S30, D30, and C30 ThinkStations have announced!!

[psuturtle Lenovo Staff]

It's not the best press release in the world, but Lenovo officially announced the 30-series ThinkStations today.

Press release:

http://news.lenovo.com/article_display.cfm?article_id=1577

Product tour (Youtube):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VpwIiSBKYN8

Feel free to ask questions if you have them.  I "think" I'm allowed to answer them now

[erik Community SuperMod]

sure... where's kepler quadro?

(joking)

edit:  to actually make this a productive post...

30 series spec sheet: http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/workstation/cleandesign/pdfs/resources/spec_sheet/Spec_Sheet_30_Se...

S30 datasheet:  http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/workstation/cleandesign/pdfs/resources/Datasheets/S30_DS_WW_28Marc...

C30 datasheet:  http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/workstation/cleandesign/pdfs/resources/Datasheets/C30_DS_WW_2Apr20...

D30 datasheet:  http://www.lenovo.com/products/us/workstation/cleandesign/pdfs/resources/Datasheets/D30_DS_WW_29Marc...

[lead_org Microsoft MVP Contributor]

they have finally arrived....

[ELaimins]

Well done Turtle and Erik!

Available nexr Monday too? Cool...

One thing, perhaps an oversight, no mention of SSD support in the "WORkStAtION StORAGE" section of the D30's specsheet - not even for a cache/sustem drive?

One more Q: will Big Blue still keep on performing Thinkstation service? (I hope so, IBM"s WS hardware support devision rocks!)

Still, can't wait until next week.

Thanks guys!

[psuturtle Lenovo Staff]

To be honest, I've already found errors in the "datasheets" out on the website.  Working to get those corrected.  SSDs are certainly supported....at launch it will be in 128GB and 256GB capacities.  No changes to service to my knowledge.

[psuturtle Lenovo Staff]

Oh, and if you read the competition's releases....they don't have Kepler yet either   Unfortunately, nobody wants to share the spotlight....meaning you'll rarely ever see NV and Intel announcing anything new around the same time.  This puts us in a huge pickle from a development standpoint as you ideally want to be time to market with both.  Throw in Microsoft every few years and it's a party.

[erik Community SuperMod]

the thinkstation PSREF sheets were updated this morning with C30 / D30 / S30 info.

get your copy today at lenovo.com/psref 

[GTVic]

Thanks for the info. It seems like the E30 and S30 can be configured with similar options. Because the S30 is not available for online order customization it is hard to tell what the difference would be.

If it is possible to configure the S30 and E30 with similar specs (processor, RAM , Quadro 2000 Video, ECC RAM etc), what is the essential difference between the two?

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Just a bit of background - we find that what manufacturers consider a high-performance workstation is not often what we would consider high-performance. For example we could spend $3K on an HP workstation but regardless of it having 8 cores and 8GB of ECC RAM and dual power supplies, if it runs at 2.2GHz and the same office can buy a $1.5K i7 3.2GHz machine from a local computer store that leaves the HP in the dust then our IT department doesn't come off very well when we can only offer these outdated "workstations". So this time we are hoping to get a better result and I think that starts with looking at S30 vs E30 and look at what type of "performance" we are paying for. Essentially what we want is raw speed which is sometimes not compatible with machines sporting server class components.

Thanks,

Greg

[psuturtle Lenovo Staff]

The differentiation between E30 and S30 is actually very similar to the differentiation between E20 and S20.

I don't know the E30 specs by heart, but in general:

E30

-uses E3 Xeons or Core i3/i5/i7  (4 core max, 1333MHz memory bus max, 8MB cache max)

-can support integrated video

-limited HDD and RAID support, SATA only

-4 DIMM slots, UDIMM only

-single x16 slot for graphics, PCIe gen2

-max video card support is Q2000

S30

-uses E5 sandy bridge Xeons (up to 8 core, up to 1600MHz memory bus max, up to 20MB cache max)

-no integrated video, discrete only

-SATA and SAS support, support for 3 HDDs and RAID 0,1,5

-8 DIMM slots, UDIMM and RDIMM support (up to 128GB total with 8x16GB RDIMM)

-dual x16 slots for graphics, PCIe gen3

-max video card support is for a single Q5000 (can be paired with another non-aux powered card like Q2000)

Raw speed is a hard thing to quantify.  It really depends on which type of software and applications you plan on running.  If  your software can't take advantage of high core counts, then going for a low core/high clock speed CPU is your better choice (fyi, the E5-1620 clocks in at 3.6G with Turbo+ support).  If you're just comparing raw CPU clock speed, there are few advantages to buying a workstation over a run of the mill desktop.  Workstation customers have other major buying points such as graphics performance, storage performance, expandability, and reliability....and workstations can excel in ALL of these areas whereas desktops usually only hit on one or two.

[GTVic]

Thanks for the information. Perhaps at the level we are looking at the price difference between E/S is not significant which is why the S20 was chosen over the E20. Our corporate IT is outsourced to IBM so how things work there is a bit of a mystery.

E30 Config $2.64K ($1.79K without the $850 160GB SSD)

Intel Core i7 - 2600 processor (3.4GHz, 8MB cache)

4GB Non-ECC PC3 1333MHz uDIMM

4GB Non-ECC PC3 1333MHz uDIMM

NVIDIA Quadro 2000 (1GB, DVI+DP+DP)

2.5" 160GB SATA SolidState Drive

3.5 "1TB SATA HDD 7200 rpm

My S10 seems about to kick the can hopefully we can get an E30/S30 to test soon.