Lenovo Thinkstation P620 in review: the ultimate Threadripper workstation
RRP $ 1,937.00
"The ThinkStation P620 is the most powerful single-socket workstation there is."
advantages
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Insane processor power
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Easy to upgrade
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Toolless design
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10Gb Ethernet
Think really big. If you could build a workstation with the most powerful components on the market, what would it look like? Well, it would probably look a lot like the Lenovo ThinkStation P620, a workstation with a Threadripper Pro processor that can handle the most demanding workloads.
It is the definition of overkill and is designed to optimize a specific set of applications for performance. For most people, it's an overpriced workstation that makes no sense if you could build your own computer with cheaper parts that you can buy separately. For others, especially those who are into deep learning and heavily threaded applications, it is the performance champion.
I've been using the Lenovo P620 for a few weeks now – and by "used" I mean tested because the fan noise is too much to cope with in everyday life. It has been proven time and time again to be one of the best performing desktops out there, provided you have the money for the right hardware.
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The Lenovo ThinkStation P620 is remarkably small considering the hardware you can stow in it. It's 17.3 inches long, 6.5 inches wide, and 18.1 inches high – a bit thinner than a mid-tower chassis, but about the same height. There is a handy handle on the front of the case to make it easy for you to pick up the device and you need to use it. The P620 can weigh over 50 pounds depending on the configuration.
Regardless of your configuration, the ThinkStation P620 comes with a three-year warranty standard and certifications for multiple software providers. Lenovo maintains a list that includes software from Adobe, Autodesk, Bentley, and Siemens, to name a few.
To open the side panel, Lenovo offers a simple, tool-free solution. You simply open a handle on the side wall with a push and then lift the side wall off. It's a simple, seamless design that allows for quick access to the internals. When my test unit arrived, I jumped off the side wall without thinking about it – no instructions required.
The side panel also reveals one of the P620's problems. There is no ventilation on the sides, top or bottom. Instead, the front of the case is almost completely open to allow air to flow through. The problem is, an 80mm fan and a couple of spare PCIe brackets (assuming you don't have any other cards installed) force the air out of the back. A single 80mm fan also takes care of the intake, although there is room for a much larger fan.
This makes the P620 a kind of air tunnel that lets massive amounts of air through the front and displaces it from the limited ventilation in the back. The P620 is also noticeably loud in idle. The dual 80mm fan heatsink for the CPU doesn't help much.
The sound only comes on during load, but I would have liked a fan curve for idling. You couldn't work next to the P620 without being distracted by the noise. The tradeoff, and the good news, is that the added noise means the cooling solution is working.
I appreciate the P620's tool-less, sleek design, but not the noise the design makes.
Even in Cinebench, the processor never rose above 70 degrees Celsius, which is a full 20 degrees below its maximum operating temperature. This is not a perfect cooling solution, but it is an effective one.
Some bigger fans would have helped the noise. Dust filters would have been nice too, especially on a machine that constantly pushes a lot of air through. After only one week of use, the front fan was covered with dust. I also removed the fan covers for the RAM – more on this in the "Internal" section – and found lumps of dust in them.
I appreciate the P620's tool-less, sleek design, just not the noise the design makes. It's built like a server – and unfortunately it sounds like a server too.
Connectivity
The P620 has enough ports to accommodate pretty much anyone. This includes two USB-C ports and two USB-A ports on the front, all of which support USB 3.2. There are six more USB-A ports on the back of the case, four of which support USB 3.2 and two support USB 2.0. Unfortunately, the AMD chipset doesn't mean Thunderbolt on this computer.
On the back you also have access to PS / 2 ports for older peripherals, audio / microphone inputs and outputs and a 10 Gbit Ethernet port. This is a big win for the P620 because you can plug it into a high bandwidth network without bothering with an add-in network card. If you want to go wireless, you can use the built-in Intel AC 9260 chip, which includes Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
As storage, you have space for up to two 2 TB M.2 drives and up to four 4 TB spinning hard drives. An integrated RAID controller enables you to access RAID 0 and 1 on the SSDs as well as RAID 0, 1, 5 or 10 on the rotating drives.
