Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

How big will the computer be for 3D rendering, industrial modeling and video editing? In the past, I had the impression that creative workers often had to be equipped with a chassis the size of an ATX mainframe. However, with the rapid development of chip technology, the previously unreachable configuration has been condensed into a small host such as the ThinkStation P360 Ultra.

Can such a 3.9L little guy really become a "eating tool" for professional enterprises and creative workers? CTOnews.com has received the RTX A5000 series from ThinkStation P360 Ultra and has brought you comprehensive testing. The basic configuration is as follows:

The design style of the exterior interface ThinkStation P360 Ultra still continues the serious style of the ThinkStation family, but it is even only 1/10 compared with other large models. BWH is only 202mm x 87mm x 223mm, only 3.9L in volume and about 1.8Kg in weight, so it is not too much to say that it is full and manageable.

The bottom and side of the P360 Ultra are provided with shock-proof mats, which means it can be placed vertically or horizontally, making it easy to adapt to different office environments.

There is a USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 port, a 3.5mm headphone port and two lightning 4 ports on the front. In most cases, only the front interface is enough to meet the needs of office expansion.

The front Think family Logo will show the signature red dot after being electrified, injecting the soul into this small steel cannon.

And the interface behind is even more shocking. P360 Ultra has 4 USB-A 3.2 Gen 2 interfaces, 3 large DP kernel display interfaces, 4 MiniDP alone display interfaces and two wired network ports in the large space of the slap. One of the network ports is a 2.5G high-speed network port, which is scalable enough to meet almost all office needs. Among these interfaces, the most eye-catching is the luxurious video output interface composed of 3 large DP core display interfaces and 4 MiniDP alone display interfaces. This means that we can connect up to 7 monitors, which can greatly improve productivity in professional painting, modeling, financial transactions and other occasions. But it's important to note that. There is no necessary MiniDP cable for unique output in the package, so it is best to prepare one in advance.

In addition to the machine body, there is a complimentary keyboard and mouse set and a 300W square power adapter in the package. This adapter is consistent with the specifications provided by some Lenovo high-performance notebooks and can be used in general. In order to match with such a productivity-focused mini workstation. We chose the ThinkVision P27q-20 monitor. This 27-inch 2K display supports up-and-down rotation and can effectively adapt to a variety of different office postures. The blessing of TUV Eye Care certification also makes it easy for creative workers to use it for a long time.

Do you wonder what kind of design makes it possible to fit the powerful core of the RTX A5000 series in such a small size? Let's take a look at it.

P360 Ultra machine dismantling is very simple, the whole process can be done without tools. There is a small folding handle on the back, which can be pulled out of the fuselage with a pull, even for ordinary employees who have no experience in machine installation.

After opening it, you can see that its CPU and GPU parts are completely separated by two independent heat dissipation modules to avoid heat dissipation conflicts.

Just press the snap button to lift the CPU heat dissipation module. There are two 16G DDR5-4800MHz memories below. The two modules form airtight air ducts through a turbofan, which dissipates heat quite efficiently.

The video card on the other side is the RTX A5000 series video card. The full RTX A5000 is so large that it is unlikely to fit into a small chassis. So this graphics card is also a specially customized RTX A5000 series, very small, but maintains the complete features of the high-end Ampere core.

The NVIDIA RTX A5000 series is not only small in size, but also uses a new Ampere architecture design. It supports real-time RTX ray tracing, AI artificial intelligence and high-level graphics computing capabilities, and the maximum power consumption is only 115W, so it is very suitable for this kind of mini workstation. In terms of core specifications, it has 6144 CUDA, 192 third-generation Tensor, 48 second-generation real-time light and shadow tracking cores, with 16G oversized GDDR6 memory (supporting ECC error correction), which is very suitable for game development, 3D design, film and television special effects and other professional work. In modeling rendering and video production software, RTX A5000 series can use CUDA to provide hardware acceleration for work. At present, almost all modeling software will optimize the GPU of NVIDIA, so it can achieve the coexistence of efficiency, stability and compatibility.

Turning to the back, the unique hardware construction of the P360 Ultra also surprised the author. The first thing that comes into view are two additional DDR5 memory slots. It is quite practical for 3D modeling that requires a lot of memory, and it is not difficult to add memory by yourself.

Pressed under the small fan next to it are two high-speed hard disk bits that support PCIE4.0*4. The introduction of active heat dissipation can keep high-speed hard drives cool and keep large files working at high speed for a long time. Samsung PM9A1, which comes with 512G hard drives, is the flagship of today's hard drives. In addition to the two PCIE4.0*4 high-speed hard drive bits, there is also a 2.5-inch hard disk bit below, which can expand a mechanical hard disk with amazing internal expansibility.

This is the ingenious interior design of the P360 Ultra. The whole machine adopts a three-fan + three-independent air duct design, so how about the performance release of this heat dissipation module? Let's try the grill next. After baking with doughnut FurMark for 15 minutes, the power consumption of the video card is stable at 115W standard TDP and the temperature is 79 ℃, which can be maintained at the preset power consumption.

The performance release of the P360 Ultra is still very good. So what is the theoretical performance? Next, we will run several running software. The RTX A5000 series has a GPU score of 11111 in the 3DMark Time Spy, which is about the same as the RTX 3060Ti on the desktop. But its biggest advantage is that it doubles the 16-gigabyte video memory of RTX 3060Ti.

In addition, the RTX A5000 series also supports RTX ray tracing, which will be helpful for some game developers or 3D modeling rendering.

Below the cooling module are two pieces of DDR5 memory, each 16GB 4800MHz, a total of 32GB, memory performance is excellent, enough to meet the vast majority of rigorous creative production needs.

