Lenovo Does NOT Want You Doing This...
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- čas přidán 30. 12. 2022
- I've always wondered what the best budget streaming/workstation PC would be, so I went ahead and put together a build with a 14 core Xeon, RTX 2070 Super, and 16gb of ECC DDR4. Best part, it only cost me $500.
Some of the following product links are affiliate links for which I may be compensated.
Build your own budget workstation (Affiliate links)
Get your own P500 - ebay.us/5zOuQe
Xeon e5-2697 V3 - ebay.us/kuZ1l5
Xeon e5-1650 V3 (Best Gaming CPU) - ebay.us/dHMVIB
Xeon e5-2699 V3 (Baller CPU) - ebay.us/IfVfwd
DDR4 ECC Ram - ebay.us/PyfZpX
RTX 2070 Super - ebay.us/CWeTWP
GTX 1080 ti - ebay.us/2ZECb4
650 Watt Thinkstation PSU - ebay.us/W6ZG4s
My Gear (Affiliate)
Sony A7s ii - ebay.us/SEfvwa
Godox SL-60w - ebay.us/pmmjRM
Canon 50mm F2.5 Macro - ebay.us/G8ouDi
Canon EF 28-70mm F2.8 - ebay.us/7UDmqQ - Věda a technologie
If you haven't, I highly recommend upgrading the BIOS on these, older BIOSes had bugs which cause system to become unbootable unless you clear CMOS etc.
where to update?
@@TheMcspreader stinkstation 💀
Is there any issues or errors like I/O or any other?
Yesterday, I bought p520, w2135 32GB quadro p1000 for my nephew. Somebody told me that you have made a mistake and you'll face few irritating and un solved errors with this machine.
Plzzz, guide me how to properly install it's drivers. Your kind info will be so helpful for me. Thanks.
@@abdulbasitsiddiq6672i think you may be able to use a ch341a reprogrammer to flash bios directly on to the chip, it's a bit difficult to figure out which chip to actually flash into, you'll have to look into it to figute out how.
1 sata port can only draw ~54w max, an 8-pin can go up to 150w.. so it IS a fire hazard
the pcie slot draws 75 watts power as well, so its not actually super jank, just a tiny bit jank XD
It's probably 30W over spec. Still i've seen worse.
RTX 2070 super max power draw is 215W. 75W from pci-e slot + 75W from pci-e 6 pin +108W from sata adapters = 258W so it's not evenclose to being a fire hazard.
@@bence.gabor.slezak Nice, I forgot the 75 watt from the board. That means this setup with dual sata and the one pci-e is actually 399 watts of headroom.
You made the same mistake of thinking the pci-e 6pin is only 75 watt. Read the label, these non-standard oem PSUs design their 6pin to handle 216 watt. They mostly sell prebuilts without discrete graphics so the cheaper 6pin is on the psu cable. When a customer adds discrete graphics, they use a properly thick 6pin to 8pin designed to handle the full 216 watt.
People need to stop pretending 6pin means 75watt or 8pin means 150 watt. That is an old standard ignored by everyone today. The wire thickness now tends to be 16awg which handles over 300 watt. The newest modular PSUs that are 1200 watt or higher come with dual 8pin to 16pin 12vhpwr rated for 600 watts. On the newest PSUs, their 8 pin pci-e connectors are designed to handle 300 watts each. That makes the new "standard" for 8pin pci-e to be 300 watt. There is no real standard, read the psu label to know how many watts the 8pins can handle. If you use adapters make sure they are 16 gauge wiring and are rated for 300 watts on each 8 pin.
@@_PatrickO no, that was just the worst case scenario, but even that is more than good enough. People use those numbers because that's what they can find on the internet. Nobody will go to each psu manufacturer to check what their connectors can handle.
