Best Place to buy the Lenovo ThinkStation P520 PCSP - pcserverandparts.com/build-your-own-custom-lenovo-thinkstation-p520-workstation/ use code F51267SF to save 5%
For 1080p gaming the cpu floor is very low so that even old office pc can run games just fine as long as it has enough cores and the gpu can also handle it. Plus for this esports stuff they test typically have very low hardware reqs on top of it all.
@@1guzuratfn are you gonna get it new or used? If you’re getting it new you should get a 580 2048sp or if your going used get a 4gb 960 if you need the no external power get a rx 460
I've come to appreciate these retired office/workstation PCs, they're so affordable and easy to work on. Currently I'm gaming at 1080P on an upgraded SFF Dell OptiPlex 7010 and have been really impressed, but that ThinkStation takes it to another level. As usual, great video.
As someone with the EXACT same specs other than a bigger ssd and more ram I have to agree with them it's a great budget build the main issue is cooling but if you replace the fans with noctua fans like mine it's great.
@@blademan7671 The fans all use 4 pin so it’s not a issue there and while the stock cooling was good it is a bit loud while benchmarking so putting a noctua fan usually fixes the problem.
One thing alot of people need to take note of about Xeon PCs is they support quad channel memory instead of dual channel so the cpu can use 4 sticks of ram like a i7 benefits from dual channel it makes a massive difference in performance for quad channel
@@bofasofa9399 no? 1080 still has the massive benefit of high FPS which for things like shooters is near mandatory, for shooters I'd much prefer 1080p 240hz over 1440p 144hz
@@bofasofa9399that's a very judgemental statement. Some of us mature folk have to squeeze everything we can out of each precious dollar. 1080p is perfectly fine for a lot of us.
I upgraded my old elitedesk 800G2 with i-6700 to optiplex 7040mt and slapped used RX6600 I got for $160, Corsair SF600 PSU and new Noctua fans. Runs Bordelrands 2 at high settings at 1800p at 100fps! 😊
Awesome build. I just put together my first pc and setup! I have a gtx 1070 8gb, 16gb ddr4 ram, i5 7400, 700w gold rated psu, 2tb hdd, Samsung 60hz monitor, steelseries keyboard and Logitech mouse. Total setup cost me $330usd, all off Facebook marketplace!
PCs like this seem to be a killer deal for those knowledgable on building them. For those just getting into it, it seems highly intimidating, especially with hearing how certain cards can be risky or you how you need to undervolt them. That's why console seems the go to for the average person on a budget. We don't have to worry about sinking money into something that we don't know how to properly test or fix if it doesn't work. If I was confident I could build a system like this for $400-$500, it would be a no-brainer to do so. But my luck, something would burn up or not operate properly, and I'd just be stuck with it.
@@jeanpaultongeren125I can get a 2145 8 core xeon workstation p520 barebone for 220 is that a good deal once I add memory a SSD a copy of windows and a decent GPU like a 2070 super it'll be probably around 399$ in total
The thing with these systems is, as you mentioned in your later video, there is a serious amount of scope for upgrading them. if you manage to get hold of one of the 720 systems, or even a 920, they are dual CPU boards so getting hold of one with a lower end single CPU gives you massive headroom for CPU upgrades over time. Then there is the capacity for 2 x M.2 sticks, 300+ GB of RAM, multiple GPU options, loads of drive bays, you can even get a hot swap backplane upgrade for the drives. Sure they are limited on the PSU options and they are not really built with cooling upgrades in mind, especially the dual CPU models, but I'm sure that something could be done.
Funny how I purchased my P520 two weeks before this video came out. I got mine off eBay for $180 from a Texas dealer and they packed it real nice, it had expanding foam custom fit to the case and shipping box. It's a 2019 model equipped with a W-2135, 32GB of 2666 mhz DDDR4, 900w platinum PSU, but no GPU so I purchased a PNY 1070 XLR8 triple fan for only $100 off eBay. This machine will certainly put a stranglehold on budget pre-builds and other PCs that cost less than $800, I had no problems with performance other than slower data speeds that Xeons naturally have. It's also a far cry from what I had before, an HP Z220 SFF and later a Z230 SFF. I found both of them in the trash and only spent $70 on a GT 1030 to get them running decently. Both were equipped with Xeons, an E3-1245 V2 and an E3-1225 V3, they didn't have great performance because they were old CAD workstations but got the job done for some casual gaming. These machines, the p520 and higher models are oriented for graphics design, 3D modeling, and machine learning. They originally came with two Quadro RTX graphics cards, a 6000 with 24GB and an 8000 with 48 GB. I was somewhat blindsided by the overall task difference between my machines, one is for CAD, the other for AI development. I had looked for another HP workstation to upgrade to, but I found this Lenovo for a better price, not to mention that I adore Thinkpads of all kinds. I've had a few Brickpads and a couple of Thinpads and always like their modularity, the P520 suits that need with a lot of options available.
