Customer Ratings & Reviews

I made a huge mistake. I shared my love of PC gaming with my tween daughter, setting her up with her own Steam account so that she could use my handheld gaming PC and not wreck my save files. It worked a little too well, and my handheld PC was no longer mine to use freely. Something needed to change. The answer to my problem was simple, get her a desktop gaming PC. The ASUS TUF T500 ended up being a perfect fit for our household. Even before I had any ASUS PC's, I would always build my own PCs using mostly ASUS parts, so I knew what to expect for performance. The Intel Core i5 processor has more than enough power to run all the retro pixel games she loves to play, and the RTX 5060 graphics card is beefy enough for when we play our FPS games together as her monitor is only FHD. The 1TB SSD has enough room for her games, and she's used to having to install and uninstall games from using the consoles. 16GB of RAM is more than adequate for the types of games we play. The front USB ports work great for plugging in controllers and headset dongles, and there's a combo headset jack as well (for when her headset runs out of batteries and she has to use the wire like an old person). I've had 4 ASUS gaming PCs in the past few years, and this is the first one that didn't bring up Armory Crate right away. I was surprised by that, since I think it's great for launching games on my handheld PC. I guess I had to start it up once so that it could run an update and install some system services. After that, it started showing up at startup, making it easier to find the games. The PC itself was a lot smaller than I was expecting. It's dwarfed by the other ASUS gaming PC that I have, standing at 14" tall. The RGB lights are customizable in Armory Crate, which is another reason why I was confused by not seeing it pop up on startup. It fits well under her desk in the living room, though I'm going to need some sort of stand to set it on to hopefully prevent it from sucking in all the cat hair and dust bunnies that tend to accumulate on our hardwood floors. This would also do well in a home theater cabinet since it's so tiny (provided you give it adequate ventilation), or any place in which space is a consideration without compromising on gaming prowess. The computer came with a 3 month trial to Xbox PC GamePass, which is Microsoft's subscription based game platform, so my daughter will have plenty of games to play over winter break. So now I have my handheld PC back, my daughter is happy to have a gaming PC of her own, and the whole family can play together without anyone thinking it's unfair that they have to play on the lesser spec'd computer.

I’ve wanted a dedicated computer for my man cave and, decided to go with a desktop for this one. The form factor is nice and compact and not too heavy, so its easy to use in my setup with a full sized tv and wireless accessories. The mouse and keyboard that come with it are a set up from what I thought I was getting since they do have some RGB lighting. They get the job done for but are still a bit basic and are wired, so I’m not using them, but they do add to the cool look if you don’t have higher end accessories yet. The rest of the lighting is pretty cool and better than just the basic colored fans that glow but you can’t control. There is a window where you can see inside and its a bit odd from what I was expecting. There is just a huge empty space in the center, which should help a bit with airflow but noticeably doesn’t really have a good way to add hard drives or internal accessories if you wanted to expand. I’m lucky enough to have multiple computers for different tasks, but if this was going to be you only computer, its really just for gaming, web surfing, and some basic office work or homework. Trying to upgrade this to handle other things is going to be a struggle. Especially anything like photo or video editing where you need more storage space, since externals can only go so far. Admittedly you could find a way to make it work but then your airflow would be restricted at the same time as adding more heat and I would be worried you’d run into bigger issues. Gaming worked fine, but maybe not as high end as I was initially hoping. That open air design is great for volume, but the heat can creep up on some more intensive games. I didn’t notice much slowdown from it, but I am a bit concerned about more intense usage or longer gaming sessions. Outside of gaming, it’s overkill for streaming movies, video calls, or other basic tasks for my man cave and gives me an extension of options for pc gaming that my console can’t do. This isn’t for a professional gamer but it fits the bill for a more basic gaming computer at a lower price point. So while there are things I think it could do better, it meets my basic gaming needs at a decent price point and with a lot of style and fun you don’t always get with other mid range desktops.

The Asus TUF T500 is an entry-level gaming desktop that showcases a unique combination by Asus. Offer the latest generation of Nvidia desktop GPU (in this case an 8 GB RTX 5060), but pair with a laptop motherboard - namely a laptop CPU and SO-DIMM memory. On paper, the idea is a pretty good one: get a full-fledged GPU to support a mid-level CPU and superfast RAM, and get a system that is simple to cool, small, and does not have to carry a kW power supply. But after “gaming” for the last week or so with my T500 desktop, which has single channel 16 GB DDR5-5600 memory and 2 year old Intel Core i5 13420H Raptor Lake to be precise paired to 1 TB of Samsung SSD, left me with a bit of a disappointment, at least in this 1st iteration. A gaming rig market is a complex one - on the one hand there’s the urge to pack the latest and the greatest CPU & GPU there, but on the other hand the design needs to cater to a wide field of audience. And for the TUF T500, Asus targeted those who want a mid-tier system who are looking for a subtle design. From the design aesthetic standpoint that impressed me. TUF series products from Asus typically have some muted features - they whisper “gaming” instead of screaming with RGBs. Dark colors and yellow/orange accents or lighting, along with a transparent side gives off an ominous aura, and the “TUF Gaming” branding perforated on metal, and printed on the front (with an almost invisible logo) seems more designed for blending than standing out. Coupling this with the small form-factor of the case (almost reaching the size of an Xbox Series X) makes it easy to use in my space-contrained desk, and shows the potential to be portable if needed. A headphone/audio jack, a USB-C and 2 USB-A ports adorn the front, while all the needed ports (USB-As, HDMI, DP, ethernet, more audio jacks) are located on the back. The Nvidia RTX 5060 GPU comes with its own panel of display ports. In essence, the balance of the design and the size is right on target, at least to my taste. The internals are packaged following the same theme - the CPU heatsink/custom cooler is small, and the 330 W power supply has a low-profile. The innards look simple and cleanly routed. Well, all this simpleness and small package comes at a compromise, and even though Asus took some unique paths to do this, the execution falls through to some extent. The simple cooler for the CPU means the CPU itself is not the most powerful (and not the latest one as well). Even with better cooling than what can be done in a laptop, the Raptor Lake based Core i5 13420H shows its age (and performance). For day to day use it actually fairs quite well - the CPU fan rarely spinned, culminating in a very quiet system which is very efficient. However, pump up the pressure and the CPU gets maxed out - and that’s the target use case for a gaming rig. There’s some argument that in gaming the load is mostly on the GPU, and in some cases it's true - but there are a lot of games that are also CPU heavy, and in those cases you can feel the throttling. Other than that, the 5060 provides access to DLSS4, so supported games get a gain in framerate even with the mediocre hardware, and a lot of the time the outcome is pretty impressive. In the end, the TUF T500 gave me mixed feelings. From the outside, it gives off a good vibe: the design just clicks with me. The inside also looked good from the idea standpoint, but then it reached the physical limit the aging CPU and the mid-level 5060 can do: just get the job done. This is not a desktop to create awe inspiring sensations, rather a gateway for new desktop users who may be looking to get out of the constraints of mid-range gaming laptops. Even with heavy usage, the desktop rarely made any sound, and the larger cooling made almost a fanless experience when doing regular non-gaming work. I wish the CPU was just a bit better - maybe from team red.