At an event in China earlier this week Lenovo took the wraps off its latest Legion series gaming laptop. The new Lenovo Legion 9i's claim to fame is that it includes the "thinnest water cooling in the industry." It will also be on many portable PC gaming enthusiast wish lists due to other premium components such as the Core i9-13980HX CPU and GeForce RTX 4090 GPU.
Tech site MSPowerUser shared rendered images of the laptop in its coverage of this announcement, but VideoCardz helped make the announcement more interesting by confirming the presence of a water cooling system in this upcoming flagship, as well as unearthing a tech specs list.
According to some of the supporting presentation slides at the Lenovo Legion 9i unveiling event, the cooling system is one of the slimmest water cooling implementations yet. In some official renders we see the liquid cooling loop, various heatsinks and the position of a trio of cooling fans. It is explained that the liquid cooling isn't necessary until the GPU temperature hits 84+ degrees Celsius. After this threshold "the liquid pump starts to work quickly to reduce the GPU temperature," says a translated slide. An AI-based system is claimed to optimize the cooling / performance of this laptop.
So, the text confirms the liquid cooling and twin fans on the GPU side of the motherboard are all to keep the GPU cool, while the fan on the right will be there for the CPU. Some other information from the source asserts that Lenovo has used '3D blades' in its cooling fans and used liquid metal for its hard to beat thermal interface properties. All of this is housed in a slim 18.9mm profile, with a distinctive finish to the laptop provided by a carbon fiber material.
| Header Cell - Column 0 |
Lenovo Legion 9i, Key Specifications |
|---|---|
|
CPU |
Intel Core i9-13980HX, 24C / 32 T, 2.2 GHz base clock |
|
GPU |
Nvidia GeForce RTX 4090 |
|
RAM | 64GB (32 + 32 GB DDR5-5600) |
|
Storage | 2 x 1TB PCIe Gen4 TLC SSDs |
|
Screen |
16.3-inch 2K Mini LED display with up to 165Hz refresh |
|
Ports |
2x USB Type A, 1x USB Type C, 2x Thunderbolt 4, RJ45 Ethernet, HDMI 2.1, Audio Jack, SD Card Reader 3.0. Wireless: Killer 2x2 Wi-Fi 6e and Bluetooth |
|
Battery |
4 cell 99.9 Wh |
This new flagship gaming laptop is claimed to be destined for a fuller reveal at IFA 2023 (Sept 1 to Sept 5, in Berlin). We don't have details about pricing or release dates as yet. We hope it will be released in time to be a contender for our regularly updated Best gaming laptops of 2023 feature.