To answer the question about the SATA to PCIe adapter: Ideally you want to be drawing from two separate rails or at least two separate cables. SATA is typically only rated for ~54w. That's for the entire cable, not each connector of a single cable! So your setup is not ideal.. Although, you're connected to two SATA connectors, they're on the same cable. What you want is to put the other connector of the PCIe splitter adapter to a separate SATA cable altogether. That'd be the safest bet in this scenario. It looks like there are multiple headers on the board for those proprietary Lenovo SATA cables. Hope this helps someone!
You should run the sata power connectors in parallel. So two different sata cables to a single 8-pin. Your crashes 7:10 are probably because you're trying to connect both sata power connectors to a single cable, which might not deliver enough power. Hence the two connectors on the adapter :)
I was thinking the same thing putting 2 connectors to the same wire does nothing, 2 separate satas should be able to provide 108 i believe, i could be wrong
It's not necessarily gpu limited. Threaded CPU work in really weird ways, and it can report only 10% load, but easily still be the bottleneck. Just a heads up, it's not that simple. Easy way to test, is lower resolution only in the game, and see if it scales the CPU usage accordingly or only slightly. If it's not consistent with pixels it's pushing, you're still limited by the CPU architecture
14 cores...only uses 2.
@@jrshaul doesnt mean the cpu is not bottleneck, its not as simple at usage percentage or number of cores.
I've always wanted to play around with Lenovo workstations too but HP Z workstations ended up being my budget gaming/streaming/workstation go-to. Especially for transplanting into standard builds. I REALLY like what Lenovo did with the tool-less modularity in this system though. Great video dude!
With a decent powersupply, you should not be able to melt your SATA cables, the PSU should trip on exceeding maximum power. With a cr@py power supply you can end up melting the SATA cables and release the "magic smoke"(TM) but since the case is not flammable and should be grounded, you can not actually start a fire outside the case (seen a lot of exploded PSUs but never a fire that actually extended outside of the case - we must also note that in theory, an impossibly large amount of dust inside the case can theoretically catch fire which could spread outside the case).
I would use a 6 pin to 8 pin bodgedaptor, and use the SATA bodgedaptor for the 6 pin, as the spec of 6 pin is actually higher than the dual SATA
Great video, thanks. I've had some experience with Xeon CPUs, a few years ago I upgraded the processors in a 2009 and a 2013 Mac Pro (sort of a hobby of mine). But it never occurred to me I could use them to upgrade older Windows PCs.
Thank you! It's actually the opposite for me, I've known about windows, but didn't realize you could upgrade macs until recently
Thank you for this, I have been thinking of going back to a desktop and didn’t want to break the bank, I appreciate the time and work you put into this video
I'm an EE and I've followed the details of the PCIe spec due to the 4090 catching fire controversy. Most of the comments (other than the one telling you to use a 6 pin to 2x8 pin adapter) give pretty good advice. The PCIe 6 and 8 pin specs are pretty overbuilt so there is a good bit of safety margin, and doing 150 watts through a 6 pin isn't the end of the world.
However, there is a way to get a single 8 pin that is 100% within spec if that's important to you. You can use a 2x sata to 6 pin adapter, then a 2x6 pin female to 8 pin male PCIe adapter. That's enough for a 3060ti, 6650xt, or a used rx 5700 if you want a really good value card.
I also highly suggest setting a power limit and maybe undervolting if the card uses more than 300 watts. I would feel pretty safe about running a card at 250 watts with those connectors, but 350+ watts is really unacceptable.
We really live in a great time. I bought a server mb (Asus p9d w/ LGA 1155) that includes ECC ram for under $100 and built a sweet unRAID server with it. Your build looks great, I'd love to mess with one of those dual CPU machines might check them out
You should have had a 6 Pin to 8 Pin adapter and 2x SATA to 6 pin. SATA is 54W each, they can handle a 75W 6 pin PCIe cable. The PSU's cable can handle 150W provided by an 8 pin no problem.
Imo, putting $80 into an X99 QD4 or MR9A, getting the same Xeon and actually unlocking ReBar and all core turbo boost (because Chinese X99 are modifiable) would cost the same - you can still buy a case and PSU. Cost is pretty much the same, but you're not leaving performance on the table.
