Announcing ThinkPad P-Series - P50 and P70

On the contrary, its quite easy to upgrade components.

Getting to the fans is difficult though, because of the way the chassis is constructed - its a very classical ThinkPad construction, with an internal roll-cage. The roll-cage sits on top the motherboard, so you have to remove the roll-cage first before you can access the fans. This is more difficult then on older models since the fans are connteced with the very long heatpipe.

HP has adopted the Ultrabook construction on their workstations, and they are simply stacking the components on top of each other.

 

Price probably, computers are just like cars, they are optimized for being put together once. I agree that the fans are not easily cleaned and the only way is to use compressed air but the gratings in both directions seems to be so narrow that the dust can never escape.

The clear solution would have been to add access hatches below the fans for easy cleaning. This construction could actually improve the structural integrity as the screw columns for the access hatches could support the the upper base.

 

But that could not work. The fans are on top of the mainboard, as are the CPU and GPU. So you can´t access them from the bottom.

I don´t think this has anything to do with prize, more with rigidity and a better usage of the given space. If one of the two constructions is cheaper to assemble, its the HP one.

 

Well accessing fans is one big pain specially considering I clean my Dell every couple of months.

The 2 RAM slots under keyboard could also been made simpler though agree that ram would be installed mostly once, perhaps twice in the life of the unit.

Other than that, P50 is quite much similar to ZBook 15 with a lower price tag.

 

Both machines (ZBook 15 and P50) cover Mil-Std-810G, so I see no difference there, but there's an obvious one in parts/components accessibility. Also the ZBook 15 has an MXM-A GPU (easy swap), where the P50 is soldered - you have to remove the entire motherboard in case of GPU failure and it is impossible to upgrade (not with a screwdriver at least).

 

http://www.notebookcheck.net/fileadmin/_processed_/csm_MG_5741_7_918027ee52.jpg

There are large holes where the air is supposed to go in under the fans. Also you are allowed to cut up sections of the motherboard for screw columns. Not much space around the fan and heatsink in this design though so you have leave sections for the screw columns. These columns would actually take up a lot of volume.

MXM will be more and more unusual in the future. Soldering the GPU will be done on almost all laptops. Many designs also keep the MXM board above the motherboard so that the laptop must become thicker. Apple, really shows the way here where everything is soldered. However, I hope they keep the possibility upgrade RAM.

 

From Notebookcheck.net
"The maintainability of the ThinkPad P50 is much worse compared to the bigger P70. The battery can still easily be removed and there is a large maintenance hatch. In addition to the screws, it is also secured by small plastic clips, so you have to be careful not to break them when you remove the cover. The hatch of the P70 could just be lifted at one side and then easily removed..... We do not know why the manufacturer makes it so hard to upgrade the device.

The Wi-Fi module, as well as the free slot for an LTE module (M.2), is located underneath the keyboard, which is only secured by three screws. Here we can also find the other two RAM slots (underneath the aluminum plate, one slot occupied). Access to the fans will require further disassembling."

Compare this with ZBook 15:
"You have to remove the bottom of the case to gain access to the components. This is basically no issue if you have the correct screw driver (Torx T9). After the removal of nine screws (there are no annoying plastic clips), you can access all components. We can notice two things: The graphics card is not soldered (MXM module) and you have to fiddle around quite a lot to reach some components. Examples would be the previously mentioned communication modules underneath the M.2-SSD or the 2.5-inch tray, which also carries the SmartCard-reader. The necessary adapter cable for the 2.5-inch hard drive is shipped with the notebook – Lenovo should take this as an example.

The upgradeability is very good in general. You get four memory slots and two M.2-2280 slots, so you can install a total of three drives. The cooling solution including both fans is accessible as well."

 

Looked at the manual and yes, the only way to clean the fans is to open the keyboard and then try to push air from the back (while inverting the unit i.e. keeping the laptop keyboard face down) and hope the dirt falls out the slots (as Oldfox also mentioned) in the frame on top of the fan. Is there an easier way?

Was wondering if one needs to take off the battery and bottom cover (as mentioned in the manual) or would taking those 3-4 screws that hold the keyboard and then taking out the keyboard cable would be sufficient.

 

Cleaning the fans shouldn´t be necessary that often anyway, since P50 as all recent ThinkPads features a dustless fan - it shouldn´t pick up too much dust.

