WIndows 10 Lenovo sale and is it a good time to buy a new workstation/desktop PC?

grizfb75

New Member
Hi, I have two related questions related to browsing the Lenovo website for a new PC. (1) Are the deals that Lenovo provides a gimmick? For example the build I am considering (see below) says it normally would cost $4,699 but with a coupon gives it a $1973.58 discount so that the price is $2725. This seems like a screaming deal but I also am not sure if Lenovo does this year round or just overprices there computers when they have "sale" so it makes it appear that you are getting a huge price break in order to entice me to purchase the computer.

My second question is what do you think of the following build for $2725?

  • Processor : AMD Ryzen™ Threadripper™ Pro 3945WX Processor (4.00 GHz, up to 4.30 GHz Max Boost, 12 Cores, 24 Threads, 6 MB Cache)
  • Operating System : Windows 10 Pro 64
  • Operating System Language : Windows 10 Pro 64 English
  • Motherboard : MB AMD Castle Peak
  • Memory : 32 GB DDR4 3200MHz RDIMM ECC
  • First Video Adapter : NVIDIA® Quadro® P2200 5GB
  • First Onboard M.2 SSD Boot Drive : Yes
  • First Onboard M.2 SSD : 512 GB M.2 Gen 4 PCIe SSD, OPAL
  • First Onboard M.2 SSD QTY : 1
  • Quad AIC M.2 SSD Boot Drive : No
  • Storage Controller Adapter : AMD Integrated Controller
  • Optical Drive : Slim DVD-RW
  • Ethernet Adapter : Integrated Ethernet
  • WiFi Wireless LAN Adapter : Intel® 9260 802.11AC (2 x 2) & Bluetooth® 5.1
  • Audio Card : Integrated Audio
  • Power Supply : Tower WRX80 92% Power 1000W
 

grizfb75

New Member
Hi John,

I am professor and will likely be mutli purpose. This will be my home computer and therefore will be used for a lot of things. Specifically some applications include data analytic stuff using R and python, video editing for my classes that I teach. Also, light gaming here and there.

Thanks, E
 

Pupp

Member
At that price point: I'd recommend going to CyberPowerPC.com and doing a custom build. Lenovo is notorious for cutting corners on their motherboard. I just helped a relative buy a Lenovo that was about $900 on sale, and it had a PCIe 16x slot -used for the graphic card- and a single PCIe 1x slot. The last Lenovo I tried to upgrade with a sound card (due to the sound having issues), and the PCIe 1x slot was not lined up with the case, so it was pretty much impossible to fix the sound without the computer looking like a hack job in a nerdy teen's bedroom.

Also, with a custom build, get a motherboard that supports a Thunderbolt 3 or 4 expansion card. Then you can add that card at a later date and have all the external bells and whistles you can throw at a computer. I'd recommend getting a motherboard with Thunderbolt 3 or 4 already on the board, but there's too few ATX and E-ATX motherboards that do that. But many do support adding a TB3 or TB4 card in an expansion slot.
Note: A Thunderbolt card is not "plug and play", and you really need to get the card made the same manufacturer as your motherboard. You can get a different manufacturer's Thunderbolt card to work, but you would probably curse the day you decided to buy a TB3 or 4 card from a different manufacturer. Also, check the motherboard's manufacturer's website to find out which expansion card (if they have multiple ones available) is compatible with your motherboard.

If your doing Video editing, an 8 bay thunderbolt RAID bay using normal hard disks, you can get some serious throughput from the raid, because it reads data on multiple drives at the same time... as long as your not using a JBOD setup. I don't think you can 2500+ MB/per second speed with normal hard drives though. I think they used SSD drives on the website. But it would still be faster than a single hard drive.

https://www.owcdigital.com/products/thunderbay-8

I personally use a Gigabyte motherboard and it's an older computer, so it has an older generation Thunderbolt 3 card called Alpine Ridge.
 
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grizfb75

New Member
@Pupp Thanks, this is really helpful. I will likely wait and build my own over the next year. After pricing out some of the components of the Lenovo I was considering most of the "sale" seems like a gimmick. ~Eric
 

Pupp

Member
Hopefully by mid 2022, the silicon shortage will have passed. That will allow people to get better systems at the same price point as today. I don't see graphic cards going down to normal prices, but hopefully lot less than 3x the MSRP, that people are hawking on Ebay or Amazon right now.

If your not comfortable installing a Thunderbolt card, I'd recommend having a computer repair shop install it. I could go on and on why most people who don't normally open up a computer case are better off having a computer repair shop do the upgrade.

You could slap it in and have it work great, or you might have a lot of trouble getting it to work.

I had no issues installing the Alpine Ridge card, but it never showed up in devices, and the photo on the box showed the card being powered directly by the PSU. So after weeks of back and forth with Gigabyte, I finally nailed down that 1) The Ver. 2.0 card gets it's power off the PCIe lane, and 2) If the BIOS shows Thunderbolt options, then the card is correctly installed, and 3) Windows won't show a Thunderbolt device until an actual Thunderbolt device is plugged into the card.
 
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