Sunday, January 08, 2012

drag2share: Lenovo outs IdeaCentre B340 and B540 all-in-ones, H520s and IdeaCentre K430 towers

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2012/01/08/lenovo-ideacentre-b340-b540-h520s-k430/

Ultrabooks might be the belle of the ball at this year's CES, but that doesn't mean you won't see a few desktops thrown in for variety's sake. Lenovo just unveiled a quartet of stationary machines, including two towers and a pair of touchscreen all-in-ones. Beginning with those touchscreens, the IdeaCentre B340 and B540 are essentially the same system, except the former has a 21.5-inch screen and the latter expands to 23. Both have 1080p displays and can be configured with up to 8GB of RAM and 2TB of storage, an optional Blu-ray drive and 3D tech. The only variation in specs, so far as we can tell, is that the 21.5-inch version maxes out with a 1GB NVIDIA GeForce 615M card, whereas for the 23-incher the top-shelf offering is the GeForce GT 650M with 2GB of video memory. Lenovo's also bundled its finger-friendly IdeaTouch software, whose OneKey TV feature lets you toggle between your desktop and TV mode using a picture-in-a-picture. Look for these in June, with an entry price of $699.

Shifting gears to towers, the IdeaCentre K430 is aimed at gamers and other users of the powerful sort, with room for up to 32GB of DDR3 memory and either a 128GB SSD or as much as 4TB in HDD storage, with optional twin hard drives arranged in a RAID0 configuration. And, unlike with Lenovo's more mainstream desktops, you'll get a choice of graphics: a 2GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX660 or, from AMD's camp, a 2GB Radeon HD 7750. Don't need that much muscle? The H520 tower has a compact shape and still accommodates up to 2TB of storage space and 8GB of RAm, along with either a 2GB AMD Radeon HD7570 or a 2GB GeForce GTX630 card. Expect the K430 to arrive in May for $599, and the H520s to follow in June for $499 and up.

Posted by Augustine at 9:15 PM