Taking out the keyboard requires you to take of the bottom cover, as the two of the 3 screws are located under the cover. And if you fiddle around with the internals, taking out the battery should be a give. Luckily taking out the batteries is the easiest part, as this is a normal, replaceable battery (unlike the ZBook where the battery is internal).

 

Funny you mention the battery, which is still replaceable in the ZBook, but you rarely need to take it out, if ever (only when it needs to be replaced, and this is like once per two years?), but something that needs more frequent attention is put back. There are various kinds of dusty environments, sometimes it's especially dusty. Would love to see how the dust free system fares then. Harder maintenance + soldered components is not a great solution in my book.

Sadly I see that tendency too, but not in Workstations (and a few gaming machines). HP and DELL are MXM for a while now. It makes more sense to have a dedicated module, not only it's easier for service, but also reduces the parts you need on tap and adds flexibility. The ZBook 15 comes with 4 GPU options, it would've meant 4 motherboards for the various GPU options if they were soldered (especially from different vendors, it would require a major redesign of the GPU part and probably the rest of the board as well), now it is only one. Also if a new GPU is released mid-cycle, like it was the case before (and could well be the case now with upcoming Polaris and Pascal), it only takes a new MXM module and not a total redesign. So no, MXM wont be gone, at least not in Workstations, since they usually have longer life cycles and are not updated every year.

As for the size, check the specs of both machines and tell me if this is significant difference.

 

Its still internal, which means that you can´t take spare, charged batteries with you to prolong the battery runtime, which is possible of course on the P50.

Also, the question is, how readily available are the internal battery parts. Replaceable batteries are readily available via normal sales channels: http://shop.lenovo.com/SEUILibrary/...de_menu_area=true&GroupID=460&Code=4X50K14091 And this question becomes more interesting after several years...

Anyway, I do think this is an advantage the P50 has. In the beginning of this thread, there was the misinformation going around that the P50 might have internal batteries, which was a reason for many to complain back then.

Thats makes it sound like the P50 design is clearly worse, which it is not. Every design has advantages and disadvantages.

 

I was going to say there is a reason to have secondary batteries, but they ditched it for this generation. They were present for the G2 and every other model for that matter. The quick swap while the system is still running is advantage that only workstations have, and obviously not all of them... Which is sad. So yes, the battery is a clear disadvantage in that case.

Well it's just that I hate soldered components and hard maintenance and P50 checks both. And as I said, that's in my book, someone else might think differently.

 

Does anyone know what is the maximum operating temperature for the Nvidia Mx000M GPUs?

 

Can any owner of a P50 with either graphics card comment on system throttling characteristics while on battery power? Does the CPU and/or GPU cut their max clock speed to a hard cap regardless of load--that is, if you're loading both the CPU and GPU, is one device prioritized over the other? Notebookcheck's review (with the M2000M) seems to refer to there being a "55 watt" cap on system power consumption while on battery, without really expanding what happens when you gave the system a CPU-bound application versus a GPU-bound application. For reference, I'm looking to pick up a P50 with the M1000M, i7 6700HQ and the UHD panel.

 

Is there a future date when a 4k touch screen will be available for the P70.

 

So what's the deal with pwm in the p50? Has the 4k screen got it? It says on notebookcheck that the full hd hasn't got it, but then there are apparently 3 different screen manufacturers and at least one might have it? I'm a little confused by pwm because I've read some sites saying it's present in all laptops. But then apparently macbook pro's don't have it. Conflicting information.

 

Not all laptops have it.

If P50 4K has PWM or not, who knows, no one has reported it yet for the 4K screen. I have the LG FHD screen in my P50, and it does not have PWM.

 

Thanks for the info. I like this laptop, can't really decide between the 4k or full hd if i do go ahead and purchase though. Don't need 4k, but I will be mainly using my laptop screen, and not connected to an external monitor. Wish there was a 3k option.

 

If you don´t work with colors, I think the FHD screen should be fine.

 

Any suggestions for a P70 that won't power on? HD light blinks repeatedly, nothing else. Working yesterday. Thx.

I suggested hold the power button for 10secs to ensure fully power off, but that had no effect.

 

Remove the keyboard and try unplugging the CMOS battery for 5 minutes. You might try removing the HDD's / SSD's and see if the HD light still blinks, too.

 

Have you tried to boot on an external device like a USB stick?

Also, Lenovo has internal diagnostics, if you press F10 during boot and there you can run a series of tests.

 

Anyone tried a stylus (the thinkpad pen pro or whatever its called) with the p70? Does it have palm rejection?

