Lenovo ThinkStation P910 Review

Lenovo is a very experienced competitor in the world of the professional work station. Putting two CPU’s, copious amounts of RAM and several GPUs together to create computing powerhouses that can tackle

Lenovo ThinkStation P910 is a powerhouse, though not without its flaws

When shopping for a pre-made workstation, there are only a few options out there that can generally provide everything that one might look for. It’s not just about the parts inside, but also about the engineering going into the case, the warranty, the ability to provide service when you need it and of course the ability to upgrade the machine. For companies and everyone except, perhaps, the singular individual that wants a powerful workstation for scientific or demanding rendering work, that combination is necessary. For you and I, working for ourselves or perhaps in a very small company, it sometimes makes sense to seek out our own parts to build our own. We can save money and obviously provide our own support and can pursue warranty work through the various manufacturers ourselves. That isn’t always the best solution, however, when uptime is a bit more critical.

As with everything Lenovo, the attention to detail and level of quality is exceptionally high. Though they’re making quite a lot of headway in the consumer space, their bread and butter, and where they excel, is predominantly in the professional segment. The outer shell is made of high quality plastics with a very business like flair that follows the same aesthetic that’s understated and modern. It’s a massive 5U-sized case that’s nearly as heavy as it looks.

Lenovo offers a wide array of customization to meet the needs of any organization. Customization includes having up to 2 x Xeon E5-2650v CPUs with 24-threads each, 256GB of DDR4 ECC RAM, and any combination of SSD and traditional spinning storage between the four dual drive bays up to 4TB (spinning media) each. That means either 48TB of pure spinning media or 10TB of SSD drives. Massive customization, though we wish you’d be able to include faster and higher core count Xeon processors. Though highly threaded applications enjoy more threads, sometimes more threads and higher frequencies to boot would be nice.

ThinkStation P910 Specifications

Another highly desirable aspect of having a machine by Lenovo, and others even, is the modularity. Within the massive P910 are a large number of easily removable and replaceable parts. Easy as in completely tool-less and no more difficult to take out than lifting a secure lever. The air baffle, four drive bays, two PCIe access doors, three fans, the power supply, the optical drive, the motherboard, the front bay cage and two multi-function brackets are incredibly easy to service. Serving means either replacing failing parts or taking them out to keep things nice and clean. Modularity is key, and this is a massive selling point.