Intel touts the top-of-the-line 12th Gen Intel Core i9-12900KS as “the world’s fastest desktop” chip; the Alder Lake family moves clock speed up to a smoking 5.5 GHz, pretty much the highest you’ll find on a PC. Finding it already installed in “value-oriented” offerings such as these from Lenovo is encouraging for those who need speedy 3D and compositing gear at a reasonable price. In the old days (a few years ago) you might have waited up to a year for top chips to drift down from premium-priced gear. The i9-12900KS retails for a $775 on up if you want some sense of a new rig’s price makeup.
Don’t count AMD out though. Its Ryzen 7 5800X3D will be out April 20th and notch in at an even more affordable $449. What’s unique here isn’t flat out speed but the world’s first 3D-stacked SRAM for desktop PCs. By going into the 3rd dimension, AMD can fit on some 96MB of L3, a huge amount. (L3 caches feeds L2 and L1 cache, thus making the CPU much more efficient.) -DO
Recently announced from the NVIDIA GTC conference – the ThinkStation P360 Tower and Tiny. This duo of workstations represents the next step in the value-oriented offerings of Lenovo’s workstation portfolio and is ideal for engineers, artists, and designers that work with clock-speed-driven 3D applications.
Built with the latest high-performance 12th Gen Intel processors and support for up to NVIDIA RTX A5000 graphics, the ThinkStation P360 Tower CPU is up to 58% faster1 than the previous generation and gives users the power of a workstation at the price of a desktop. The P360 Tower chassis also now comes with an industry leading 92% 750W power supply, as well as four PCIe Gen 4 slots for faster memory and access to storage technologies, along with robust I/O for peripheral support.
The ThinkStation P360 Tiny is the industry’s smallest desktop workstation at less than 1L in volume and offers uncompromising performance in a form factor that is 96% smaller than a traditional desktop for optimal mobility. Powered by the latest 12th Gen Intel Core processors, the ThinkStation P360 Tiny brings the professional power of a workstation in an efficient and portable design. The P360 Tiny supports the NVIDIA T1000 professional GPU, boasting up to 47% more performance2 than the previous generation GPU. The new workstation now also supports RAID storage configurations to improve data security and the Intel WiFi 6e standard for improved connectivity.
The P360 family continues Lenovo’s commitment to environmental sustainability, utilizing post-consumer recycled materials in the systems and their packaging, as well as important certifications like Energy Star and EPEAT Gold. The Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Tower and Tiny will be available in April, starting at $1,249.00 and $1,149.00, respectively. Visit www.lenovo.com/workstations/thinkstation-p-series for more information.
