware. The IdeaPad Y900 features a 6th Generation Intel Core i7-6820HK processor, along with some beefy, discrete graphics in the form of a GeForce GTX 980M (with 8GB GDDR5 memory). Lenovo seals the deal with 16GB of 2133MHz DDR4 memory.

The IdeaPad Y900 sports a Killer AC Wireless package that also includes Gigabit Ethernet. For storage, Lenovo squeezed both a 128GB SSD and a 1TB hard drive into the laptop. You won’t find an optical drive in this beast, but one is hardly needed for gaming on the go these days with services like Steam.
One of the laptop’s most interesting gaming features is its Turbo mode capability, which overclocks the CPU and GPU when you hit a particular button on the keyboard. Actually, you slide the button, rather than press it, which struck us as a gimmick at first, but turned out to be exactly what the laptop needs. As a button, it could easily be pressed by accident. With the sliding Turbo key, you’ll only send your laptop into high gear when you intend to.

Let’s take a bit closer look at these two Lenovo gaming rigs…