@Lurch I had one of the chinese x79 boards in my nas for quite a while. With an e5 2650 the vrm would sit at about 90c at ~5% cpu usage. I put an old 40mm fan on it and that kept it alright but I wouldn't want to run anything more powerful
@Lurch I have a chinese x79 with a 4930k overclocked to 4.1GHz and the vrm heatsink doesn't even get hot.
@Lurch That's some bullshit. You buy the models that are well tested and reviewed instead of just the cheapest you can get your hands on. I'm sorry you didn't do your research, but there's plenty of people daily driving the X99 TF, T8, QD4, MR9A, etc
@@b0ne91 He did start with "those cheap...", IMO anything you buy the cheapest unknown brand version of is asking for trouble, doesn't matter what it is. Replacement Li-Po batteries possibly being the most flaming example.
I picked one of these up in October and built a budget unraid server out of it. I still have a second CPU socket that I could take advantage of and plenty of room for more ram!
Considering this for my new work station 👍 good video man, I’m subscribing right now
4:35 In theory I feel like these could work decent with a nice undervolt. You’re getting a guaranteed 75 watts from the slot, another 75 from the 6 pin and each sata connector is capable of supplying 54 watts each to the 8 pin. Definitely not 4090 proof, but something last-last gen or before will be fine.
8:02 I miss Jak II an unreasonable amount. Legendary game!
I did the same thing with 6 Lenovo Thinkstations P700, each with 2 Intel Xeon E5-2699V3 processors (18 Cores / 36 Threats Each CPU) (5 are connected in a Proxmox cluster) and each with 768 GB RAM on 12 banks, 2 NVME SSDs (2TB) connected via the Flex connector in RAID 1, and one NVIDIA 4080TI (for the cluster, each has NVIDIA QUATTRO K6000). I can say that this is a monster performance. Even games like PUBG, Cyberpunk, and other AAA titles run at 4K with over 60 FPS.
nice. So if you have the Quadro GPu and the RTX 4080Ti together ?
on microcenters website you can sort GPUs by power connector and get specific model numbers to look up on ebay. Apparently there's a 12GB 3060 and 8GB 3070 the run on 6+8
in 2018 i used a geforce 560ti and ran it on power from a 6 pin and an adapter that pluged into the cdrom and disk drive power headers just like that. what matters is the rating of the power supply rail that your pulling the power from, and the thickness of the wires.
My upgraded Lenovo M83 (1150) story: Xeon E3-1265L v3, 1660Super 6gb, 16gb DDR3 on a proprietary 450W PSU. Perfect as a home cinema and casual gaming. Never had an issue with it.
4:56 a while back I wanted to hook up two gpus at the same time on the same computer. I didn't have enough 8 and 6-pin cables on my one jank no-name power supply. So I got two jank no-name gaming power supplies and hooked one up to each gpu. You may need to jump a couple pins on the cable that goes to the motherboard but seeing as you're not apposed to fire hazards it's not a bad way to get a bunch of cheap power.
That is both terrifying and amazing!
@@aChairLeg terrifying is the best kind of amazing. Means you are doing something right (in the worst, most sketchy kind of way)
Really enjoying these videos, keep it up!
Thank you!
I did a similar build I got ThinkStation P520 off Ebay from a seller who builds them out. Mine came with a 10 core 20 Thread CPU, 64Gb DDR4 Ram, 256 Gb of ram for $450 (Also came with a Quadro P620 I sold for $60) but it solves a few issue you had. First it has connections for 2x 8 pins, and then 2x NVME Slots. I also got an Intel A770 16GB GPU from a friend for $175. (Only downfall is no rebar support but the games I play work just fine.) I use it for editing photos and videos and started to dabble a little cad work. Overall its a sweet all around rig for under $700.
I currently have an Optiplex 7010 SFF, I7 3770, 16gb ram, SSD, Rx 6400 low profile. I was interested in this Lenovo P520 as it can fit full graphics cards in it. Is the A770 a good choice if the P520 I order has a 900watt power supply? What's the highest graphics card the system could support? I've Google'd and looked all over and you're the first person I've seen to have a good graphics card in a P520. So any input would be appreciated. What's the wattage on the two 8 pin connectors that come with the 900watt power supply of the P520? Thanks in advance!