Samsung PM9A1, which comes with a 512G hard drive, is a high-performance Pcie 4.04high-speed hard drive. In addition, there is an additional M.2 interface in the fuselage to facilitate self-expansion.

Creative production to buy such a mini workstation, the main role must be creative production and modeling rendering. Therefore, we first test several commonly used modeling and rendering software. The first is that OptiX ray tracing accelerated by RTX in Blender,Blender Cycles, the open source modeling software of recent years, provides ultra-fast rendering of the final frame.

Blender Cycles OptiX ray tracing technology based on RTX acceleration is used in the view to provide interactive, photorealistic rendering capabilities for modeling and animation. Supports accelerated dynamic blur rendering and nanoVBD to make mass rendering easier. In short, when GPU acceleration is enabled, modeling efficiency increases exponentially.

We chose a very large Blender project, which takes more than 24 gigabytes of memory to open and more than 10 gigabytes of video memory for rendering. The P360 Ultra's 32 gigabytes of memory and 16 gigabytes of graphics memory are perfect for running it. When rendering with Cycles renderer, it takes 19 minutes and 43 seconds to complete rendering without using GPU acceleration and using CPU to calculate the rendering.

But if you turn on the GPU acceleration of the RTX A5000 series, the speed will more than triple, and it will only take 5 minutes and 52 seconds to complete.

In another commonly used rendering tool, V-Ray, you can use RTX accelerated ray tracing to achieve high-performance final frame rendering. With the noise reduction feature of AI, GPU can further speed up interactive rendering.

The score for V-Ray rendering using CPU is 13677. The GPU CUDA score reached 1300, which can meet most of the modeling needs.

Reflecting the actual use of the scene, we choose the commonly used modeling software Maya2023 to load a model of a sports car and use the V-Ray renderer to render. If you only use CPU to render, it takes a total of 5 minutes and 46 seconds to render a picture.

If GPU rendering acceleration is turned on, it only takes 3 minutes and 17 seconds, which is also nearly twice as fast.

In another rendering software, KeyShot, it can achieve fast interactive rendering through ray tracing accelerated by RTX and noise reduction by OptiX with AI. We run both CPU and GPU cores, and the CPU score is 2.86 Magi GPU and the acceleration effect is obvious.

In the actual rendering preview process, even the super-large 3D model can drag the preview in real time, and the rough model can be quickly rendered in a few seconds after dragging, and the whole workflow is very efficient.

↑ Keyshot GIF Preview

Finally, we test a rendering software specially optimized for RTX GPU: octane. In octanebench, its score is as follows. Based on the computing power of GTX980, the rendering power of the RTX A5000 series is 3-6 times that of GTX980. It can be easily rendered in 3D.

Next, let's take a look at some graphic design software. in engineering drawing software such as AutoCAD, P360 Ultra can also call GPU to accelerate, even for complex large-scale projects, you can drag and edit without delay.

↑ CAD large image zoom GIF preview

In the commonly used image modification software PS, it can reach 1364 points and can run most large-scale PSD smoothly.

The author tried to open a 1G PSD file and successfully opened it in 11.39 seconds.

Then the author gives such a large PSD on the Gaussian blur effect, it is well known that Gaussian blur is very performance, but the P360 Ultra can be real-time preview without stutter.

↑ PS Gaussian Blur GIF Preview

In the later part of the video, CTOnews.com tested PugetBench For Adobe Pr, Adobe Ae and Davinci for everyone. Pr is the most common video editing software, using RTX GPU's own NVENC encoder can speed up the export of video and make clips smoother. GPU acceleration effects based on NVIDIA CUDA technology can achieve faster real-time video editing and frame rendering, and the output speed using NVIDIA coding can be increased by up to 5 times. In Pr, the score can reach 850 points under CUDA acceleration, 8K video clips will not stutter, and there is no need for agents to play 4K videos in real time.

And in the configuration of video special effects software Adobe Ae, the performance of P360 Ultra is particularly excellent. GPU acceleration effects based on NVIDIA CUDA technology can accelerate the effect synthesis process of Ae. In Pugetbenhc for Ae, the score of CUDA acceleration can reach 1322 points, which can smoothly produce most of the video post-effects.

With the help of NVIDIA CUDA technology, the commonly used video color adjustment software Davinci can finish rendering faster with the key special effects accelerated by GPU.

The measured PugetBench For Davinci score has reached 1620, which makes it possible to do some complex multi-level color adjustment of video. 32 GB of large memory can also bring more space to creators.

What the author plays here is an 8K video material. After adding multi-layer node color adjustment, the real-time 60-frame preview can still be carried out smoothly, the 4K high frame rate video will not stutter, and there is no need to open an agent for real-time playback of 8K video.

↑ Davinci 8K material Color blending GIF Preview

All these difficult projects have been won, not to mention the daily integrated office. In the measured PCMARK10, the ultra-high score of 8697 can be reached, and all daily office software can be run.

To sum up, during the whole experience of CTOnews.com, ThinkStation P360 Ultra has demonstrated the qualities that a professional workstation should have. It works stably, the hardware performance is strong, and the software adaptation is also in place. On this basis, the P360 Ultra also uses a unique motherboard design to achieve both portability and performance. From the author's point of view, P360 Ultra is very independent for creative producers as a working machine, small does not occupy an area, and is also suitable for enterprise users to use as a workstation for office rendering, making it easier to manage.

At present, ThinkStation P360 Ultra has been listed in China, the specific configuration provides a wealth of customization options, if you are interested, you can go to Lenovo Mall for customization.

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