Lenovo ThinkStation P340 Tiny 1L PC with NVIDIA GPU Review

By
Patrick Kennedy
-
13

Power Consumption

Let us talk power here. Idle power consumption on 120V power we saw 22-23W idle for the system which was not bad. We generally assume these nodes will use 9-14W at idle so this was a bit higher but makes sense given the GPU. What we also observed is that leaving the system at idle for a day or two would mean we hit 32-33W at idle. Likely this is due to some sort of heat soak and is closer to what we saw with the P330 Tiny.

Lenovo ThinkStation P340 Tiny 230W Power Supply 1
Lenovo ThinkStation P340 Tiny 230W Power Supply 1

The power supply for this unit is a 230W Lenovo power adapter from the company’s notebook line. It is absolutely massive compared to this small machine. Just for comparison, here is the P330 Tiny’s power adapter.

Lenovo ThinkStation P330 Tiny 18
Lenovo ThinkStation P330 Tiny 18

We managed to push this unit to just over 150W but there are options for higher-end GPUs like the T1000 as well as the Core i9-10900T and more storage, so it is not hard to imagine top-spec units using even more power. Of course, at 150W without USB devices, it makes sense for Lenovo to use a bigger power supply than a 135W unit.

Lenovo ThinkStation P340 Tiny 230W Power Supply 2
Lenovo ThinkStation P340 Tiny 230W Power Supply 2

At idle, the noise is still relatively quiet. Under heavier loads, the fan spins up and the system is very audible. This is a function of having a CPU and GPU in a small package like this. There is little room to add elaborate cooling and larger quieter fans

Next, we are going to discuss key lessons learned before getting to our final thoughts.

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13 COMMENTS

  2. Are GPU performance tests coming in the next article? Without the heat pipe does it throttle under load?

  3. Woah. Stop the press. That is a 16x PCI Express slot. This will fit a single port 10G NIC for sure. Might fit a dual port one.

  4. Patrick,

    The unusually large power supplies are also to allow customers to insert these Tinys into the TIO (Tiny-In-One) displays. Normally these come with 90W, depending on the display size, 22″, 24″: 90W & 27″ come with 170W.

    Typically if the Power supply that comes with the Tiny is 135W or larger it’s designed to replace the power supply that ships with the TIO. They both use the same “Slim Tip” rectangular power supply connectors.

    @PNWah01 If you look on Reddit’s homelab area you will find that someone has put in an X710-DA4 into a Tiny. It’s an x8 3.0 electrical connection though. Which is still 8GB/sec (or being lazy with the rough rule of 10 bytes to bits, 80Gb/sec.)

    The Rocket Lake (11th gen Intel) version P350 Tiny x8 of PCIe 4.0 slot & 2 * PCIe 4.0 NVMe drives and also Nvidia T600 & T1000 GPUs.

  5. When I first heard about this tiny PC with all the power under my desk, it sounded too good to be true. But when you think about how much space we renting out in our office by plugging or unplugging accessories every day–the benefits become clear! This machine has everything from processing speed and storage capacity down low enough that even tall guys can use them without stretches (don’t worry if your head doesn’t reach above where they’ll put these things). And don’t forget: no more bulky tower computers taking up desktop real estate while providing less functionality than what most people need.

  6. Does the bios on these support Intel SGX? The 10th gen procs do but trying to find out if the system bios does.

  9. Will these take standard PCIe cards? I’d like to put a dual 10g x550 nic with active cooling in one of these…

  10. Very cool product. I didn’t know about it until just now and as usual, the most excellent and professional review on it by the STH team. Very cool to see how the lack of sata storage allows pcie slots to become a reality in such a small package.

  11. The GPU in this can be readily upgraded to a Quadro T600 or T1000 for a nice graphics boost. Yeston even makes a single slot low profile GTX 1650. There is even an absolute madman who created a custom single slot cooler for the RTX A2000 and put it in here.

  12. I’ve tried to install P1000 Quadro in P340 tiny by using PCIE16 Expansion Graphic Card for ThinkCentre P330 Tiny.

    Unfortunately after installation the PC can not be powered on I.e. it does not react on the power button. If I remove the card, PC is operational.

    Any hints what’s may be wrong?

    Thanks and a all the best,
    Luka

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