Review: New Lenovo ThinkStation P410 Offers Xeon Processors

Lenovo finished out the year much the way it began, with the release of yet another new workstation. The latest system to arrive at our lab is the ThinkStation P410, an entirely new entry in the company’s P-series workstation lineup. Built for businesses involved in engineering, architecture, finance and media & entertainment, the P410 also caters to individuals involved in rendering, simulation, game development, animation and 3D CAD modeling. The new ThinkStation P410 offers mainstream power at what had formerly been an entry-level price.

The new Lenovo ThinkStation P410 delivers mainstream workstation performance at new affordable price points. Image courtesy of Lenovo.

The Lenovo ThinkStation P410 comes housed in a tower case with a red touch point marking its integrated handle. The case measures 6.89x14.8x16.77 in. (WxHxD) and our evaluation unit weighed just 21 lbs. The front panel features a pair of Lenovo Flex Bay modules that can support either a standard drive or an ultra-slim optical drive, media card reader and FireWire (IEEE 1394) port. The system we received included a standard 5.25-in. DVD +/-RW dual-layer drive in one of the two Flex bays. The space below these bays contained a 9-in-1 media card reader, two USB 3.0 ports, headphone and microphone jacks and a power button.

The rear panel provides PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports, four more USB 3.0 ports, two USB 2.0 ports, an RJ45 network jack, and audio jacks for line-in, line-out, and microphone. The NVIDIA GPU in our evaluation unit included four DisplayPorts.

Enhanced Expandability

To access the interior of the P410, you must remove two non-captive screws and press a round button to release the left side panel. Unlike other models in the P-series, not all components in the P410 can be removed without tools. For example, the 450-watt power supply is attached to the metal chassis with four screws.

The motherboard features four full-height PCIe expansion slots: two PCIe 3.0 x16 slots, a PCIe 3.0 x8 slot, and a PCIe 2.0 x4 slot. There are also four DIMM (dual in-line memory module) sockets flanking the CPU and a pair of internal hard drive bays. Cooling is provided by a pair of fans.

At $1,043, the base P410 configuration includes a quad-core 3.1GHz Intel Xeon CPU, but that’s just the starting point. Lenovo offers a choice of four different Xeon processors. Our evaluation unit came with a 3.6GHz six-core Intel Xeon E5-1650 v4 processor. This Broadwell CPU has a maximum turbo speed of 4.0GHz, 15MB SmartCache, and a 140-watt thermal design power (TDP) rating, adding $340 to the base price.

The base configuration also comes with 8GB of RAM, installed as a single 8GB module. Our system included 16GB of RAM, installed as a pair of 8GB 2400MHz ECC (error correcting code) DIMMs, a $126 upgrade. The ThinkStation P410 can accommodate up to 64GB using 16GB modules.

The base configuration includes one 1TB 7200rpm SATA hard drive, but the P410 supports up to four internal SATA drives and up to three PCIe M.2 drives. Our unit came with a single 1TB solid state 6GB/second SATA drive, which added $430 to the price. The system also supports RAID 0, 1, 5 and 10 arrays.

The system we received also came with an NVIDIA Quadro M4000 video adapter in lieu of the NVIDIA NVS315 included in the base model, a $725 upgrade. Based on the Maxwell GPU, this graphics card features 8GB of GDDR5 memory and 1664 CUDA parallel processing cores. Although the M4000 takes up just a single PCIe slot, its 120-watt maximum power consumption requires an auxiliary power connection. The M4000 can support up to four 4K displays.

Midrange Performance

Thanks to its six-core CPU and NVIDIA Quadro graphics, the Lenovo ThinkStation P410 did quite well in all of our benchmark tests. On the SPECapc SOLIDWORKS benchmark, the ThinkStation P410 was at or near the top on all aspects of this test, compared to other single-socket workstations. On the very demanding SPECwpc benchmark, however, the results were more of a mixed bag, with some results at the top, some at the bottom, and most falling midway between those extremes. The P410 completed our AutoCAD rendering test in just 50.1 seconds. The system remained nearly silent throughout our tests.

Lenovo pre-loaded Windows 10 Professional 64-bit. Windows 7 is also available. Like other Lenovo workstations, the new ThinkStation P410 comes with a 3-year on-site warranty. The ThinkStation P410 is independent software vendor certified for applications from Adobe, Autodesk, Dassault Systèmes, PTC, Siemens and others. Customers can also download the recently released Lenovo Performance Tuner (LPT) to optimize the performance of their P410 workstation for specific applications.

While the base configuration costs just over $1,000, that buys you an entry-level graphics board, mechanical hard drive, and 8GB of RAM. As equipped, the system we received is currently available for $2,515. At that price, it delivers a level of performance that should result in the Lenovo ThinkStation P410 finding a welcome home on the desks of many DE readers.

Single Socket Workstations Compared

More Info

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Lenovo ThinkStation P410

• Price: $2,515 as tested ($1,043 base price)

• Size: 6.89x14.8x16.77 in. (WxHxD) tower

• Weight: 21 lbs.

• CPU: 3.6GHz Intel Xeon 6-core E5-1650 v4

• Memory: 16GB DDR4 ECC at 2400MHz

• Graphics: NVIDIA Quadro M4000

• Hard Disk: 1TB SSD SATA

• Optical: 16X DVD+/-RW

• Audio: integrated Realtek ALC662 audio (front panel: headphone; rear-panel: line-in, line-out, microphone)

• Network: integrated gigabit Ethernet, one RJ45 port

• Other: Six USB 3.0 (2 front/4 rear), two USB 2.0 ports rear, PS/2 mouse and keyboard ports, four DisplayPorts on NVIDIA board, 9-in-1 media card reader

• Keyboard: 104-key Lenovo USB keyboard

• Pointing device: Lenovo USB optical wheel mouse

• Power supply: 450 watts, 92%, 80 PLUS Platinum qualified

• Warranty: 3-years parts and labor