Rumor is that according to the specs for the FHD touch a stylus should work (though it would be awkward to use) and that wacom aes might work with it.

 

Not really a rumor, this is a feature Lenovo advertises in various documents (user guide, for example).

 

I see in your review, which was great, that your coming from the w550s. I have the w550s as well, and am considering the p50. I find the w550s great except cpu usage almost maxed all day and fan constant (with whine). I knew my usage, and am OK with this. I chose power bridge and battery life, of w550s, vs power of w541.

My question for you, is selling my fully loaded w550s for $900 (paid $2300 plus upgrades), to spend $2200 on a p50, really worth it?



Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

Well, thats a more extreme price difference then what I had. I bought the P50 for 1400 €, and sold the W550s for 1000 €.

I would say if you need the performance, the P50 is absolutely its moneys worth. I found it to be quieter then the W550s, and its design is more leaning towards "classical ThinkPad", W550s is more like a bigger T450 with a dGPU.

 

Well, in the US, I bought the 15"3k, model with i7 6550u I think. ad 32gb ram, 2gb msata, 1tb Samsung pro ssd, internal battery, 3cel external, 6 cell external (smaller capacity came with), and 2x 6cell larger capacity. Also got the 5year warranty including accidental. All together came to about $3k US. Tried selling for $1500 and nothing. Dropped to16gb ram(2x8) and only 240 msata, tried for $1000US and nothing. Put up for $900 this morning, fingers crossed.

The only P50 I would get would be 4k screen, m2000m and 6820. ram/hhd would be cheapest and I'll throw in my 500gb 950pro and 1tb 850pro, then add 2x8gb ddr sticks.
I have an Alienware 17 r3 I use for video/photo editing and work when in office. Only can't use it when on-site or away from office (told its not "business" enough). So I barely ever have my w550s used.
I run multiple vm's (3 minimum), video edit daily, and code/program for work.

 

Its difficult to help you with the decision. In the end, you have to decide if its worth the money for you. Again, I would certainly recommend the P50, but I also can´t talk about the 4K panel, because I have an FHD unit.

I guess if you wait longer, the value of the W550s will diminish even further.

 

True. I'm just asking since you made the same jump, what your thoughts and opinions on the jump were.
I've been semi actively attempting to sell w550s for over 6 months now. I'm at 950 now, which is a steal vs original price. So even if I get less than 950, it's already % wise horrible.

Sent from my SM-G930V using Tapatalk

 

Thanks, unplugging the CMOS battery solved it. Couldn't even get into the BIOS apparently. Possibly caused by attaching external HD prior to power-up. That may have created an issue with the BIOS boot device setting or boot device priority settings I'm guessing? Seems like a flaw in the BIOS if that is the case.

 

After the latest Bios update (1.24) for my P50, the keyboard key that mutes/unmutes no longer displays its LED indicator. This is the key directly above the NumLock key. Anyone else have this issue? The key still works but the indicator doesn't.

 

hi, can anyone compare the fhd display of the p50 - no touch and the w510?
the spec of w510 fhd, no touch: 1920x1080 FHD, 270nits, RGB mit 95% Farbgamut, LED-Backlight

 

In terms of color space coverage, the FHD display of the P50 will be much worse.

 

does anyone have the p70 xeon, with 4k and 64gb ram? We get decent pricing from Dell at work but it's pretty much standard laptops and never 4k option. I had to buy my own qhd+ precision and use that instead of my work laptop.

I like my m4800 qhd+ on a 15" at 125% scaling on Win7 but certain things are hard to see. Is the 4k p50 17" at 125% scaling readable? I actually back up a lot of things via esata on my m4800 and via the edock, I do the same with my w520/w530 via the 4338 dock with esata. Does the p70 have any esata options or is thunderbolt/usb c much faster.

 

Latest-spec USB C with 10 Gbit/s USB 3.1 transfer rate is faster than 6 Gbit/s eSATA, and 40 Gbit/s Thunderbolt 3 is way faster than even standard USB 3.1. So eSATA is not needed if external storage takes advantage of those transfer speeds.

 

It's sad that the P50 has such a dim screen, if not, I would have bought one already

 

Is there a consensus that the P70 seem to have a better 4K display than the P50 which seem to have quite a lot of problems with it? Have read through most of this thread and it seems like the P70 has displays from Toshiba which seem to be better quality than the ones from LG/Samsung in the P50?

 

Does Toshiba even manufacture display?