I can't think of a situation where the P620 doesn't have enough connectivity. There are plenty of USB ports and space for hard drives, and anything you can't connect directly to the system is likely going through the network. And the 10 Gbit Ethernet port offers plenty of bandwidth for this.
Internals
| Central processor | AMD Ryzen Threadripper Pro 3995WX |
| GPU | Nvidia Quadro RTX 8000 48GB |
| Storage | 128 GB Octa-Channel DDR4-3200 ECC |
| storage | 1 TB M.2, up to two M.2, up to four HDD |
| power supply | 1000W 80+ platinum |
| USB ports | 10, eight USB-A, two USB-C |
| Thunderbolt ports | None |
| Networking | 10Gbit Ethernet, WLAN |
| Ports | Headphone / microphone connection, PS / 2, audio in / out |
My test device was built with some of the highest quality parts available today, which shows how much power you can put in the ThinkStation P620. At the heart of the system is a Threadripper 3995WX, a massive 64-core, 128-thread processor that can boost up to 4.2 GHz.
All P620 configurations are based on these Threadripper Pro processors. They are based on the same architecture as the normal Threadripper range, with just a few key differences. They support octa-channel memory instead of quad-channel memory, and you can use up to 2 TB of ECC RAM, compared to just 256 GB of non-ECC in the standard range. In addition, they support 128 PCIe 4.0 lanes that fit AMD's Epyc server CPUs.
With the exception of the Threadripper 3945WX, Lenovo offers a 12-core, 24-thread part with a boost clock of 4.3 GHz. While there are four Threadripper Pro options, prices and performance vary widely. The top-of-the-line 3995WX costs nearly $ 11,000.
While these CPUs are the best of the best right now, they may not be long. It is rumored that Threadripper 5000 chips are set to hit the market later in 2021, and they will almost certainly outperform them.
The AMD chip is remarkable, as the direct competitors of the P620 use Intel almost exclusively. The HP Z8 and Dell Precision workstations use Intel Xeon chips, not Threadripper. There is no Xeon chip that can match the Threadripper 3995WX in terms of core count. For that you would have to get a dual socket system.
In addition to a beefy processor, the configuration supplied by Lenovo came with 128 GB DDR4-3200 memory and an Nvidia Quadro RTX 8000 with an impressive 48 GB video memory. Despite being a $ 10,000 upgrade, this card fits in the middle of Lenovo's options. You can scale down to a 2GB Quadro P620 and upscale up to two Quadro GV100s (at a $ 35,000 premium).
I used Lenovo's configurator to get an idea of how much the rig sent for review would cost. At the time of publication, it was priced at $ 14,861.92 thanks to a coupon on the Lenovo website. Without them, it would cost $ 25,624.
I released a similar device with the lowest prices I could find for any component, and the price was about $ 1,000 cheaper compared to Lenovo's price with a coupon. Keep in mind, however, that the Quadro RTX 8000 can cost up to $ 2,000 more than the lowest price I've found, so the difference comes in as you wash it.
If you've got the P620 on sale, it's actually a great deal. However, a Lenovo representative confirmed that the coupon is not constant. At full price, my test device is about $ 11,000 more expensive than buying and assembling the parts individually. At this price, I can handle a $ 1,000 difference, but a $ 11,000 gap is a different story.
There are other systems in this category that are also cheaper. A similarly configured system from Puget Systems costs around $ 16,000 and will likely have better airflow and cooling as it uses a Fractal Define 7 case and Noctua CPU cooler. Similarly, an identical system at Boxx costs about $ 20,000 – a full $ 5,000 less than the P620.
