Lenovo ThinkStation P500: How to Optimize Your Mid-range CAD PC Workstation

Lenovo ThinkStation P500

The Lenovo ThinkStation P500 is built specifically f0r the main-stream design and engineering market. In this post we'll review the P500's components and then dig into how to configure it for running SolidWorks, Inventor, SolidEdge or Autodesk. We'll also cover configuring it parts versus assemblies and CAD versus simulation or rendering.

If you find yourself needing more than one GPU, or you want a more powerful Xeon processor, or more memory and storage (and who doesn't?), this might be your next machine. The P500 can be optimized for a standard CAD configuration or for more high-performance work like assemblies, simulation or rendering.

The P500 is a high performance single socket workstation with a motherboard that consists of the Intel C612 Chipset, a single Socket-R processor socket. It has support for up to eighteen core processors from the Intel Xeon line and the highest storage capacity of any 1 CPU workstation. Let's look at some more highlights.

Improved Industrial Design and lots of new features:

One of the immediate standouts of the ThinkStation P-series is the new industrial design of the streamlined chassis. The handles are integrated and there are bright red touch point indicators that spell out exactly where to lift or open. The Access Panel, Optical Drive, Hard Drives, Expansion Cards, Processor Socket are all tool-less for better serviceability.

Optimizing the P500 for Solidworks,AutoCAD, Solid Edge and Autodesk Inventor:

The key here is to manage the ratio of minimal investment vs. loss of productivity . The P500 ThinkStation is only outfitted for 1 CPU, but the options are powerful. It's the combination of CPU, GPU(s) and RAM that can be calibrated to your common operations that will yield best balance of expense vs performance.

Optimizing CPU:

Part Modeling: The Intel Xeon Processor E5-1660 v3 will cover part modeling, which is a single core task that cannot be split up (multi-threaded) amongst its eight cores. The processor base frequency of 3.00 GHz is pushed by Intel's Turbo Boost to Maximum single core frequency of 3.5 GHz, which is actually a higher frequency than most of the current Xeon E7 processors. 8 GB of RAM on average will be more than sufficient here.

Assemblies:  Assemblies are similar in respect to CPU load, but there are a few things to keep in mind. Your PC has to have enough RAM to load all of the parts into memory without taxing the Virtual Memory of your machine.  The other thing to remember is how fast a PC can load your parts from your HDD into RAM.  SSDs are a much better choice than HDDs in this area.

The P500 has a new M.2 (NGFF) PCIe Solid State Drive (SSD) which can run 5x faster than SATA standard today. It has 256 GB and a relatively low cost at $140. If you go with this, there's likely no need for multiple drives, so you can also skip the RAID setups altogether.

Drawings: Drawing programs are beginning to use multi-threaded loads.  Each drawing view in your active drawing sheet is assigned a core, and because most drawing sheets have 4 views or more, a quad core CPU would be enough. That said, the Intel Xeon Processor E5-1660 v3 has 8, so you start off ahead of the game.

Simulation/Rendering: The performance of these two uses goes up or down depending on how many cores and GPUs you have. The 8 core Intel E5 v3 CPU is definitely fast enough, but the faster your CPU is, the more Cache will be required. The Cache stores operational code specific to the CPU, so you aren't using RAM for these instructional sets. Out of the available options, if you are using programs primarily for simulation and rendering, the Intel Xeon Processor E5-1603 v3, which has 10MB Cache and 3.50 GHz is a great option to keep the speed steady as you increase the number of parts.

Optimizing RAM: Most CAD files load directly onto your RAM when you open them. For example, the more complex and larger a model is, the more RAM is required. Another good thing to keep in mind is how many other applications you are using at the same time (should be as few as possible), plus the size and complexity of your parts, assemblies and drawings.

The average recommended RAM for most mid-range CAD files falls between 6GB and 16GB. The P500 has a maximum memory support of up to 256GB. The best thing about is that it is relatively inexpensive, so if your performance is lagging, you can always add more.

Optimizing GPU: The first question in this part of your configuration is: How much on-board memory comes packed into your GPU?

If you are primarily creating simulations, for example, you'll need to have enough memory to maintain the data for number-crunching locally, or the performance will suffer due to data transfers between the graphics card, which is doing the computing, and the workstation memory. This is also what makes the memory bandwidth and raw computing power of the graphics card so important (especially double-precision floating point performance) for all operations.

The P series ThinkStations support NVidia Quadro and Tesla series GPUs. They've improved a great deal. For example, the NVidia k2200 has 4GB memory which is twice the memory of the k2000 from the last Quadro series.

In the following table I've set out some optimal configurations for AutoCAD, Inventor, SolidWorks and SolidEdge CAD applications, depending on the workload you expect to place on the workstation.

•  S = Small Workloads, Small Parts Modeling & Assemblies

•  M=Medium Workloads, Medium Sized Models & Assemblies, Some Drawings

•  L= Large Workloads, Large Sized Models & Assemblies, Simulations, Rendering, Animations

Who this the P500 for: If you are doing heavy workloads on AutoCAD or comparable programs, the P500 can be a perfect fit, no matter what operation you are using it for. The P500 is also a great fit for small to average workloads on Inventor, SolidWorks, Solid Edge and 3DS Max.

Who won't benefit by using the P500: Extreme CAD users. If you have huge workloads and are constantly simulating and rendering in SolidWorks, Solid Edge, Autodesk Inventor and 3DS Max, you may want the advantage of having multiple CPUs to carry the extra workload.