Lenovo ThinkPad P50 Workstation Review

[Redaktion]

Also a success with 15 inches? After the ThinkPad P70, we also have a look at the smaller ThinkPad P50 from Lenovo. The two devices are very similar in many respects, but there are also important differences. Those include the display as well as the more complex maintenance, but also the longer battery runtimes. Our review unit also has a problem with the Turbo Boost most of the time.

http://www.notebookcheck.net/Lenovo-ThinkPad-P50-Workstation-Review.158713.0.html

[Adamto]

There should be THREE thunderbolt 3 controllers which Intel offers or planed to offer.

DSL6540, PCIe Gen4 x4, dual-port tb3
DSL6340, PCIe Gen4 x4, single-port tb3
JHL6240, PCIe Gen4 x2, single-port tb3

P70 use DSL6340 controller that can provide PCIe Gen4 x4, but I need to know  what is exact controller at Thinkpad p50 and the amount of PCIe that can provide.  If you get a chance to open your p50 and see the chip , please take a screenshot and  let us know what is thunderbolt 3 controller at Thinkpad p50.  This can help me to decide to get p50 or p70. If both p50 and p70 use  same DSL6540 controller , then, I can happily select p50  :)

Thanks!

[Lu]

Does the fan on this laptop reduce speed/go off as soon as a gaming/rendering workload is finished? With my Dell Inspiron 7537 even after I close a game or finish a video render the fan keeps only reduces to medium speed then stays there for hours. My Macbook Pro 15" Late 2013 if left at idle after playing an intensive game, is silent after about 2 minutes. I hope this Lenovo has the fan behavior of the Macbook Pro. This will greatly help my decision. Thank you.

[Stellewind]

Does the fan on this laptop reduce speed/go off as soon as a gaming/rendering workload is finished? With my Dell Inspiron 7537 even after I close a game or finish a video render the fan keeps only reduces to medium speed then stays there for hours. My Macbook Pro 15" Late 2013 if left at idle after playing an intensive game, is silent after about 2 minutes. I hope this Lenovo has the fan behavior of the Macbook Pro. This will greatly help my decision. Thank you.

I just tried, after a stress test, the fan went back to silent in 30 seconds.

[Leanux]

Hi! Very good review. I'm waiting for this since October from last year.

I own a ThinkPad W520, very happy with it except for his cooling system, one fan can't handling the CPU + GPU
at same time, so this is a problem for me. I'm a Aerospace Engineer student and I constantly run particle simulations,
renders and other CPU + GPU related works. So the question here is very clear.

I see that the P50 don't have any problems in the stress test for handling both CPU + GPU at the same time, so
this is very nice for a workstation, in the other hand I'm worried about Turbo Boost. In the past weeks I read
that Skylake has problems when it stress it, for example in Prime95, so maybe the Turbo Boost problems in your
unit has some type of patch in BIOS form from Lenovo for avoid Skylake problems?

http://www.extremetech.com/computing/220953-skylake-bug-causes-intel-chips-to-freeze-in-complex-workloads

My only concerning about buying or not the P50 is the Skylake bug, that can be an important problem for me and for
people that need stress the CPU. And I'm interested in the question from @Adamto, My idea is plug a Desktop Quadro
via Thunderbolt 3 with an EGPU Case like the Razer Blade Stealth, but it is very important to know the controller, if the controller can
handle 40Gbps there is no problem with port, but if it's only 20Gbps could be a problem with external graphics.

Thanks! : )

[Leonid]

Please do a short review on 4k model as well.

[luyuan20]

Q1: Does anyone have experience with the FHD touch model of this laptop? Is the LCD and the cover glass laminated like the Dell XPS 15, or is there a very noticeable air gap that results in double reflections like the Asus Zenbook Pro?

Q2: During basic browsing, like reading this review and you open a link to another article, does the fan spin up then spin down again quickly? Eg: I find on my Dell M4600 (2011) workstation the fan spins up 50% when I open another page, and right after it finishes loading it turns the fan off immediately. This erratic fan on/off behavior when just basic browsing is annoying and I'd prefer to just have it be silent, or constant low noise.

Thanks in advance to whoever can answer any of my questions. This is the top contender to replace my Dell M4600. Hoping to avoid annoying fan behavior in the future as this was one thing not mentioned despite NBC's review saying it the M4600 cooling system is a success and it silent and cool.

[esit]

I am quite curious about if the P50/P70 can take advantage of DDR4-2400 memory.

I read that some Haswell thinkpad can have DDR3 memroy running at 2133, although intel ark says only 1600. I am thinking if similar thing happens on P50/P70 and skylake.

[esit]

There should be THREE thunderbolt 3 controllers which Intel offers or planed to offer.

DSL6540, PCIe Gen4 x4, dual-port tb3
DSL6340, PCIe Gen4 x4, single-port tb3
JHL6240, PCIe Gen4 x2, single-port tb3

P70 use DSL6340 controller that can provide PCIe Gen4 x4, but I need to know  what is exact controller at Thinkpad p50 and the amount of PCIe that can provide.  If you get a chance to open your p50 and see the chip , please take a screenshot and  let us know what is thunderbolt 3 controller at Thinkpad p50.  This can help me to decide to get p50 or p70. If both p50 and p70 use  same DSL6540 controller , then, I can happily select p50  :)

Thanks!

Hi,

I have thinkpad P50, and after i connect my usb 2.0 keyboard to the type-c connector via a typa-a to type-c adapter, i can see with HWINFO64 that this keyboard was connected under a USB host connector that is under a PCIe x4 link.
I hope this information helps.

[MarinoPersiani]

It says that the RAM is single channel in the review. I was wondering if that means the computer supports dual channel RAM but only has one stick or that it does not support dual channel. Mine is coming with 1x16GB stick. Can I get another 16GB of the same type and upgrade for dual channel capability?
Any help is much appreciated

[Luka Žnidaršič]

Sorry for such late writing, but in the article I saw it was written than there was no problem installing the GeForce driver. How did you do that? Any special procedure or tools for that? I might need that for some games, that's why I'm asking :)

[Q.L]

Hello.

I noticed that P50 uses LP156WF6-SPK1 in this article, and You says that it is PWM-free.
But I find some reviews of other models(such as Y700, X220, etc.) which use the same panel but they have low frequency backlight.

So, If I want to replace the panel for my P50(using a PWM-220Hz panel, 1080P, NV156FHM-N42), will I get a PWM-free monitor by changing the panel? Which one control the backlight, circuits on the motherboard or the panel itself?