P70 4K screen = Panasonic

P50 4K screen = Sharp

 

Sorry, I probably confused Toshiba with Panasonic.

 

The p50 screen is kind of dim but not enough for not buying the computer. The p50 4k screen is good despite the vague brightness. Also the gamut is higher on the Sharp screen versus the Panasonic screen.

People who are reluctant to buy buy the p50 screen because of the brightness I would say that reason is not enough. The brightness is ok but not top notch. Unless you are really anal about the image quality, then the p50 is good enough. However I find the screen to be good enough and I'm very picky. However, it is not as good as the HP dreamcolor alternatives.

 

i am still reluctant due to none LTE in Top seller models

 

Anyone with the m3000m/m4000m and uhd screen - how is the battery life with Optimus disabled?

 

super stupid question from my part, I just got my P50. how can I tell the manuf of my 4k panel?

 

well, I am slightly far, I got the P50, Xeon, 32GB, 4k. I got it from the outlet for about US$1.55. I have been looking since I bought it two weeks ago, and it seems I got luckly, I have not seen many 4k displays in the outlet. when I got my p50, they had P70 with the 4K and M4000M for about US$2k. I regret not having gone for the big one.

 

There is only one 4K panel on the P50. So Sharp it is.

 

P50/P70 owners:
I'm investigating an NVIDIA driver issue that affects some laptops including the Dell Precision line. It is reliably reproducible on the Precision and I'm wondering if it also affects Lenovo or HP workstations. The issue has to do with the screen contrast being adjusted automatically when the laptop is running on the dGPU only, and on battery power.

Dell has reproduced the issue for me but is not interested in working with NVIDIA to fix it, so I'm working on a case for NVIDIA directly. If other laptops are affected it will be easier to find something for them to test on (and also more likely that they'll care about fixing it).

Can someone try this and let me know if you can reproduce the issue?
Requirements: NVIDIA GPU, Optimus/graphics switching disabled in the BIOS (discrete GPU only), no external displays attached
Pull your AC adapter to get on battery power. Visit http://stuff.aaron-kelley.net/2016/07/black2.html, switch to full screen with F11 key, scroll the white box on and off the screen and see if you can notice the contrast changing while carefully observing the white background behind the text at the top.

Thanks for any feedback.

 

Yep, I can confirm this issue with my ThinkPad P50 20EQS00700 (Quadro M1000M). Its very annoying, I found no way to disable it.

I believe this issue comes from the remnants of the disabled Intel driver. The Intel driver has this setting, where you can disable the automatic screen contrast on battery. My guess is that its enabled, but you can´t disable it since you have no access to the Intel driver settings when Optimus is disabled in BIOS.

I was planning a clean-install, hoping that it might resolve it.

 

I don't think that you will be pleased with a reinstall. I have done two clean installs to check on this and the issue always appears immediately once the NVIDIA driver is installed, even if the Intel driver was never brought into play. Additionally, this issue is not present in NVIDIA drivers older than 325.xx. (But obviously newer GPUs can't run drivers that old, and who wants to be stuck on an old driver anyway.)

I have written up everything that I know about this issue in this thread.

Thank you for confirming the presence of this issue on the Lenovo series.

 

Glad I can help.

The Intel driver and the Nvidia driver are both packaged together. In my case, I had an issue with external displays (I was unable to watch movies on external displays), so I disabled Optimus, without actually clean-installing. The files of the Intel driver are still somewhere in the system, but they are disabled.

Btw, I am using the latest Nvidia driver, not the Lenovo one, which is outdated.

 

Currently having a strange (and very irritating issue) on my P50.

A week ago, the computer started to have incredibly high battery drain. At idle, the battery estimates were half of my usual battery life (5 hours compared to 10 hours). I followed up and confirmed that the battery drain rate was indeed double (13Whr instead of the usual 6-7Whr). This was with no change in usage, no driver updates, and no visible issues (<1% CPU usage, no disk usage, no network usage, iGPU).

I did a clean install and updated all drivers to their most recent from Lenovo site only. This issue still exists, but I have determined how to replicate it.

On restart, there is no issue with power usage. However, upon usage of any monitor (via DP, TB, or HDMI) and then unplugging that monitor, the battery usage doubles. This is after ensuring that device utilization is low and the GPU has switched off. The only way to return to the regular battery utilization is by restarting the computer.

Has anyone experienced this issue recently? My hunch is something related (like the PCIE bus) does not turn off or return to a low power state after usage. As I have to restart the system after using any external display, it is very annoying.