Lenovo ThinkStation P410 Workstation

Description

At its release, the Lenovo ThinkStation P410 workstation featured the highest memory capacity and core count than any other entry-level workstation on the market. it offers a lot of power at a great price point. Tailored for creative professionals in the media and entertainment markets, this workstation supports NVIDIA's high-end graphics cards, 128GB of memory, and the advanced capabilities to connect up to four 4k displays. This single-socket powerhouse is easy to upgrade and extremely customizable featuring its own application launcher allowing end-users to modify processor threading, core affinity, visual effects, and power management.

ISV Certification

Performance

Featuring Intel's C612 chipset, this single-socket workstation can support a processor from either Intel's Xeon E5-1600 v4 or Xeon E5-2600 v4 processor families. Both product families offer up to eight processing cores and up to 20MB of cache. Both processor families support Intel's Turbo Boost Max Technology 3.0 which directs critical workloads to the fastest performing processor cores to provide a 15% increase in single-thread performance. This system supports a variety of NVIDIA's graphics cards which can be easily upgraded as business needs expand. Although NVIDIA is now pushing their Pascal-based GPUs, the previous generation and I might add, more economical, Maxwell-based Quadro M5000 still delivers impressive performance with four DisplayPort 1.2 connectors, up to 8GB of RAM, and 2048 CUDA cores.

Memory

Up to four DIMMs of high-performance DDR4 memory are supported on this workstation. DDR4 memory operates at a lower voltage and supports higher bandwidths than its predecessor, DDR3 memory. This platform supports registered (RDIMM) memory modules which are available in three different capacities: 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB. Using 32GB modules in all four DIMM slots will provide the system's max memory capacity of 128GB.

Storage

In terms of storage options, The Lenovo P410 Workstation offers plenty of flexibility. Through two internal drive bays, it can support a maximum of four storage devices. Traditional spinning hard-disk drives (HDDs), high-performance solid-state drives (SSDs), and top-of-the-line M.2 PCIe NVMe SSDs are all supported. Configuring this system with four large-form factor 8TB HDDs will provide the server's max storage capacity of 32TB. For businesses that require lightning-fast performance, M.2 SSD configurations will support up to 3TB of storage. The system's motherboard has several SATA ports for storage or optical disk drive expansion and supports RAID levels of 0, 1, 5, and 10.

Expansion

The motherboard supports four full-height PCIe expansion slots. To access the interior, simply remove the two thumbscrews on the left panel, press the release button, and slide the panel backward. The system's GPU uses the first PCIe 3.0 x16 slot. There's also a PCIe 3.0 x16 slot and a PCIe 3.0 x8 slot. These slots get their bandwidth from the system's processor which has 40 PCIe 3.0 lanes. The last PCIe slot is a legacy 2.0 compliant slot with an x4 bandwidth that is routed directly to the Platform Controller Hub (PCH). The front of the system displays an SD card reader, two USB 3.0 ports, an audio/microphone jack, the power button, and a pair of Lenovo Flex Bay modules can support either a standard drive or an ultra-slim optical drive. The back of the system features another four USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, two PS/2 connections for keyboard and mouse, audio ports, four display ports, and an Ethernet port.

Management

Intel's Active Management Technology (Intel AMT) integrates third-party management and security applications to provide all the essential functions necessary to manage, monitor, and repair this workstation throughout its lifecycle. Lenovo's new Performance Tuner (LPT) software is a free application that provides BIOS, graphics, and power management as well as resource monitoring. LPT also allows end-users to enhance performance for particular programs, such as ANSYS or Adobe Illustrator by simply choosing the “optimized” option next to the desired program in the LPT app. Several BIOS' are available to customize and secure this workstation, including Lenovo's Nice UEFI Setup Utility, Intel's ME BIOS, and Lenovo Diagnostics. In regards to operating systems, this platform supports either Microsoft's Windows 10 Pro or Ubuntu Linux.

Summary

The Lenovo ThinkStation P410 workstation is a powerful, single-socket tower featuring flexible storage options and up to 128GB of memory. At its release, it offered a higher core count and memory capacity than any other entry-level workstation on the market. Designed for creative professionals involved in applications like rendering, game development, and 3D CAD modeling, this workstation supports a variety of high-end NVIDIA graphics cards. It has great expansion potential with multiple SATA ports, extra SATA connectors for storage devices, and four full-height PCIe slots. Power, memory, storage, and I/O configurations are fully customizable and Lenovo's Performance Tuner allows end-users to set up profiles for specific software applications. An impeccable balance between affordability and performance makes this workstation the perfect solution for creative professionals who demand high-performance with a tight budget.