Lenovo has just announced a small PC workstation which includes the kind of components you’d find in a traditional mid-tower chassis in a 4L box, with a few corners cut along the way to achieve that level of compression.
ThinkStation P360 Ultra supports Alder Lake Intel processors up to 16 cores Core i9-12900K CPU, up to 128GB of DDR5 memory and up to an Nvidia RTX A5000 cell phone. Expansion features are restricted; There are two PCIe Gen 4×4 M.2 slots and a 2.5-inch SATA port for a SSD or HD, In addition, there is a PCIe 4.0 x 16 expansion slot for the GPU and one for a single PCIe 3.0 x4 card.
Given its size, Lenovo has done a brilliant job when it comes to connectivity. While there are no card readers, you’ll get four USB ports, two LAN ports (1GbE and 2.5GbE), up to three full-sized DisplayPort ports (powering up to 8K monitors), and up to WiFi-6E (Intel AX211) on vPro -capable system.
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Unsurprisingly, the P360 Ultra’s housing has more holes than a Gruyère cheese to help dissipate heat as quickly as possible, alongside a powerful (and probably noisy) fan. The CPU alone has a maximum turbo power dissipation of 241W with the GPU’s TGP reaching 150W under load.
As for powering the parts, Lenovo has wisely removed the power supply from outside the chassis, which helps a bit with cooling. As these PSUs top out at 300W, they are unlikely to be GaN’s new compact model. It might be a smart move to compare it to mobile workstations if you’re not worried about the form factor.
Lenovo makes even smaller workstations; The tiny P360 it’s a 1L minicomputer, but it can’t compete with Ultra when it comes to pure grunt.
The cheapest P360 Ultra will cost around $1,299 when it launches in a few days. Lenovo has yet to confirm whether the workstation will be widely available outside of the US.