Lenovo ThinkStation E30

The Lenovo ThinkStation E30 ($1,019 direct) has an attractive marketing angle: It's an ISV-certified system, with an Intel Xeon processor and a true Nvidia workstation video card, for less money than you'd pay for some run-of-the-mill performance business desktops. It's hampered in a few areas, but if you're looking for certified systems for your demanding users, the E30 is a sensible entry-level workstation.

Design and Features
The E30 looks like a standard tower, with the addition of an easy-to-use handle on the top that lets you easily move the system from one cubicle to another. The perforated front panel of the E30 is all business: two USB 2.0 ports, audio jacks, a digital media card reader, and a DVD burner. But it's a party in the back, with six more USB 2.0 ports, more audio jacks, Ethernet, serial port, and DVI and DisplayPort jacks (on the discrete Quadro 600 video card). The system's low price explains why it lacks high-speed ports like USB 3.0 and eSATA, but these are standard on $400-$500 media PCs and should really be included here. The rest of the chassis is painted black metal, as you'd expect of a corporate-oriented PC.

There's plenty of room inside for upgrades. You can add (now or in the future) an additional 3.5-inch hard drive, a second optical drive, as many as three more DIMMs (the E30 comes with only 4GB of RAM), two PCI cards, and one PCI Express x1 card. But the power supply is somewhat limited: It maxes out at only 280 watts. Granted, the Quadro 600 uses only up to 40 watts and the Xeon E3-1230 processor up to 80 watts, but that still gives you a fairly low ceiling for planning future upgrades. The "touch points" in the chassis are marked in Lenovo blue, so you know where to push to pop out hard drives or slide in drive sleds. The system can be upgraded without using a screwdriver, a plus if you need to replace hard drives regularly.

The system comes with a standard 500GB 7,200rpm SATA hard drive, though faster 10,000rpm hard drives and solid-state drives are also options; and RAID Level 0 and RAID Level 1 are supported on the motherboard. There's also a TPM chip for added security. The power supply is 80Plus Bronze certified, the system is GreenGuard certified, and the whole shebang has EPEAT Gold certification. The system is very quiet, thanks to the low power usage in the Quadro 600 card and Xeon processor. As mentioned, the system is ISV certified, so you're covered in case you need support or if ISV certification is a mandatory checkbox on your contracts for projects.

Windows 7 Professional 64-bit came preinstalled on our test unit, but the E30 also supports 32-bit Windows 7 Professional, Windows 7 Ultimate, Windows XP (both Professional and x64 Edition), and Red Hat Enterprise Linux 6. Like most Lenovo desktops, the system comes with the Lenovo Rescue and Recovery utility and the Lenovo update manager. The ThinkStation E30 is mostly free of other bloatware, as it should be. About the only other software applications you'll find are Office 2010 Starter, a shortcut for Skype, and an installer for Norton Internet Security.

Performance
The Xeon E3-1230 processor has four cores and supports Hyper-Threading, so it can chew on eight processing streams at once. This advantage is huge for tasks like 3D rendering: The E30 received a high score of 5.73 on the CineBench R11.5 test. To put this into perspective, the Editors' Choice?winning Lenovo ThinkStation C20 ($4,618 direct, 4 stars) and Apple Mac Pro ($3,499 list, 3.5 stars) each had dual Xeon processors and respectively earned scores of 9.53 and 8.62. The single CPU?powered Editors' Choice HP Z210 Small Form Factor Workstation ($2,173 direct, 4 stars) was just behind the ThinkStation E30, with a score of 5.44. Likewise, the E30's Xeon helped it motor through the Handbrake video test (in 1 minute 17 seconds), at which it beat even the dual-Xeon systems, and the Photoshop CS5 test (3:07), at which it finished just behind the Z210. We had some trouble running our gaming tests on the E30, but the system's 3DMark 11 scores were decent. Besides, the Quadro 600 is the equivalent of a midrange 3D card, though it should be enough for real work like CAD and other design tasks.

The Lenovo ThinkStation E30's price point makes it one of the least expensive expandable workstations with ISV certification. Sure, "regular" business desktops like the enterprise-class Editors' Choice Lenovo ThinkCentre M91p ($1,180 direct, 4 stars) come close to matching the ThinkStation E30's performance for a similar price, but the E30 is better at scientific calculations and has that ISV certification. The ThinkStation E30 also compares well with our current workstation Editors' Choice, the HP Z210 SFF workstation, as it's significantly cheaper and boasts similar performance. But the ThinkStation E30 loses points for lacking USB 3.0 and having an underpowered PSU that hinders future expandability. As it is, the ThinkStation E30 is a strong workstation system, but a little tweaking at the same price point would help put it over the top.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS

COMPARISON TABLE
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