I went the HP Z420 way, its V2 and DDR3 but still does de job nicely, and HP seems to be easier on upgrades, the stock PSU came with only 6pin connector, but standard PSU fits (with some DIY adjustments), after that I had no problems powering my GPUs.
In my case, using M2 NVME for OS Booting is possible, but the ssd has to be AHCI bootable (for example: Samsung Pro series like 950, 960 and 970, don't know about the 980), I think its possible for yours too, and with noticeable results all around on day to day usage.
Sata's only rated for 54 Watts, so two together would be about 100w (I think a normal 8 pin can do 150W). The 6 pin can supply 75w, and the PCI-E slot can supply another 75w. All together, that's 250W. That 2070S draws about 215W, so it's close. The 1080ti pulls like 250W so that's probably why it crashed. I wouldn't overclock it haha. If you have molex, it would be a bit safer! Super cool build though! Love the creativity!
I think mine is a P31. It's a small tower and originally shipped with Win 7. It looked brand new and I paid $200 CDN, tax, shipping, all in. It's the perfect media server/home theater PC. It's dead quiet. You can put your ear on the case and hear nothing. I paid a fortune for silent fans the last time I built a home theater PC. I have 8 tuners attached to it. It's always cutting commercials out and it still has something left over if I need more power and remote desktop in from the ThinkPad. It just runs, cat fur and all. Hate the Quatro, though. Couldn't get another GPU during the pandemic. Time to get rid if that annoying thing.
I've got a dual CPU ThinkStation P920 w/ a Xeon Silver 4114 (10 Skylake-SP cores / 20 threads per CPU @ 2.2GHz) and 64GB of RAM. Your PSU seems to be exactly the same connector as mine, but mine is 1kW (1.2kW on 240V) and I have slightly better GPU connectivity. If you lookup the technical manual, it should tell you how much power each rail has and what connectors go to what rails, so you would be able to use adapters on the appropriate rails to power most everything.
Downside for my system: Used Cascade Lake LGA 3647 CPUs are not cheap.
I used one sata to 6pin for my gtx970 for a while. Also had 1 normal 6pin, but in theory it was under the sata spec, in the end it was fine
Those fire-starting adapters are much safer if you can spread the load across two SATA *rails* rather than two ports on the same rail. The problem with those adapters is that people draw the full 150W the 8-pin is rated for (like you did, probably for lack of an extra rail) from one SATA rail, and they're usually simply not designed to handle that load by themselves.
The PSU should trip when pulling more than 108 watt from the dual sata cable the same as when he tried to pull more than 216 watts from the 6pin pci-e cable. When he added the dual sata to 8pin and used both the original 6pin and sata, he raised the available wattage from 216 watts to 324 watts. That is why the card worked when using both sources of power.
That is a very nice system!
I am running a i7-5960x but the motherboard can also use the Xeon e5-2697 V3. The prices over here for the Xeon e5-2697 V3 is still 65 USD.
I really like the X99 system and these CPUs
If I only could update my x99 to a cheap i7-5960x from a 5920k.
I already maxed out the memory to 64GB.
X99 were a beast of a system.
@@monad_tcp I had a 5820K up until 3 months ago. Saw the prices of 5960x dropped so I bought one. It was also time to change thermal paste so I thought might as well do everything in one go.
@@monad_tcp you can find a 6950x, which will likely work with your motherboard for under $200 on ebay. I did so a little over a year ago. They may have dropped even more.
Great video, enjoyed watching the whole thing.
