ASUS V500 V500 Home & Business Review

A CPU champion with the graphics of a potato. For pure office work, it's a steal. For anything else, keep walking.

The ASUS V500 is a weirdly powerful CPU trapped in a basic office PC's body. For $640, you get a 10-core Intel i7 processor that's faster than 99% of the desktops in our database. That's the headline. But here's the catch: it pairs that beastly CPU with integrated graphics that can't even run a screensaver smoothly. This is a machine built for one thing: raw number-crunching productivity, and it's shockingly good at that one thing.

The performance story is a tale of two halves. That i7-13620H processor is no joke. It's a laptop chip, but it's punching way above its weight class here, landing in the 99th percentile for CPU power. It'll chew through spreadsheets, code compilation, and video encoding without breaking a sweat. The 16GB of DDR5 RAM is solid for multitasking. But then you look at the GPU score, sitting in the 24th percentile. That's because it's just Intel's integrated graphics. It's fine for driving two 4K monitors for work, but ask it to render anything 3D and it'll tap out immediately. The 180W power supply tells you everything you need to know about its ambitions.

At $640, the value is incredibly niche. If your workload is 100% CPU-bound—think data analysis, software development, or running a dozen business apps—this is a steal. You're getting near-workstation-level processing for the price of a mid-range laptop. For anyone else, even casual users, the lack of a real GPU makes it a tough sell when a more balanced pre-built isn't much more.

Don't even look at the gaming desktops like the HP Omen or Corsair Vengeance. They're in a different league (and price bracket) for graphics. The real competition is other business towers. Compared to a similarly priced Dell OptiPlex or Lenovo ThinkCentre, the ASUS V500's CPU smokes them. But those Dells and Lenovos often have more standard, upgrade-friendly internals and better warranty support. If you need a GPU later, you'll have an easier time with those. The V500 is the performance play, but it's a bit of a dead-end upgrade path.

If you're even thinking about gaming, skip this. Go look at a budget gaming PC with an RTX 3050 or AMD RX 6600 instead. Also skip if you're a creative professional or want a future-proof tower you can upgrade. This is a sealed unit for a specific job.

We recommend the ASUS V500, but only to a very specific person. If you need maximum processing power for office work, light development, or home server tasks on a tight budget, and you know you'll never need to play a game or edit video, buy it. It's a productivity powerhouse. For everyone else—students, families, casual users, or anyone who might want to play a game someday—the lack of graphics horsepower is a deal-breaker. Look for a system with at least a basic discrete GPU.