We have seen a lot of mini computers and professional workstations, but in the case of using the Windows system, the chassis space of the whole machine is only less than 4L of professional-grade workstations. Such products can be said to be unprecedented in the market. .
In July this year, Lenovo officially launched the ThinkStation P360 Ultra mini professional workstation, further enriching its desktop workstation product lineup. This time, Lenovo has greatly eliminated the volume drawbacks of traditional small desktop workstations in a chassis of less than 4L, providing users with the powerful performance experience of general tower workstations.
Recently, I received a ThinkStation P360 Ultra. How powerful is it in this compact body? Let’s find out.
Product Design
In my opinion, ThinkStation P360 Ultra can be said to be a very ThinkStation product in design. In addition to the classic black and red Think family design language, we can also see ThinkStation’s ultimate pursuit of product performance. No performance compromises for size.
First of all, the appearance design of the machine inherits the consistent design language of Lenovo’s commercial workstation product line. The whole machine body adopts a pure black color scheme. The front of the machine body is a honeycomb-shaped metal air outlet, and the word P360 is embellished in red. Kind of “little red dot” flavor. The four sides of the fuselage are sandblasted metal panels, which are relatively comfortable to touch and not easy to stick to fingerprints. The design of the side corners of the fuselage is slightly curved. Although it is still a typical workstation design style, it gets rid of the inherent impression of rigidity.
Of course, the most surprising thing is the size of the body. On the premise of maintaining performance output, this time Lenovo compressed the size of the P360 Ultra to 203x223x87mm, the chassis space of the whole machine is only 3.9L, the chassis height is shorter than the common 500mL mineral water bottle, and the body weight is only 2.9kg It’s terribly small. Such a body size, let alone a huge professional workstation, is even much smaller than the size of a traditional standard mid-tower case.
Although the body is small, the interface configuration of the P360 Ultra is exceptionally luxurious. Let’s take a look at the front of the chassis first. In addition to the familiar circular power button, the machine is also equipped with a 3.5mm audio interface, a USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 interface, and two full-featured USB-A that supports Thunderbolt 4. C interface, these two interfaces can not only provide a transmission speed of up to 40Gbps, but also can complete video output through the C interface to expand application scenarios.
Turn to the back, the rear interface of the machine is 1 Gigabit Ethernet port, 1 2.5Gb Gigabit Ethernet port and 3 DP 1.4 ports, plus the two Thunderbolt 4 ports on the front of the fuselage, up to 7 A single monitor makes it easy to work on multiple screens, making the ThinkStation P360 Ultra the only desktop workstation in the industry with dual onboard Ethernet ports and Thunderbolt 4 ports. In addition, this time Lenovo completely canceled the USB 2.0 and USB 3.2 Gen1 interfaces and replaced them with 4 USB 3.2 Gen2 interfaces, making data transmission more efficient and convenient.
Next, is the disassembly part. I believe that many people hate disassembly. After all, it is common to turn the screws softly, but
The disassembly of the P360 Ultra is very simple. Just press the buckle on the back of the fuselage to directly pull out the entire motherboard from the rear, and then you can see the internal structure of the fuselage. As shown in the picture, the machine adopts a unique double-sided motherboard design. The top of the right motherboard is the independent graphics card, the bottom is the CPU and memory slots, the top of the left motherboard is 2 PCIE 4.0*4 M2 hard disk slots, and the bottom is Two easy-to-expand SO-DIMM memory slots, all heat-generating parts are covered by push-down radiators and fins, and the ingenious design based on bayonet is not only beautiful, but also easy to maintain.
The secret to the ThinkStation P360 Ultra’s ability to maintain performance output in a compact body lies mainly in two points: First, the front honeycomb full-hollow design gives the mini chassis enough air intake, and cold air enters from the front and side. , which is discharged from the rear of the fuselage to improve heat dissipation efficiency; the second is this double-sided motherboard cooperating with Intel, coupled with the fans covered on the CPU, GPU and hard disk, it helps the air to circulate in the machine and makes the motherboard hot spots Try to exchange heat with fresh air to keep the machine at a normal working temperature during use. As for the actual effect, it depends on the heat dissipation test we conduct later.
Performance Testing
In the above, we introduced some highlights of the ThinkStation P360 Ultra in terms of appearance design. Next, we will test the performance of the P360 Ultra in the evaluation software in detail.