I've been running a E5-2696v3 for about a year now on a Machinist motherboard with the turbo unlocked and 32 gigs of ddr3 ecc ram and its been awesome. I really don't need the cores but being able to own a cpu that I could only dream of a few years ago lead me to buying it lol. I use it for gaming with a 5600xt and it has 0 issues, the gpu is actually holding me back. Its great for multitasking and hosting servers for me and my friends to play on while still being able to play the game perfectly. I'd say to take a look at this cpu as well if anyone is planning on a budget workstation, 18 cores 36 threads and a 3.8 ghz boost and the ability to use ddr3 or ddr4 makes it a monster. Unfortunately it is a little more pricey than the other cpus in its line but I think its the best you can get for the socket.
running a Huananzhi X99-8M ( only dual channel sadly ) with a 1650-v3 ( cheap as hell ) overclocked to 4.1 and it runs anything a throw at it
Very late to the conversation, but the workstations like this (Lenovo Thinkstation, HP Z series and Dell Precision) all came with 6 pin PCI-E cables that were actually rated for 150W and there was an OEM 6-pin to 8-pin adapter required if required. For example, the HP model is N1G35AA
Come on man..... There are so many rabbit holes I am getting sucked in to now. Thank you for the content, this seems like a great contender for a budget NAS/server.
In more modern games like Warzone 2.0 & Asseto Corsa would this CPU bottleneck a 1660ti or would the GPU be a bottleneck?
Im looking to replace my i7 3770 (non-k) which is severly bottlenecking my 1660ti and i'd like to know if this would be good, cheap upgrade to do. (Btw, my pc's a Dell Optiplex 9010).
Hey! I have a load of these. My daily desktop is a P520 (Skylake, $350 total for 8c16t 5700xt), I have a C30 (v2 2S, 2620v2 x2, 128gb for $150 total) as a virtualization server, a P710 (2x2620v4, 256gb) as a a second virt server and six E32s (4670t desktops, $30 each)
You've just got to watch out for power supplies and buy barebones! Cheaper and quieter than my real servers
Made a similar pc with a dell t5810. Currently it's sporting e5-2690 v4 14 core and 32 gb of 2133 DDR4. Cobbled the whole thing together for about 500 usd over the course of the past 4 years. On top of that I recently added a used RTX A5000 I picked up for about 1k and about 100 gb of optane as L2 primocache. All I can say is that she is absolutely singing these days. This thing feels like a pc equivalent to an 18 wheeler, a mountain of torque and enough raw speed to get real work done.
Pro Tip: don't compare computational devices to cars
it never ends well.
With time, processors/processor architectures get way more efficient and are able to do way more. The only thing slowing down modern systems terrible software design. I.E Bytecode on L2 VMs, bad kernel design, etc.
The 2690 should still work for modern workflows, but it might be time to upgrade depending on how expensive electricity is, and how important reliability is in your case.
How are the CPU temps under heavy load? I always wondered if that little CPU cooler could keep up with what that 14-core puts out and if it's better to invest in a proper 92mm heatsink.
iirc the ones that came with a 650W psu from factory actually had multiple 8 pin power connectors. So If you wanna put a more powerful gpu, find one with a 650 from factory.
You actually don't technically need the SATA to 6 pin adapter, as the included 6 pin is actually an extention leading to a partially pinned 14 pin interface to the PSU. It should be theoretically possible to figure out the voltages on the pins that are left, depin an extension, and repopulate the appropriate pins.
I'd offload the 8 pin to your PSU's 6 pin cable via a 6 to 8 pin adapter and pull the 6 from SATA. Great video. These older workstations are definitely worthy of a second life.
very high quality content, well done!
I do a very similar thing with my side PC, a Dell Precision T7810 workstation, but I would suggest against using SATA-to-PCIE connectors on the same SATA cable. It has two SATA plugs for a reason, your best bet is to plug them into different cables to try and use 2 different 12V rails on the PSU for the 8-pin. I took the extra safe route on the RX580 I have in mine; I use a 2 6-pin to 8-pin, then use the built in 6-pin into that, as well as a similar SATA-to-6-pin using 2 different SATA cables. More cables, but better safe then sorry!
