A Very Affordable Workstation

By David Cohn

Lenovo ThinkStation E30.

Lenovo has once again taken the lead in producing one of the most affordable workstations with independent software vendor (ISV) certification. Aimed squarely at entry-level CAD users, the Lenovo ThinkStation E30 may not break any performance records, but it won’t break the bank, either. While prices for the new E30 don’t start quite as low as its E20 predecessor (see DE, February 2011), our evaluation unit was incredibly affordable—costing just $1,099 thanks to Lenovo’s web discount.

The Lenovo ThinkStation E30 looks similar to last year’s E20. Like other systems in the ThinkStation lineup, the E30 comes housed in a black case with a removable front handle that adds 2 in. to the height of the case, which measures 6.7x16.5x16.2 in. (WxDxH) overall. With a total weight of just 21 lbs., the handle makes it extremely easy to move this system,  although there’s also a metal lip on the rear of the case as a second lift point.

The top portion of the front panel provides two 5.25-in. drive bays, one of which contains a 16X DVD+/-RW dual-layer optical drive. Below these is a smaller 3.5-in. bay that houses an optional 25-in-1 media card reader. Below this, a sloping panel contains two USB ports, along with headphone and microphone jacks. Icons above these ports light up, making them easy to identify, even in low-light conditions. To the right of these ports is the main power button, along with lighted indicators for power and hard drive activity. A sculpted air intake with the ThinkStation logo fills the bottom portion of the front grill.

The rear panel provides six more USB ports, as well as a 9-pin serial port, RJ45 LAN port for the integrated Intel 82579 gigabit Ethernet, and microphone, audio line-in and audio line-out connectors. The rear panel also provides a VGA and a display port connector, both hidden beneath removable rubber covers. These ports are only functional on systems equipped with Intel processors with built-in HD graphics. There’s also space for optional PS/2-style keyboard and mouse connectors, but these were not included in our review unit. FireWire and USB 3.0 are available as extra-cost add-ons.

Modest Expansion Capabilities

To access the interior of the case, we had to remove two non-captive thumbscrews on the rear of the case and then press a small button to remove the side panel. Inside, the Lenovo-designed motherboard takes up about two-thirds of the interior, with all sockets, slots, and connections easily accessible. Lenovo offers processors ranging from the dual-core 3.1GHz Intel Core i3-2100 to the quad-core 3.5GHz Intel Xeon E3-1280. The single-socket motherboard in our evaluation unit housed a quad-core Intel Xeon E3-1230, a 3.2GHz CPU rated at 80 watts of thermal design power (TDP)  with a maximum turbo speed of 3.6GHz and 8MB of Smart Cache. The motherboard also provides four dual in-line memory module (DIMM)  sockets. Our evaluation unit came with 4GB installed as a single 4GB ECC 1333MHz memory module. The E30 can accommodate up to 32GB using 8GB DIMMs.

The motherboard provides just four expansion slots: one PCIe x16 graphics card slot, two PCI card slots and a PCIe x1 card slot. The graphics card slot in our system was filled with an entry-level NVIDIA Quadro 600 graphics accelerator equipped with 1GB of discrete graphics memory. Lenovo’s other NVIDIA-only options range from the NVIDIA NVS300 to the Quadro 2000,  as any boards larger than that would not fit inside the confines of the E30 case.

The Lenovo ThinkStation E30 has two 3.5-in. internal drive bays with quick-release acoustic dampening rails, one mounted just below the front panel in a novel cage that rotates 90° (after disconnecting the power and data cables) to allow easy access, and the second attached to the bottom of the case. For our review, Lenovo equipped the E30 with a single 500GB Hitachi 7,200 rpm SATA drive. Lenovo offers other 7,200 rpm SATA drives ranging from 250GB to 2TB, as well as 300GB and 600GB 10,000 rpm drives and a 160GB SSD drive, and systems equipped with two drives can be factory-configured in various redundant arrays of independent disks (RAIDs).

A 280-watt, 85% efficient auto-sensing power supply provides enough power to handle the system’s relatively modest expansion options. The system was virtually silent during normal operations in spite of five fans—front, rear, CPU,  graphics card and power supply—spinning inside.

Modest Performance

Lenovo pre-installed Windows 7 Professional 64-bit and also sent us a second hard drive with Windows XP 42-bit installed, so that we could repeat all of our benchmarks using that older operating system. The workstation also came with hyper-threading enabled so that our quad-core CPU appeared as eight separate processors. Equipped with fairly modest graphics and a mid-range CPU, we did not expect the ThinkStation E30 to set any records. And the E30 lived up to those expectations, turning in results measurably slower than those of other systems we’ve reviewed recently. But the numbers were definitely not disappointing. The ThinkStation’s performance was approximately twice as fast as that of workstations from just three years ago—and nearly equal to that of modern systems costing much more.

On the SPECviewperf benchmark, NVIDIA Quadro 600 just couldn’t match the performance of other systems we’ve reviewed recently, which came equipped with Quadro 2000 and Quadro 5000 GPUs. But the Quadro 2000 costs nearly three times that of the Quadro 600, and a Quadro 5000 would more than double the total cost of the entire ThinkStation E30 workstation (if one could be crammed into the case).

On the SPECapc SolidWorks benchmark,  which is more of a real-world test (and breaks out graphics, CPU and I/O performance separately from the overall score), the E30 continued to lag behind other systems we’ve tested, thanks to its slower CPU and entry-level graphics. But again, the numbers were by no means disappointing; they would have placed the E30 near the top of the pack just a few years ago.

On the AutoCAD rendering test, which clearly shows the benefits of multiple CPU cores and hyper-threading,  the ThinkStation E30 took just 71.75 seconds to complete the rendering. While that’s nearly half a minute longer than the over-clocked BOXX 3970 Extreme workstation we reviewed in January,  it’s just 10 seconds slower than most of the other single-socket workstations we’ve tested recently, most of which cost twice as much.

Lenovo rounded out our evaluation unit with its standard 104-key USB keyboard and a USB optical wheel mouse. While Windows 7 came preloaded, Lenovo continues to support Windows XP and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. The system is backed by a three-year warranty on parts and labor onsite, with other warranty upgrade options available.

Although Lenovo lists a starting price of just $600, that’s for an extremely basic system with no operating system. As configured, our evaluation unit priced out online at $1,513, but a web-based discount immediately dropped the total system cost to just $1,099. At that price, the Lenovo ThinkStation E30 is extremely affordable. While its performance won’t set any records, its value may be too good to pass up.

David Cohn is the technical publishing manager at 4D Technologies. He also does consulting and technical writing from his home in Bellingham, WA, and has been benchmarking PCs since 1984. He’s a contributing editor to Desktop Engineering and the author of more than a dozen books. You can contact him via email at [email protected] or visit his website at DSCohn.com.

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