They are selling through Amazon now also. Ordered one with 64gb of RAM, no video card and no drive for under $200. Adding a video card and an m.2 will be a cheap upgrade.
Ayy supprised to see you here, been watching your vids recently. i picked up a LGA3647 8core+board + RAM combo for £350 on ebay and been using that as a daily driver and its been solid
@@IcebergTech the Xeon Gold / Platinum SKUs are cheaper and cheaper these days! I was thinking of selling it anyway so if you are interested can shoot you a DM/Email?
This thing can take Xeon W-2295 CPUs, an 18 core cpu, Cascade Lake that can boost greater than 4Ghz. It can support up to 512GB memory. And with all thos PCIe slots, you can take gaming to really high levels. It is unfortunately only PCIe 3, however, so with some of the newest cards you lose some performance.
I just finished putting one of these together too.Also my first ThinkStation. But w/ a 2145 processor and 32gig of ram to start. I added a new Samsung 2gig NVME and an old Nvidia 1070 .So far it runs v cool [ 28-32 degrees- in the Summer] cruises at 4.7 g and running Linux starts in seconds. These are solid rigs and and a good investment
I'm thinking of buying a refurbished 2145 system it's 220$ but I'll need my own storage memory windows copy and a decent GPU probably going 2070 super I can snag locally for a good price all in all probably 399$ do you think that's a good deal
@@Spencerwalker21 2070s are still $200 where I am, it's nice the 2145s have dropped down to $180. I might build one myself just for lols with a spare 1660super I have.
@@sinosoul yeah great idea I'm actually going at least to 4070 now especially because I have a 4k TV some 1440p Alan Wake 2 sounds great I also got a shit load of Amazon reward dollars but everything short of a 4080 has only 12gb of vram and yes pretty sold on Nvidia
Awesome! I just bought the very same rig except I got the 32gb ram version. I used a dell rx580 and a WD 1 TB nvme. This thing is super slick and I could only imagine what the p700’s or p900’s are like… not to mention the modern Lenovo work stations. How bout that thread ripper p620 tho?
@@bofasofa9399 yeah I’m sure you have a way better rig… but certainly paid for the extra. These are amazing for the price and will serve for a long time to come. Have fun being a comment troll!
I know this is a late comment but it bears stating. The whole reason these hit firesale is because of Retbleed. Read up on what it does to 6th and 7th gen Intel Processors. The CPU in this build only came out 3 years ago. They are so cheap because the people that bought them are unable to use them efficiently anymore because the mitigations cost them well needed performance. That being said im in for 1 or 2 because its an easy upgrade to a cascade lake 10c or 12c cpu with tons of home server potential.
As to what GPU you might use, some of the older Xeons tend to run better with Higher resolutions at lower FPS. Old Xeons make excellent 4k60FPS machines the goal being to push the system load as much to the GPU as possible. That being said if you want a more budget oriented build, I would say RTX2070 or 3060 could be nice. Maybe even an old flagship gtx 1080ti. As for AMD, you could probably get away with a RX6600/ 6650XT.
The issue is even the Nvidia gpus your listing are a bit more pricy than the RX 5700 XT not to mention when it comes to the GTX 1080 TI while it may be a good gpu the architecture is outdated and for newer titles they would prefer RNDA over it. Not to mention the RTX 2070 is a fair bit weaker than the RX 5700 XT and time hasn't made it that much better like the RDNA 1 gpus. So for the price to performance if you don't care about ray tracing the RX 5700 XT is your best bet or if your thinking more long term possibly a Intel Arc A750 for the advantage it gives over the RX 5700 XT and even the RX 6650 XT.