The hinkStation P360 Ultra uses the W680 chipset and is optionally equipped with Core 12th generation processors – i3-12100, i5-12500, i7-12700 and i9-12900 and other processors. This one in our hands is equipped with Intel® Core™ i9 processor 12900 vPro high-end version, this processor adopts the latest Intel 7 manufacturing process, 16 cores and 24 threads, the main frequency is 2.4GHz, the maximum turbo frequency is 5.1GHz, and the L3 cache is 30MB.
In the CPU-Z performance test standard, the machine scored 803.6 points for single-core, 9436.7 points for multi-core, 743cb/7836cb for R20, and 1927cb/20877cb for R23. As shown in the figure, compared with similar products equipped with the 11th-generation Core flagship processor, the single-core performance has been improved by at least 15%, and the multi-core performance has been enhanced by 300%. This processor has endowed the mini workstation with efficient computing power .
POV-Ray is an open-source free software that uses ray tracing to draw 3D images. It is mainly used to test the performance of the workstation CPU – that is, using the processor to generate image frames with ray tracing effects, so as to render according to the rendering used by the processor. Time to judge the computing power of the CPU. In the POV-Ray test, the single-thread score of the i9-12900 vPro is 718PPS, and the multi-thread score is 7084PPS.
V-Ray is one of the most popular rendering engines in the industry, and V-Ray Benchmark is a free independent rendering speed test software launched by its developer chaosgroup, which can be used to test the V-Ray 5 engine of the computer rendering speed. The CPU rendering test score of ThinkStation P360 Ultra is 14136vsamples, which is among the best in the official database.
SPECview is a professional-grade, industry-standard graphics card performance test analysis software that measures the 3D graphics performance of a system running under OpenGL and Direct X application programming interfaces. The latest version of the benchmark is SPECviewperf 13, which includes 3ds Eight applications and test scenarios in CAD, 3D design and rendering, including Max, MayaNX and SolidWorks, can be said to fully reflect the professional performance of the workstation in the CAD field and DCC field with the help of SPECviewPerf.
Judging from the running score results, the ThinkStation P360 Ultra’s results are outstanding. With the support of i9-12900 vPro, ThinkStation P360 Ultra can bring to users whether it is rendering Pr video, using 3D software SU for garden design, using LR, PS and other design software, or using 3ds Max for modeling and rendering. A more efficient and smooth authoring experience.
In terms of memory, the ThinkStation P360 Ultra in our hands is equipped with 32GB SO-DIMM DDR5 4000MHz memory, and can even be expanded through the two vacated SO-DIMM memory slots. Using AIDA64 for the memory cache test, the measured read speed is 61563MB/s and the latency is 88.5ns, which is quite good.
In terms of storage, our ThinkStation P360 Ultra is equipped with a 1TB PCIE 4.0 Samsung SSD hard drive. Its SSD read speed can exceed 6537.42MB/s and write speed exceeds 4906.26MB/s, which is also an outstanding level among hard drives of the same specification. It can greatly shorten the time of copying materials in design work, and can fully meet the high-speed requirements of daily loading and file transfer.
Application Test
In the theoretical performance part above, we compared the performance with a variety of processors through test software such as CINEBENCH R20/R23, and the performance of the Intel® Core™ i9 processor 12900 vPro is evident. When the monster-level performance of such a powerful hardware output is applied to actual work scenarios, what level of productivity will the ThinkStation P360 Ultra achieve? Let’s test it.
The first is the common PCMark modern office test. The final score of the ThinkStation P360 Ultra is 7933 points, which can perfectly adapt to various modern office needs.
Let’s take a look at the graphics rendering. We ran the classic BMW and classroom demos in Blender. In the BMW Demo, the P360 Ultra took only 2 minutes and 06 seconds, while in the more complex classroom demo, the P360 Ultra took only 5 minutes 18 seconds. Such excellent results are not unrelated to the strong performance of the 12th-generation Intel Core processors and the thermal design of the P360 Ultra.
Next, we tested through 3ds Max, AutoCAD, SolidWorks and other software commonly used by professional designers.
The first is the Cadalyst benchmark for AutoCAD, the main purpose of this test is to test the performance of the system when running various AutoCAD scenarios – such as the running speed of 3D models in four display modes; the running speed of various effects in 2D mode. At the same time, it will also examine the disk and CPU performance of the system, and finally convert the results into component values. The larger the score, the better. The final score of the ThinkStation P360 Ultra is shown in the figure, which means that this product runs hundreds of times faster than a typical AutoCAD device and far better than similarly priced consumer-grade hardware.
