Lenovo reveals small but mighty desktop workstation
- Reference: 1656004449
- News link: https://www.theregister.co.uk/2022/06/23/lenovo_thinkstation_p360/
- Source link:
Available from the end of this month, the [1]ThinkStation P360 Ultra comes in a chassis that is less than 4 liters in total volume, but packs in 12th Gen Intel Core processors – that's the latest [2]Alder Lake generation with up to 16 cores, but not the Xeon chips that we would expect to see in a workstation – and an Nvidia RTX A5000 GPU.
Other specifications include up to 128GB of DDR5 memory, two PCIe 4.0 slots, up to 8TB of storage using plug-in M.2 cards, plus dual Ethernet and Thunderbolt 4 ports, and support for up to eight displays, the latter of which will please many professional users. Pricing is expected to start at $1,299 in the US.
[3]
ThinkStation P360 Ultra. Source: Lenovo
The new system is not the smallest workstation that Lenovo makes. The littlest is the 1 liter [4]ThinkStation P360 Tiny , the updated version of the [5]P350 Tiny announced last year. However, the new form factor packs in the high-end professional components you'd expect from a tower format chassis.
[6]Lenovo, Barcelona Supercomputing Center sign joint research deal
[7]Lenovo opens doors on first in-house European factory
[8]Lenovo to form venture with Hong Kong comms conglomerate PCCW
[9]Lenovo halves its ThinkPad workstation range
Lenovo claims that the new system outperforms previous generation small form factor desktop workstations by more than 50 percent, based on the company's own tests using the SPECworkstation 3.1 benchmark.
Lenovo said that it worked closely with both Nvidia and Intel to develop a compact form factor that can fit both the RTX A5000 GPU card and the cooling required to support it. The system also features an unusual layout with a dual-sided motherboard positioned in the middle of the chassis, which offers increased airflow to support the Alder Lake processors that run at up to 125W.
[10]
Rob Herman, VP for Lenovo's Workstation and Client AI Business Unit, claimed that the desktop workstation was "purpose built to deliver impressive performance in a space-saving form factor that our customers need."
[11]
Lenovo said the ThinkStation P360 Ultra is fully ISV certified and tested to pass MIL-SPEC standards, though not to the most demanding MIL-STD 810G standard for ruggedized hardware. ®
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[1] https://news.lenovo.com/pressroom/press-releases/power-of-desktop-workstations-thinkstation-p360-ultra/
[2] https://www.theregister.com/2022/01/04/intel_alder_lake/
[3] https://regmedia.co.uk/2022/06/23/exploded_view_lenovo_workstation.jpg
[4] https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/workstations/thinkstation-p-series/thinkstation-p360-tiny/len102s0005
[5] https://www.theregister.com/2021/07/13/lenovo_small_entry_level_workstations/
[6] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/21/lenovo_barcelona_supercomputing_center/
[7] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/15/lenovo_hungary_factory/
[8] https://www.theregister.com/2022/06/15/lenovo_pccw_solutions_services_company/
[9] https://www.theregister.com/2022/05/20/lenovo_thinkpad_range/
[10] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=2&c=2YrTigRT9Rm-hnFBHN2mRIwAAAJE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D2%26raptor%3Dcondor%26pos%3Dtop%26test%3D0
[11] https://pubads.g.doubleclick.net/gampad/jump?co=1&iu=/6978/reg_onprem/personaltech&sz=300x50%7C300x100%7C300x250%7C300x251%7C300x252%7C300x600%7C300x601&tile=4&c=44YrTigRT9Rm-hnFBHN2mRIwAAAJE&t=ct%3Dns%26unitnum%3D4%26raptor%3Dfalcon%26pos%3Dmid%26test%3D0
[12] https://whitepapers.theregister.com/
Re: Is it true that it uses proprietary bits?
I don't have this exact model but I know that mine defiantly has proprietary connecters between the PSU and the Motherboard..
When my PSU fried it suddenly became a whole lot of extra pain to find the "adapter" and then have to perform some electrical shenanigans to correctly set things up.. You have to use a paperclips between two pin in order to allow for a boot.. It's easy to do but it feels like you lose any advantages that Lenovo has to offer( if there ever were any)
Missing a market.
That nvidia card isn't that great. Intel seems unable to produce NUC extremes in any meaningful volume. If they let it use real GPUs they would sell a whole lot more of them. I think the segment of customers who need a GPU for work but only one this powerful is pretty small..
Review or press release?
I'm sure it's a perfectly functional desktop but what's special enough to pick it over a competitor or cause someone to upgrade from last year?
This reads like a Lenovo press release with no added value from the Vulture's expert.
Re: Review or press release?
It's probably a press release. Same on Ars Technica (which just ran a similar article about this computer).
Somehow Lenovo manages to get distinctive coverage in the press for even the most mundane of systems, while similar systems from other (Western) vendors don't.
Is it true that it uses proprietary bits?
ISTR from a different story about these little beasties that it used a proprietary thingamajig to connect something & the folks commenting were worried that the company would either fail to offer that connector in the future, no 3rd party vendors would offer the connector, or that replacement parts would be difficult/impossible to find. If that's true, I'd avoid this machine like the plague. I've been burned before by vendors using such bits & then turning around to no longer support their own damned product.
If it is NOT true & it's all COTS hardware, then I could envision getting one to yank the drive, replace it with a similar/larger capacity one, & installing a decent OS on it instead. (If it ever got screwed, I could put the untouched original back in place & get the company to fix it under warranty.)
A nice new shiny computer sounds great, but not if I have to take Win10/11 infesting it.