@@Spencerwalker21 The main issue with that card is the vram like all graphics cards nowadays even at 1080p. What type of gaming are you wanting to do and what resolutions/settings.
fastest cpu's for lga 2066 are 7980XE, 9980XE, or 10980XE, hyperthreading off and tuned for the highest clocks possible and then pushing the RAM for the lowest latencies.
Lenovo thinkstation are unmatched by pretty much anythink out there at the moment i have two p500 workstation with xeon 1650 v3 and rx 590 8gb and can play anything with adaptions thrown at it there are top dog to me💯👌🤙
I found these Lenovo thinkstations and thought the same thing , for upgrades I suggest 64gb or 32 GB on quad channel 2 m.2 nvme ssds a xeon 2155 w and a rtx 2080 or rx 6700 xt
I'd say for the future 64gb is gonna become the regular and of course a Intel Arc A770 16gb because while it may not beat the cards you specified right now it has enough raw power that with more driver updates can most likely beat even the likes of the RX 6800.
Do you think I can get this to power a rtx 4080 super TeamProfitcom 16 AWG GPU VGA PCI-e 8Pin PCI Express Graphics Video Card GPU VGA 8 Pin Female to Dual GPU 8(6+2) Pin Male GPU 8 pin Splitter Power Sleeved Cable 8 Pin GPU 12-inches (4 Pack)
Just bought the Lenovo p520 workstation for cheap 4k gaming. I heard from a Nate zone that did a few p520 videos saying it supports up to a 500 watt GPU so I think I'll be fine and that cable i mentioned is what he recommended but I want a second opinion so I've been asking other commentators here and reddit
6:00 Honestly, a used SanDisk CloudSpeed Eco Gen II for $45 gets you 2tb. Even after being used in servers; as long as they're in good health I'd trust it more than some no-name 1tb "new" SSD.
That pc while good for the ultra budget range won't really fair against this pc I had a HP Z440 and switched to this pc because the architecture is very old, the ghz isn't high, and the cache memory sucks. Thus when you get to a LGA 2066 system most of those issues are fixed and you have the advantages of it along with it.
Not sure what your problem was exactly with the 5700xt but I do want to mention if you use it for anything else that it will thermal throttle on games like Halo infinite and cod2 (which sometimes creates this odd fan noise), BUT if you undervolt the card to 1999mhz and 1108 volts(t comes out to 1.1 volts rather than the factory 1.2) this card runs great and and relavitely cool. I also put an aggress fan curve as well. Apparently this has to be done with most of these cards now.
Xeon Workstation on Overclocking board...I had SR-2 Classy, amazing computer had that for 13 years, was playing Cyberpunk 2077 in 1440@60FPS was just fine. Crazy amounts of Cores/Threads, 48 Gigs of RAM, 7x16 PCE lanes and the ability to actually keep the 16 threads per lane when using multiple lanes was insane...SLI Graphic cards anyone, yes please....Sure not a lot of games but the ones that did just in 2015 such as SkyrimSE, Fallout 3,nv,4.....Only problem is good used workstations with Xeon chips that overclock are highly desired by all sorts of enthusiasts not just gamers, so pricing is all over the place and can be high enough that getting a brand new enthusiast PC by selling your old one is a reality. A still working SR-2 Classy board is going to sell for about the same as a z790 Kingpin board if its near mint.
I have a Lenovo P520 w/ Xeon W-2145 and an HP Z440 with a Xeon E5-1650v4. Both are excellent for gaming. I think both cost around $500-560 CAD inculding Graphics card, NVMe and SATA SSD storage and 64 gigs of ECC runnig in quad channel. I prefer the P520, but the HP Z440 is conventionally easier to work in.
Me: “Yeah man I’m totally gonna get a ps5, I wanted a gaming pc but it’s a bit too expensive ” Also me: “Hold up toasty bros might of changed the game”
i would say this card is the max for this pc as in COD i observed the gpu utilisation was hovering between 80-90% most of the time which means that there's a slight bottleneck. other games were fine.
Searched up the processor and according to the officially supported CPU list for Windows 11, the Xeon W-2135 is officially supported! Might consider that for my next PC.