Keep in mind that this price is for configuration on the Lenovo website – in a real-world situation, companies will likely order some of these machines through a different channel. The P620 is too expensive to be a machine, but price doesn't really matter when it comes to a computer that can cost tens of thousands of dollars.
Inside the Lenovo P620
The P620 is almost entirely tool-free. Upgrades should only take a matter of minutes, with handy levers around all major components for easy replacement. This includes a bracket for the PCIe slots and 5.25-inch bays as well as levers for the power supply unit, intake fan and RAM covers.
Each of the levers is also coated in red, which makes them stand out from the black and silver inner parts. The motherboard was specially developed for this machine and has eight slots for DDR4-3200 ECC memory and two M.2 slots. There are a few passive heat sinks that cool various parts of the motherboard, as well as covers for the two RAM slot banks.
These covers are just a bit of plastic with a fan on top that will likely add to the noise. It's not ideal, but most ECC kits don't usually come with heat sinks and sit very close to a power-hungry processor.
On the underside of the case is the 1,000 watt 80+ platinum power supply, which you can replace by pressing down the lever. The power supply has no cables; Instead, it plugs into the case with a single plug and delivers 1000W of power without the mess of cables that comes with it.
What would normally take 15 to 20 minutes only takes a few minutes with the P620.
Next to it you will find either one or two drive cages, depending on the configuration. The standard configuration comes with a single drive cage for two additional hard drives. If you use these slots in your initial configuration, it comes with an additional drive cage.
This upgradeability is probably one reason why the P620 is so expensive. Replacing components is a breeze. What would normally take 15 to 20 minutes only takes a few minutes with the P620, which systems using standard parts cannot claim.
Processor power
There is no doubt about the P620's performance, especially when you choose a top-notch device. With the right parts, it is certainly one of the most powerful machines on the market, but the inflated price and high-quality components are only useful in a narrow range of tasks. If you're looking for general computing power with the P620, you're spending too much.
PCMark 10 gives a clear view of it. My test device got an overall score of 7,172, which is actually below the eight-liter Intel NUC 11 Extreme I recently tested. Not too surprising, however. PCMark is a general benchmark that tests everyday apps, and most apps are not optimized to use 64 cores and 48 GB of video memory.
Cinebench R23 shows more clearly how powerful the Threadripper 3995WX is. It achieved a respectable single-core score of 1,242, which is a step below the consumer Ryzen 5000 processors. However, Threadripper is designed for multi-core performance. In the multi-core test, the Threadripper 3995WX achieved a score of 61,261, which is well above anything we have ever tested. As a reference, the Ryzen 9 5950X achieved a multi-core score of 23,539.
There is no doubt about the P620's performance, especially when you choose a top-notch device.
When it comes to multi-core workloads, Threadripper shines. It does not dominate tasks that require a single core, but when it comes to distributed work that uses all 64 cores simultaneously, there is nothing like the Threadripper 3995WX in a single socket system.
Geekbench 5 told a similar story. In the single-core test, it lagged behind the latest consumer desktop chips and even some laptop chips. However, nothing came closer in the multi-core test. According to the Geekbench browser, the consumer Ryzen 5950X earned about half of the multi-core score.
Geekbench also gave me a chance to see how the Threadripper 3995WX fares against its non-pro sibling, the 3990X. The Pro-Chip I tested achieved a multi-core score of 32,517. The Threadripper 3990X achieved around 28,000 points in the high-end range under Windows and around 22,000 points in the low-end range. At least under Windows, the Pro model shows some significant improvements.
Put simply, the Threadripper 3995WX is the benchmark. In each representative test, the only processors that run faster are other Threadripper 3995WXs. The Pro range comes at a high price, but shows performance advantages over the Threadripper 3000 range, as well as support for more PCIe 4.0 slots, octa-channel storage, and much more storage.
Content creation
With the power of the P620, you can handle anything from deep learning to data science to creating dense content. To me, large content creation workloads seemed to be the right fit given the beefy GPU and CPU in my review unit. This is a machine that can generate, edit, and render faster than anything.
