Lenovo Unveils New ThinkStation Workstations

Lenovo is introducing a new line of workstations that are designed not only to give users more power and flexibility in their systems, but also make them easier to use and keep cool.

At the SIGGRAPH 2014 show Aug. 12 in Vancouver, British Columbia, Lenovo officials unveiled the latest additions to its ThinkStation P Series desktop systems, which are armed with the latest processor and graphics technology from Intel and Nvidia, leverage DDR4 memory and include enhancements around thermal management.

Lenovo in May announced the ThinkStation P300, an entry-level system. The new workstations are the P900, P700 and P500.

Company officials said Lenovo engineers used customer feedback to build on what they had offered in the vendor’s 30 Series workstations.

“We want our customers to know that we listened to their demands for a higher-performing, more reliable and more usable workstation, and our ThinkStation P Series represents our response to those demands,” Rob Herman, director of worldwide workstation product and vertical marketing at Lenovo, said in a statement. “We’ve partnered with the best technology makers in the world and engineered these new workstations to be more intuitive, flexible and powerful than any workstation technology available, regardless of the level of user.”

In the area of performance, Lenovo is leveraging the latest Intel Xeon server chips and Nvidia Quadro graphics cards, according to officials. The workstations also leverage high-capacity DDR4 memory, and the P900 supports up to three Quadro K6000 graphics cards and up to 14 storage devices. Keys to keeping the systems cool are a tri-channel architecture and a fanless air baffle that draws in air and directs it to system components. Warm air is forced out the back.

Users can access key components without having to use tools, and red touch points help direct them to quick component changes. There also are integrated handles to make it easier to move the systems around, fit into many workspaces and mount into racks. Lenovo engineers also pushed flexibility in the workstations, including the Flex Bay, which can support an optical drive, and the Flex Module, which can support an ultraslim optical drive, media card reader or Firewire. The Flex Tray for hard-disk drives offers support for 2.5-inch and 3.5-inch products, and Flex Connector is a mezzanine card that connects to the motherboard and supports various storage technologies.

The systems offer from 256GB (in the P500) to 512GB (in the P900) of DDR4 memory, 11 to 14 storage devices and two to four GPUs. The systems will be available in the fall.