I searched too, and I don't know if they mention it, but these processors are Skylake. It seems the top dog for this socket is the W-2195... 18 cores, 36 threads, 2.3-4.3GHz, 24.75MB of cache. Closest Core i-series chip equivalent is Core i9-7980XE. Though it's listed as X299 compatible, whereas the W Xeons use a C422 chipset. Same socket, though. IDK. This setup seems not very far behind last-generation stuff, though... the board has m.2 and lots of PCIe (even if it's only 3.0) and quad channel DDR4. And no, ECC doesn't have but one extra chip per row (I think), they're probably thinking of buffered registered DIMMs which have a bunch of chips. I would like to see performance before and after upgrading to quad channel memory.
You guys should try a similar build with the RTX 2070 Super. May be some CPU bottleneck but that card is definitely looked over right now, you can get it for 180-250 depending on how hard you search.
It's about the same performance as a 5700xt, so it is very similar to the results you get here. And I think you normally can get a 5700xt cheaper than a 2070 super.
@@Daybreak194 Thats true but correct me if I'm wrong i think the 2070s is faster once you get to 1440p and 4k. Also, this isn't important to a lot of people but the 2070s has fairly good RT support while the 5700xt has none at all. You also miss out on NVENC and DLSS which are important parts of a decision for me although I know that to some people raw performance is all that matters. But I get what youre saying though and for people who don't care about the reasons I mentioned you should definitely go for the 5700xt Edit: Looking at a gaming benchmark and from the looks of it they are very close in comparison with one another. In fact, the 5700xt even outperforms the 2070S in a couple of titles. Here's the video for anyone who's curious. This isn't my video or anything, I just looked up a benchmark. ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-FUab8gODsnE.html&ab_channel=NJTech
COD was cpu bound. Not sure why you ran FSR when you had the extra overhead on the gpu. I’d rather be gpu bound than cpu bound. I think you said FSR on balance. Could do quality and not loose much if any fps
I built this pc aswell worth the 5700xt but can’t get it to boot to windows… I’ve tried everything but it will just go to the windows recovery error 0x0000000f I believe and I can’t find out why. I’m about to just throw this thing in the trash
I put a 4gb rx580 jtptc and im getting 50-60 fps in cyberpunk the first time I opened it without changing any settings. Not sure if it auto detects settings but I’m also building another one with an 8gb model next.
I know it's 1 year later but have they ever done videos on the dell precision t5810 as they r pretty powerful and cheap for what they r and I've recently bought one
Aesthetically, inside and out, I prefer this computer to a glass panelled gaming PC. Question: Can I use all the extra connected CPU PCIe channels the chip has for extra NVMe storage?
After seeing this might want to give one of those units a try. Especially since I've already have SSD to Hardrive and could use a back up system in case my main unit breaks or has problems. Also I've had some issue with upgrading servers. Plus did a ebay search and saw some good prices on ones with no Hard Drive/SSD and GPU.
hey guys just a reminder that used gpus are not worth it get the warranty and gpus do die alot do and you dont know what the gpu your buying is in shape wise like if it was mining in a hot case if it was dropped, if you can save up for new always unless you buying everything used.
I wanted to from my HP Z440 the issue is HP is very hard to customize when it comes to cpu coolers and all that on top of that the bios is usually locked down so it really isn't great to tinker with.
As much as 5700xts are dirt cheap on the used market. They were also one of the top mining cards during the full length of the Ethereum boom. So it's really buyer beware when you buy them used/refurbed. You are probably better off spending the extra bucks and get a 6650xt and save yourself the headache.
Thankfully I got a cheap one that wasn't mined on I'm sure if you showed ebay that it was mined on and the listing didn't specify it then you could get a refund.
I would check the thermal paste on any card I bought that I thought might have been a mining card. If the Toasty Bros saw that it was bad/nonexistant (after the fact, sadly) then what happened is there were probably hot spots in the silicon and burning out parts of the die, killing the chips. They should have checked the paste before they killed the card. They checked the paste on the CPU... bad Toasty Bros...
I have a HP OEM SFF that I setup for my kids. It has an i5-6500, 32 GB DDR4, 1 TB GEN 4 NVME connected via a Saberent NVME to PCI adapter in a GEN 3 slot (it gets full GEN 3 speeds so I’m happy), and a GT 1030 LP. What would be the best GPU upgrade for this setup, that could still fit into a LP PC (it can be dual slot)?