As Cinebench showed in the last section, the 3995WX Threadripper is a monster in multicore workloads. I turned to a number of Puget Systems' benchmarks for Premiere Pro, After Effects, and DaVinci Resolve to see how the P620 would perform in real life. It's stackable well, but content creation isn't the P620's true calling.
I started with Premiere Pro, where I did the extended test. This test isn't much longer, but it does include 8K testing – something the P620 should be able to handle in this configuration. It was passed with a total of 1,235 points. A system that rocks a current 32-core Xeon managed 1,001 in the same test, but with a weaker graphics card and significantly more memory.
This test also showed some weaknesses. Compared to systems with a cheaper Threadripper 3990X, my test device is around 200 points behind. Most of these systems also used an RTX 3090, which is much cheaper than the Quadro RTX 8000. You pay a premium for workstation-class parts, and PugetBench for Premiere Pro shows that.
The After Effects test showed this, too, with no clear difference between the 3990X and the 3995WX. The same applied to my handbrake test, in which the P620 achieved the rendering time of a machine with a consumer-class Ryzen 9 5950X.
Blender showed a bigger difference. The RTX 3090 was about twice as fast as the Quadro RTX 8000 with CUDA for rendering. DaVinci Resolve, however, was a little different. Compared to a system with Threadripper 3970X and RTX 3090, my test device was about 9% faster, mainly on the back of the 4K media handling.
As these tests show, a large part of the purchase price depends on software and features. The 3995WX is more powerful than the 3990X, but more memory, more memory channels, and more PCIe lanes are a big part of why it's more expensive. The Quadro RTX 8000 is also more expensive because it has an enormous amount of video memory, but also because it offers rock-solid driver support.
The Quadro RTX 8000 isn't built for gaming, but I'd be remiss if I didn't make good use of a $ 6,000 GPU. Fire Strike Ultra showed how much the Quadro RTX 8000 is wasted on gaming as it got an overall score of 8,667 – the bottom 1% of scores compared to the RTX 3090, the most RTX 3090 results.
At 4K Ultra with activated ray tracing, the Quadro RTX 8000 managed 37 frames per second (fps) in Cyberpunk 2077. The RTX 3090 is approaching 60 fps (although it's still struggling to get there). If you need proof that a Quadro wasn't designed for gaming, it's here – but you can still have a little fun after the work is done, provided you turn down a few settings.
Although my test device was equipped, the P620 is limited to Threadripper Pro processors and Quadro graphics cards (as well as a few AMD workstation GPUs). The Threadripper Pro chips are more powerful than their non-Pro counterparts, but not by much (especially when it comes to content creation tasks). The benefits tend to show in other areas, so keep that in mind.
Our opinion
The Lenovo ThinkStation P620 is a top-of-the-range workstation with a price to match. It features some of the fastest components on the market and a smart, tool-free design that makes upgrades easy. It's too loud and the extra power is lost in many situations, but there's no denying how much the P620 has to offer to those who can take advantage of it.
The price is the main problem as there are almost identical systems from smaller system builders for less money. But compared to the Dells and HPs in the world, Lenovo is the only one offering workstation options with Threadripper Pro parts. Plus, if you order multiple systems, you can likely get a deal with the P620.
Are there alternatives?
Yes sir. Aside from the case, motherboard and power supply, the P620 uses parts that you can buy and assemble yourself, which saves you a lot of money. System manufacturers like Puget Systems and Boxx also have similar options that cost less than the P620. Competitors like Dell and HP are currently tied to Intel processors.
How long it will take?
Depending on your hardware configuration, the P620 can last for many years – maybe even a decade. It's a computing powerhouse that can be easily upgraded, and the power supply is big enough to accommodate even the most power hungry components.
Should you buy it?
Yes, if you can get a deal. The P620 is a great one on offer. At full price, there are options from other system manufacturers that are cheaper and come with off-the-shelf parts.
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