[Review] Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Tower




Without spending a lot to run a server or a private cloud at home, either the cost of the server itself or the power consumption the server will draw, this Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Tower can be one of your choice.


Product page (Malaysia): https://www.lenovo.com/my/en/workstations/t...r/p/LEN102S0006

Detail Specification & Documentations: https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkStati...tion_P350_Tower


I was looking for a workstation or entry server which support ECC RAM and able to fit in at least two 3.5" hard disk drives.
Main usage for this server will be a private cloud storage, with some other minor roles such as web hosting.
For private cloud storage, RAID1 is part of a requirement, and therefore the server casing must be able to fit at least two 3.5" hard disk drives.

This Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Tower suits my needs well. It runs on Intel desktop CPU but with ECC RAM support thanks to W680 chipset.
For the hardware configuration, I tried to make this machine as much future upgrade room as possible, while keeping the cost affordable for myself.

This machine will not be intended to run intensive tasks most of the time, and also there will be no graphics load needed at this time.
Therefore only one stick of RAM and no dedicated graphics card is configured.
On the other side, a power supply rating of 750W is selected to anticipate future upgrade or add-ons.
The Flex Bay is configured as an empty 3.5" HDD enclosure, so that the 2nd hard disk drive can be slotted in.


The list, as configured:

Processor	12th Generation Intel® Core™ i7-12700 vPro® Processor (2.10 GHz up to 4.90 GHz)
Operating System	Windows 11 Pro 64
Operating System Language	Windows 11 Pro 64 English
Memory	16 GB DDR5-4000MHz (UDIMM, ECC)
Memory Qty	1
Motherboard	Intel Alder Lake-S W680
First Video Adapter	Integrated Graphics
Onboard M.2 SSD G4 Boot Drive	YES
Onboard M.2 SSD G4	512 GB SSD M.2 2280 PCIe Gen4 Performance TLC Opal
OnBoard M.2 SSD G4 QTY	1
Second OnBoard M.2 SSD G4 QTY	0
Single AIC SSD G3 Boot Drive	NO
Single AIC M.2 SSD G3 QTY	0
Storage Boot Drive	No
First Storage Qty	0
Second Storage Qty	0
Flex Bay	Empty 3.5" HDD Enclosure
First Ethernet Adapter	Integrated Ethernet
WiFi Wireless LAN Adapter	Intel® Wi-Fi 6E AX211 2x2 AX & Bluetooth® 5.0 or above with vPro®
Flexible I/O Port	Flexible I/O Port Card-USB-C
Audio Card	Integrated Audio
Power Cord	LineCord - Malaysia
Power Supply	Tower 92% Power 750W
Rear Fan	REAR_SYSTEM_FAN
Language Pack	Publication - Traditional Chinese/Simplified Chinese/English
EPEAT Gold Certificate	EPEAT Gold Certificate
Warranty	1 Year On-site

Packaging

A 3-pin UK plug is provided in a separate small box, located inside the main packaging box.
The tower itself is sealed inside a plastic packaging using a red colour security sticker to deter tampering and to protect from water splashing.








Tower Exterior

On the left side, it is a house for slim optical drive, and a flex bay.
On the right side, from top to bottom, power button with power LED, disk activity LED, house for SDCard, microphone jack, headphone/microphone combo jack, USB-C 3.2 Gen 2 (data transfer only), 2x USB 3.2 Gen 1, and 2x USB 3.2 Gen 2




From top to bottom, Line-out (3.5mm), Flex-IO (Configured as USB-C port with both data transfer and video output support), HDMI Port, 2x Display Ports, 4x USB 3.2 Gen 1, Ethernet (RJ-45) Port, PCIe expansion card slot, and power connector.




View from the top




View from the side




Tower Interior

Tower interior with empty 3.5" HDD Enclosure mounted on Flex Bay.




Tower interior without empty 3.5" HDD Enclosure mounted on Flex Bay.




Closer up picture for the upper section of the tower interior




Closer up picture for the lower section of the tower interior




The "Empty 3.5" HDD Enclosure" removed from Flex Bay.




The 16GB DDR5 ECC RAM from Samsung








Power Supply Unit

The power supply unit provided might be a proprietary PSU, although it looks a lot similar to the ATX12VO.








Connecting 3.5" SATA Hard Disk Drives

According to the specification, P360 Tower is able to fit in up to 2x 3.5" SATA HDD or 4x 2.5" SATA HDD.
If you would like to install two 3.5" HDD on your own, you might want to add additional empty 3.5" HDD enclosure under Flex Bay option during your purchase.

