My company bought this Lenovo P3 through our IT provider for $2800. It’s a dedicated CAD/CAM station. I offered to spec and build the pc for the price they were quoted to maximize the performance. Support and standardization won out and this is what I got. Am I missing something or is this a huge ripoff. I9 13900k VPro, 64GB (mismatched, extra 32GB for $250) RAM, 1TB m.2, RTX A2000 12GB graphics. I understand that CAD graphics are not the same as gaming but the card is equivalent to a RTX 3050. I just feel like the component quality is shit for a hard working PC. CPU cooler is micro, case fans are weirdly placed and held in with rubber pull plugs, m.2 is hanging off the bottom of the mobo.
I could have build a badass CAD/CAM Pc for $2800. Correct me if I’m wrong….
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I’m all for custom builds, but you have this all wrong from a business perspective. There’s a lot more to it than just picking the fastest pretty looking components possible.
There are a lot of things I dislike about these OEM PCs but something they tend to get right is building a durable computer that will still work after being thrown down a flight of stairs 5 times.
They also tend to use components that are fiarly high up on the quality and reliability scale, rather than spending money on fancy decoration.
You could spend $50 on a single RGB fan and that RGB fan would last half as long as the “crappy” looking fans OEMs use.
From a business perspective in terms of not wasting employee time doing something that isn’t the job they are paid for, these types of computers make sense to buy.
business grade hardware is more expensive, cause they know business can afford more expensive.
also the hardware is designed for 24/7 use. maybe the ram is ECC.
u can see the case was designed for improved airflow and easy repair.
even amazon basics did a better job http://www.amazon.de/dp/B07V4TFWFZ?starsLeft=1&ref_=cm_sw_r_apan_dp_SMCES6MR5Q05SP285JY2
1. Mismatch, but it’s running at JEDEC specs, stability.
2. That Quadro has ECC memory
3. Nope, that is more convenient way to accessing your M.2, it’s using a simple latch. Have you try accessing your M.2 on consumer mobo?
Because it’s for business. Companies aren’t buying them with the intent to change the internal parts. They keep them I til out of warranty or a new contract comes along and send the s stuff to surplus.
That’s the most amount of fan I’ve seen from brand prebuild, and they even bother to put a heatsink of sort for the MOSFET vrm
32gb for 250🤦
I’m with corporate on this. I would never build a custom rig for work.
13900k on that cooler? Either they have an absolute insane power limit or their RnD team was on something when thinking that cooler is enough.
They’re made for high volume and being a “business grade” product 99% of users won’t be adding or replacing any hardware so no real need for accessibility or higher performance hardware. Plus warranty and support are available. Gotta look at these for longevity, not high performance.
Exactly as you stated support, stability and uptime is more important to a business than maximizing performance
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> weirdly placed and held in with rubber pull plugs,
That is a good thing. It reduces vibrations/sound.
The PC looks fine to me. And their NVME solution Looks very effective.
Another reason businesses don’t want custom PCs, warranty. With this lenovo and the right warranty lenovo sends someone out in 48hrs to fix it VS trouble shooting what component in the custom build failed and RMAing it. I’ve made a living most of my adult life selling computers to businesses, pre-builts belong here in my realm.
My job does the same thing. They order horribly outdated X-299 Xeon systems from a vendor for our machine vision systems. They can barely keep up with the level of product inspection my company wants to do.
But the contract and being able to point the finger and blame somewhere when it fails is far more valuable to them than downtime and speed.
I think liability and service is what they care about most.
If I, an average PC enthusiast, were to build a PC for CAD/CAM for $2800, I’d avoid name-brand prebuilts like my life depended on it. I’d have a 13900K with a 420mm AIO, 64GB of DDR5-6000, an RTX A4000, the whole 9 yards.
The difference between me and a business is that I *want* longevity in my machine, but a business *needs* longevity. For me, I can tolerate replacing an AIO cooler if the pump fails or troubleshoot an issue with my RAM speeds. I won’t like it, but it won’t be the death of me if it happens. A business actively losses money if their workstations fail and need to be repaired, so it’s in their best interest to have their PCs as low-maintenance as possible, even if that sacrifices on some performance and value-for money.
From a consumer perspective, it looks like a scam, but from a business perspective, that PC is built with as few points of failure as possible while still being able to get work done, and easy to repair so downtime is minimized if something breaks.
I understand your confusion, but this PC is only bad if you look at it as a regular person and not a business.
Oh man they totally got taken for a ride and highway robbed.
If I were you I’d send an email to the head of that department, with the photos, and your professional opinion on the quality of work that was done for that $2800 price point, be sure to make clear you offered to part source and build a whole one for less, include photos of your previous works.
I think the consistency is key. Bigger companies with IT departments need to have consistent hardware on the machines and be able to order another at a moments notice. Otherwise they’re going to spend much more time troubleshooting employees computer problems.
Bro this thing will run SC2 on a soft medium graphics quality, but will render like a motherfucker.
even that 2 ram sticks not the same, someone must touch it
It’s all about warranty.Chances are nobody is ever going to open or clean this thing.As soon as something even tiny goes wrong,they’ll just ship it back to the manufacturer and it will get replaced after the warranty is out.
ThinkStation – Makes you rethink your life choices when you buy one.
Looks fine.
Their goals are much different, the parts and case aren’t planned with consumers doing anything to the pc. Where as consumer parts have usability in mind. They are also built to be shipped however far they will ever need to go and not get damaged from movement, hence all the support pieces inside the case.
They are also usually built for specific specs and aren’t built with upgrading in mind. That’s why sometimes you will see proprietary motherboards and proprietary power supplies.
13900k is going to run at all of 1GHz across all cores with that 50W aluminium cooler.
I work with a mismatch of HP workstations and classic off the shelf gaming PC that the management bought because it was cheaper. The gaming PCs all are more powerful and younger than the HP workstation yet they break more often, are less reliable (failing PSUs, SSDs, GPUs, etc) than the HP. Also when I need to swap a part like a NVMe it takes less than a minute on the HP because it’s designed to be easily swapable. There is a very clear difference between a professional grade computer and a consumer one. Your ThinkStation will last a long while even if it’s moderately powerful.
Seems optimized for function. Not form. Not necessarily bad.
Don’t underestimate standardization.
I work in IT (like a lot of people of reddit, specially in this sub).
I use hundreds of lenovo tower / laptop. (small use of CAD / 3D thought.
I spend roughly 10h max on all the lifetime of a PC (6~8 year in my company) for setup and maintenance.
> I set him up, throw it under the desk of a user, don’t talk about it for 6 year.
I build for myself and friends, and can take a LOT of more time for parts list, building, troubleshooting, strange issue, random crash etc. Each PC take more than 10h in 8 year.
If we used 150+ computer build by ourself, we will need more people in IT team a least one full time. So, the money you win with the parts, you loose in other place and your user have bigger downtime.
Warranty and support, mostly.
Your time is worth more than building a better PC, or finding a better deal then having to support it if and when something goes wrong. That’s just how this industry works, and companies like Lenovo and middlemen like CDW know it and bank off it. You have bigger fish to fry, so fire up that stove and get to work!