Solidworks is the most widely used 3D CAD drafting professional software on the market, developed by a subsidiary of Dassault Industries. The test results of six sub-items of performance and simulation are used to master the 3D CAD drawing performance of the workstation. The final score of ThinkStation P360 Ultra is shown in the figure. This result means that in the application of professional software, this product can still bring designers a smooth working experience.
3ds Max is one of the tools commonly used by architects and other professional users who have 3D design needs. Here, we have selected multiple types of project files, and run 3ds Max 2022 through ThinkStation P360 Ultra for testing (using V-Ray renderer) prime mode, renderings and other tests.
After the actual test, if it is a simple single building outline and home decoration, the ThinkStation P360 Ultra can complete the rendering in a few seconds, and a complete interior decoration scene with nearly 4 million polygons and 2.5 million vertices (output The original size is 3500×2590), and the ThinkStation P360 Ultra took 45 minutes and 27 seconds.
Judging from the test results, ThinkStation P360 Ultra can well meet the needs of designers, and has obtained excellent results in various tests of professional design software such as 3ds MAX and Solidworks, which means that ThinkStation P360 Ultra can be used for professional designers. Designers bring stable and lasting high performance to improve work efficiency and help professional designers to polish the best solution within a limited time.
Nowadays, with the rapid development of information technology, my country’s construction industry has entered the era of BIM (Building Information Modeling), which is based on the relevant information data of construction projects and simulates the real information of buildings through digital information simulation. The design method of engineering supervision is becoming more and more popular, and the engineering industry combining three-digit digital technology is becoming a new environment that talents in the construction field must adapt to.
In this case, as educational and scientific research units, Chinese colleges and universities should take the initiative to stand up and promote the construction of BIM training classrooms. Through professional workstations, students can comprehensively understand construction engineering from architectural design, sunshine analysis, energy-saving HVAC design to construction engineering and installation engineering budget information under 3D models, and combine building information model solutions with related actual projects , intuitively understand the current advanced management mode of the whole life cycle of construction engineering; let students know the future work mode of the industry in advance before leaving the school, and at the same time provide a broad development space for students’ employment.
Thermal Test
Finally, let’s take a look at the cooling capabilities of the ThinkStation P360 Ultra. As shown in the figure, after single-baking the CPU for 10 minutes, it can be seen that the frequency of the CPU can be stabilized at around 3.4GHz, and the temperature of the whole machine is around 72°C.
During the most stressful double bake, the CPU can stabilize at around 3.4GHz, the CPU temperature is fixed at 75°C, and the GPU temperature is 88°C.
In general, thanks to a reasonable thermal design, the thermal performance of the ThinkStation P360 Ultra is very optimistic. It is worth mentioning that the machine will only increase the fan speed at the moment of starting the roasting machine, and then the fan will stabilize at a relatively quiet speed, and the whole machine can also maintain a good performance release level. In a sense, the P360 Ultra has successfully solved the common problems that all small workstations on the market have, bringing users a quieter use environment.
Summary
Advantage
1. Small and exquisite body design;
2. Powerful CPU configuration;
3. Durable and excellent heat dissipation;
4. Rich interface and expansibility;
As the latest product of ThinkStation, the ThinkStation P360 Ultra has been fully upgraded compared to the previous generation. Under the blessing of the Core i9-12900 vPro processor, its CPU performance is quite good, which can bring high efficiency to applications such as modeling, rendering, transcoding, and image editing. The powerful performance allows ThinkStation P360 Ultra to improve efficiency in more professional application scenarios, helping creators to get rid of the constraints of “deadline” to better show their talents.
Of course, in addition to strong CPU performance, ThinkStation P360 Ultra also provides many professional features. The compact body design saves more space than most large workstations, and can be hidden under the monitor or desktop; the compact structure design, in addition to the excellent ventilation and heat dissipation performance, the internal metal frame supports and protects well enough; rich interfaces and expansion It is very suitable for architects, designers and professional enterprises who need to run a variety of professional design software and want to keep the office space compact and tidy.
Thanks for such a detailed review of this machine! The temperature section in reviews is really rare to see.