I have had the Lenovo ThinkStation P5 for a few months and since I couldn’t find any reviews on it, I decided to write one. In general I’m happy with the computer, especially with the large amount of memory and the speed of the M.2 drive. The speed of the CPU is comparable with last generation AMD chips of similar speed/cores.
My specification:
In Q1 2023, Intel launched two new CPU families for workstations in their Sapphire Rapids series (4th generation Xeon scalable): Xeon W-2400 and Xeon W-3400. Where the W-3400 series is a stronger version of the W-2400, supporting more cores, memory, memory channels and PCI channels. The most noticeable difference between the Xeon processor and the Intel Core processor is that the Xeon CPUs support more RAM, more PCI channels, overall stability, and are easier to scale.
A note on AMD Threadripper: The Threadripper is a very nice CPU, however, as of now it only supports DDR4 memory and the 5000 series was launched in 2022. AMD has announced that they will release their 7000 Threadripper series soon. The 7000 series will most likely give Intel some hard competition, but as of now Intel is the better choice over an older AMD CPU.
Intel Xeon W5-2455X
I decided to go with a standard GPU as it is not my main focus. However, the Nvidia RTX A2000 12 GB is a potent workstation-class GPU, particularly suited for tasks that require advanced graphics processing and computation. Despite its relatively compact form factor, the A2000 delivers quite impressive performance for its class.
DDR5 ECC (Error-Correcting Code) RAM is a significant leap forward in memory technology, especially for workstation and server environments where stability and reliability are paramount. In the ThinkStation P5, this RAM type brings several advantages:
Error Correction: ECC RAM is designed to detect and correct common types of internal data corruption. This feature is crucial for my research, where data integrity is essential, especially when dealing with large datasets and complex calculations.
Increased Speed and Efficiency: With a clock speed of 4,800 MHz, DDR5 RAM offers a significant improvement over its predecessors in terms of data transfer rates. This increase in speed translates to more responsive applications and faster processing times, a necessity for real-time data analysis and high-frequency trading simulations in quantitative finance.
Higher Capacity: The ThinkStation P5 supports up to 512 GB of DDR5 ECC RAM. This high capacity allows for extensive multitasking and handling of large-scale data sets, a common requirement in blockchain and Ethereum research where processing large ledger databases efficiently is critical.
M.2 SSDs are multiple times faster than regular SSDs. Generally an M.2 SSD has a read speed of around 7,000 MBps, whereas a regular SSD has around 550 MBps. This is important when intensively working with disk reads and writes. In my case, I work with Ethereum nodes which includes syncing, running, and calling the nodes. The Reth archive node can be synced in 50 hours with an M.2 drive, however it takes roughly 9 days. Similarly, when I write call scripts, I multithread the calls, as I process transactions individually. These scripts require fast disk reads to perform optimally.
Once I had installed the ThinkStation, I wanted to connect it with the old computer in a network. The reason for this was initially to share files, but also it could be nice if I want to put some jobs on the other machine.
In Ubuntu it is straightforward to connect two computers in a LAN. We just have to manually assign the IP address in the same range.
Note also that with modern Ethernet adapters you do not need a cross-over cable or a switch, you can just connect the computers with a regular Ethernet cable.
On my old machine,
sudo apt install openssh-server
sudo systemctl enable ssh
Then I went into Gnome and settings/network selected the wired connection and selected to set a
manual ipv4. I set the address to 10.0.0.2 and netmask to 255.255.255.0.
Then on my new machine I went into Gnome and settings/network and selected my wired connection and
also set a manual ipv4. I set the address to 10.0.0.1 and netmask to 255.255.255.0.
Now it is possible to connect to the old machine with ssh username@10.0.0.2. We can also transfer
files to the new machine by,
rsync -av username@10.0.0.2:/path/to/directory /path/to/destination/
You can also set up a passwordless login by generating a public/private key pair,
ssh-keygen -t rsa -b 4096
The private key is now stored at ~/.ssh/id_rsa and the public key is stored at
~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub. We can now upload the public key to the remote server we want to ssh to by,
ssh-copy-id magnus@10.0.0.2
The public key will now be stored at ~/.ssh/authorized_keys in the remote server.
To make log in even easier you can make an alias for the ssh command.
To connect a computer to wifi through the terminal you can use the nmcli command,
nmcli dev wifi list
sudo nmcli dev wifi connect 'SSID' password 'password'
If you already have your security settings saved you can simply run,
sudo nmcli connection up 'connection-name'
nmcli connection show