Restoring a Used Lenovo ThinkStation P500 🖥 Building a Home Server 

S30 is a great device. In my country they were essentially at the same price on the used market, so it wasn't worth it.

Hi, that's a complex question, as there are many gaming cases, but I think you'll have a lot of problems to solve. Are you sure the motherboard will fit at all without modifying the case? It is non-standard. The power supply situation would complicated things a bit I think? It is cable-less, so you will need to keep it in the same position.. there aren't many gaming cases that would fit the power supply in such a position. You also need to cool the power supply, which is another thing to consider.. The front IO was non-standard as far as I can remember, so not sure if you will be able to solve that easily as well. You could find other workstations with similar hardware with more standard components to swap in a gaming case like the HP Z440 for example. Also, keep in mind that this case is much higher quality than the majority of the gaming cases (definitely all the cheap ones I have encountered).

It seems like you cannot use a P500 without a graphics card. I haven’t tested on my workstation as I don’t have access to it for a few months, but there are a lot of questions about this in the Lenovo forums.

Absolutely agree. It's a great affordable used PC that can be very capable. I also really like the looks. It's the best looking ThinkStation in my opinion.

​@@nltech1 Indeed. Coming from the Mac, I always thought PC's were pretty ugly and/or geeky looking… Until I saw those Thinkstations, used for CGI in a VFX facility I've been working for. They had those gorgeous (probably P620?) Thinkstations and it was love TKO! :D Of course, I couldn't afford those more expensive models, so I went for the P500. It's really got an awesome design (too bad they removed the bottom red stripe on some later models, I think it added a nice design finishing touch), it's silent and I'm loving the tool-less assembly. I've tried to match peripherals so I could stay in that "darth vader" color scheme. So I've added a Logitech G413 mechanic keyboard. It's awesomely gorgeous and the keys are just awesome (noisy and clicky like an old 80's keyboard) . Also, it is one of tha rare keyboards that offer a single red backlight (and not the usual "rainbow" rgb effect), but it's plaggued with ghosting and is actually a nightmare to use when you type. Also added the wireless silent Thinkpad mouse, which is one of the best mice I've ever used in my life (has dual bluetooth selector switch, so I can use it both with my P500 or my Macbook)… Only criticism on that P500 : pastics are a bit brittle. Mine came with a broken front cover that kept breaking and falling apart everytime I would move the tower, but I was fortunate enough to find a mint spare cover on eBay… That said, should my P500 die on me, I'd buy another one in a snap. Even though most parts are proprietary and can sometimes be expensive (like the higher spec'd PSU's and their scarce extra power cable. Needed one to power a hungry GPU), I'd buy another one instantly. If I could afford them, I'd buy one of the newer stations like the PX, P5 or P7 series, their design is just out of this world! ;) But that would be overkill for my needs.

Thank you!

😂 It’s not possible to please everyone with royalty-free music in the background