For the current setup, two WD Red Plus 4TB are installed into the tower, one installed inside the enclosure on the Flex Bay, and the other one installed in the enclosure at the bottom of the tower.
Due to the design and the location of the bottom enclosure, the HDD has to be installed up side down, this is to ease the connection of both SATA cable and SATA power cable.
To install 3.5" HDD into the bottom HDD enclosure, first the front panel has to be removed, so that the black colour bracket inside the enclosure can be taken out.
No screw is needed to install the 3.5" HDD, which is very convenient.






Both SATA signalling cables and SATA power cables are provided inside the box.
The power for the SATA HDD are to be tapped from the motherboard rather than from the PSU, similar to ATX12VO design.








After completed all the SATA cable connections, head to BIOS setup page and you can have option to setup RAID for the two HDD.




Continue on next post.

This post has been edited by alexander3133: Jul 2 2022, 09:41 PM

Continued from "[Review] Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Tower"

ThinkStation P360 Tower System Information

CPU-z






HWiNFO64




ThinkStation P360 Tower Benchmark


Environment/Setup:
- Ambient: 29 to 30 degree Celsius
- Wi-Fi: Turned off via Windows
- Ethernet: 1Gbps
- Display: Connected via HDMI but monitor is off, using remote desktop


Cinebench R23

Cinebench R23	Score (pts)
Single Core	1890
Multi Core	16320

Geekbench 5

Geekbench 5	Score
Single Core	1851
Multi Core	11655

https://browser.geekbench.com/v5/cpu/15695318


CrystalDiskMark

[SSD] Default Profile


[SSD] Peak Performance Profile


[SSD] Real World Performance Profile



y-cruncher

y-cruncher	Total Computation Time (seconds)
Single Thread	667.327
Multi Thread	144.425

Browser Benchmark (Microsoft Edge)

JetStream 2


Speedometer 2


Ares 6


WEBXPRT4



ThinkStation P360 Tower Power Consumption

Measured using Uni-T UT230B-UK

Workload	Power Consumption	Power Factor
Soft Off	1 W	< 0.30
Idle in Windows (As Configured)	8 W to 9 W	0.30 to 0.40
Idle in Windows (+ 2x SATA)	11 W	0.40 to 0.50
Cinebench R23 (Multi Core), Peak	183 W	0.99
Cinebench R23 (Multi Core), Sustained	95 W	0.98
Prime95, Peak	186 W	0.99
Prime95, Sustained	95 W	0.98

Graph for CPU Package Power and CPU Package Temperature while running Cinebench R23

Single Core:


Multi Core:






This post has been edited by alexander3133: Jul 2 2022, 09:28 PM

Reserved again.

I have never used Synology product before, so can't comment on it and compare with it.

I believed only 1st slot is for GPU.

From this page under "Specifications":
https://psref.lenovo.com/Product/ThinkStati...tion_P360_Tower

Storage Support[1]
Up to 2x 3.5" SATA HDD or 4x 2.5" SATA HDD; also supports up to 3x M.2 SSD (2 by onboard, 1 by M.2 to PCIe® adapter )
• 3.5" HDD up to 4TB each
• 2.5" HDD up to 1TB each
• Onboard M.2 SSD up to 4TB each
• M.2 SSD by M.2 to PCIe adapter up to 2TB


This post has been edited by alexander3133: Jul 2 2022, 09:33 PM

I just checked, the front I/O is part of the motherboard itself.

Here is my order and delivery history:

Currently I am using the provided Windows 11 Pro.
For the cloud storage, I am running it inside Ubuntu under Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL).

The program for the cloud storage is called Nextcloud, hosted using Apache.

There are additional configurations and setup to run the cloud storage under WSL, particularly on the port forwarding and autorun.

I did use remote desktop to the workstation but did not run CPU intensive tasks at the moment.
I do know that this spec is overkill for just cloud storage, but I needed RAID + ECC.
The i7 CPU and 750W PSU are chosen for future just in case I needed for CPU intensive load and also add in graphics card.
Other than cloud storage, I also currently hosting GPS tracker server for my own usage.

Previously I used my router to host nextcloud server with USB flash drive as storage medium, that was just a temporary solution until I got this workstation.

Did not use Docker before, and you just introduced it to me.