Could putting laptop components in gaming desktops be the start of a new trend?
Get ready for some serious novelty in the form of the Asus TUF Gaming T500. This compact gaming desktop (starting at $999.99, $1,299.99 as tested) is something of an odd wedding of a machine: It features an Intel Core i7-13620H chip—a laptop CPU—and a GeForce RTX 5060 Ti desktop card. We’ve seen mobile CPUs in desktops before, such as the compact Asus ROG NUC 970, but seldom together with a full-size GPU, or in a mini-tower this size. In short, there’s nothing else quite like it out there, and it offers surprisingly good performance to boot. But if you don’t need the small footprint, a full-tower gaming PC like the HP Omen 35L will likely be a better value in one of its lower-end configurations. (The Omen starts at $1,099; we tested a storming version closer to $2,500.)Design and Specs: Spiffy Outside, Constraints Inside
You can get the TUF Gaming T500 with one of two mobile CPU flavors: a 13th Gen Intel Core i5-13420H for $999, or the Core i7-13620H for an extra $300. (The latter is the version we tested for this review.) Both models include 16GB of DDR5 RAM and 1TB of SSD storage. Most important, both configurations sport a desktop-style discrete GeForce RTX 5060 Ti card.
When you peek inside the T500, you’ll find a setup something like the interior of a typical gaming laptop, were you to crack one open, with the placement of heat pipes off an integrated CPU. The RAM is under a lid on the motherboard, in the form of two SO-DIMM laptop-style modules in slots parallel to the board. (The board is upgradable to 64GB via two 32GB modules.) Unlike most prebuilt gaming desktop PCs, you don’t get options to swap out most other components, like the motherboard or power supply. Why? Much inside is proprietary to this machine, barring the M.2 SSD, the memory, and the GPU. Even the cooling system for the CPU is an unusual heatsink-and-fan combination mounted in the rear exhaust position on the chassis.
All that amounts to a design that really limits what you can upgrade with the machine down the road. For one thing, a 500-watt power supply unit (PSU) will limit your upgrade choices for GPUs in the future, and the specialized motherboard connector that the PSU here uses means you can’t just plonk in an ordinary socketed Mini-ITX motherboard with a 24-pin power connector later. Because of that and the inability to upgrade the CPU, I worry about the long-term staying power of this system compared with others at around the same $1,300 that offer more traditional desktop builds. At least you can upgrade the memory via the SO-DIMM slots.
So what about the unusual chip combo? I’m not against the idea of using laptop components in a desktop for efficiency; a desktop case offers better cooling than a laptop, maximizing the performance you can get from the parts. Likewise, performance isn’t hindered by the lower power draw from a 500-watt power supply.
