If you’ve been following Techaeris for some time, you’ll probably be thinking “wait, didn’t they already review the ideacentre Y900?” – and you’d be correct. We reviewed the ideacentre Y900 back in January, but Lenovo was kind enough to send us another with the new NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 graphics card and a Y27g curved gaming monitor (check out our review) to take a look at. As such, this will be a shorter review and mostly focus on the updated graphics card as I pretty much agree with our previous review of the system.
Specifications
The Lenovo ideacentre Y900 as tested had the following specifications and features:
- Model: 90DD0075US
- OS: Windows 10 Home 64-bit
- Processor: Intel Core i7-6700K (4.0 GHz 2133MHz 8MB) 64 bit Quad-Core Processor
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition (8GB DDR5); 3x DisplayPort, 1x HDMI, 1x DVI out
- Hard Drive: 1 TB (7200rpm) + 128 GB SSD
- Memory: 16GB DDR4 2133MHz
- Front Ports: 7-in-1 Card Reader (SD/SDHC/SDXC/MMC plus/MMC/MS/MS_Pro), 2 x USB2.0, 2 x USB 3.0 (1st port supports always-on USB charging), 2 Audio/Microphone Jack
- Optical Drive: DVD±RW
- Rear Ports: 4x USB 3.0, 2 x USB 2.0, 1x PS/2 connector, 1x VGA, 1x HDMI, 1x DVI, 1x RJ45 Gigabit LAN, 6x Audio ports with S/PDIF
- Connectivity: 802.11ac Wireless LAN, Bluetooth 4.0
- PSU: 625 Watt
- Dimensions (H x W x D): 8.12″ x 19.82″ x 18.85″
- Weight: 33lbs
What’s in the Box
- 1x ideacentre Y900 desktop
- 1x Power cable
- 1x Wired keyboard
- 1x Wired mouse
Design
As mentioned previously, we already reviewed the ideacentre Y900, and I agree with Mike’s previous assessment when it comes to design, software, and sound so we’ll move right along to the performance section of the review. I will briefly mention that I wasn’t a fan of the included mouse and keyboard, but to be honest any respectable gamer is going to be playing with their own preferred gaming mouse and keyboard.
This version of the ideacentre Y900 also came with optical audio out, which worked well and provided great sound when I tested it with the Sound BlasterX G5 amplifier. There are definitely more than enough USB, audio, and video ports for all your external devices — both on the actual system itself, along with the extra video ports on the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080.
Performance
We were impressed with the performance of the ideacentre Y900 with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 970, but there’s no question that the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition graphics card blows it away. I’m not really a fan of benchmarks and stats, but Mike ran his ideacentre Y900 through a few benchmark tests so I did the same. For comparison, the Y900 with the GTX GeForce 970 scored 9611 on the 3DMark Fire Strike test, 25909 on the Sky Diver test, and 28736 on the Cloud Gate test.
As for actual performance, this machine took every game I could throw at it, chewed it up, and spit it back with absolutely beautiful graphics, rendering, and performance. Games like Tomb Raider and Crysis 2 ran flawlessly on maximum settings. Even my go to games like Diablo III and Heroes of the Storm were a new experience being able to run them on the highest settings. In addition to running games like that on high, the NVIDIA GeForce Experience app lets you render the games at higher resolutions like 3840×2160, and then downscales it to 1080p (in the case of the Y27g monitor we tested with this system) to further enhance image quality.
Of course, the real test for me was with Forza Motorsport 6: Apex and Forza Horizon 3 — both have pretty beefy recommended specifications. In my Forza Horizon 3 review, I mentioned how great the game looked on the Xbox One. Playing on the ideacentre Y900 though, both games looked absolutely stunning on Ultra settings — and were able to maintain 60 fps at 1080p. Coupled with the Y27g and NVIDIA G-Sync, gaming on this rig is definitely a pleasure.
Price/Value
Our review unit retails for a (some would consider whopping) $2,099USD. Considering you’re getting the $700USD NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition with 8GB DDR RAM in this package, the value is definitely there for the Lenovo ideacentre Y900 as you should be able to easily run anything that you can install on it for some time to come. Of course, there are various other configurations available for less, but you won’t be getting the power that the GTX 1080 offers.
Wrap-up
If you’re not one for building your own machine, the Lenovo ideacentre Y900 with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition graphics card is a well designed, excellent performing gaming desktop rig that should keep you gaming comfortably for the foreseeable future. It’s not hard to award the ideacentre Y900 with the GeForce GTX 1080 Founders Edition graphics one of our Top Picks of 2016 awards.
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