The psu should not allow pulling more watts than 108watts from an SATA cable with two connectors on it. The 6pin pci-e is designed for 216 watts as confirmed by the label. (non-standard PSUs used by OEMs all seem to be designed for 216 watts over their 6pin pci-e, they just size the wires appropriately). Amazon has both dual SATA to 6pin or 8pin cables and 300watt 6pin to 8pin adapters(marketed to crypto miners).
The safest solution so you know all wiring and adapters can handle the current load is to buy a dual SATA to either 6pin or 8pin, depending on what your card needs. No need to try to find a 6+2pin(which may not exist). These dual sata to 6 or 8pin adapters should be designed to handle the full 108 watts SATA can supply. So no fire hazard. If you tried to pull more, the PSU should trip before a wire gets too much wattage.
For the pci-e 6pin, buy a pci-e 6pin to 8pin that is rated for 300 watts or more. That is well above 216 watt and thus the PSU should trip before the wiring started to get hot.
This should be safe. The video even confirmed the PSU will trip and turn off if he tries to pull too much power from the 6pin. When he added the additional dual sata adapter, he added another 108 watts of headroom, so the PSU no longer tripped and it works fine.
I would use the sata adapter if I had a 6pin+8pin card or an 8pin+8pin card that uses more than ~175 watts. For ~175 to ~270 watts, I would use dual sata to 6 or 8pin(108 watts) and a 6pin to 8pin(216 watts).
If the card is under 175 watts and you only want to use the 6pin, you'll need to use a 6pin to 8pin that can handle 216 watt and then use an 8pin to dual 8pin that also can handle over 216 watts. (16awg adapters should be able to handle twice that)
It is arbitrary, but I would stay under 80-90% of the max draw of either configuration to ensure stability. Lean towards 80%. If you want more wattage for a xx80 or xx90 card buy a second dedicated psu for the pci-e 8pin connectors and jerryrig it that way.
I highly recommend using a 6 pin to 8 pin adapter for the 8 pin on the card and then powering the 6 pin with two separate strings of sata or molex adapters.
Using SATA adapters is not a good idea but will most likely work. I would cut all the connectors off and solder my own 8 pin connector. It gets rid of the connector bottleneck but still keeps the small cables. Just watch all connector and wire temps
I use a dual SATA to 6-pin and 6-pin to 8pinadapters with a 6-pin to 8-pin adaptor for a Sapphire R9 290X VAPOR-X in a HP Workstation Z420 and it works just fine. I love my £60 build!
Yessir! I was waiting for this video!
You should have more subs, videos are VERY high in quality.
That PSU has a lot of 12V 18A rails, so if you split the load, you really shouldn't have an issue.
Depending on how many extra SATA power cables that workstation has available, I would get two dual SATA to 6-pin (not 8-pin!) adapters and try to distribute the load on as many SATA cables as you have, each coming directly from the PSU (avoid using daisy chained SATA connectors for more than one thing if you're drawing that much power). I would use the native 6-pin from the PSU with one of the SATA adapted 6-pins in a dual 6-pin to 8-pin adapter for the 8-pin connector on the GPU, and I'd use the other SATA adapted 6-pin for the 6-pin connector on the GPU. Sure, using more adapters will increase resistance, but it's still way better IMO than over stressing a single cable with way too much current. Just make sure everything is plugged in firmly and has good contact!
I temporarily ran my 3060 TI on a single sata to 6+2 pin, leaving one connector unplugged. Card pulled about 50-75 watts through it, and it got *very* warm. If you are going to do this, make sure you don't overload any single sata connector
Great video 😄👍 How did you research this? How did you know which workstations you need? I understand you wanted a workstation with a specific socket for specific processor, but im interested in steps you took 😃. I tried to do sth like this on my own but there was so many cpus and sockets.. If anyone has any advice, i would be very glad.
Anyways, I love the video and the effort you put in, very underrated👌
I started with the socket and CPU I wanted, then looked at different brand's workstations. You can check either their websites or wikipedia for lists of all of their models. Then you can check the models on ebay with the socket you need and see if the prices match up to your budget. You can also lookup lists of all of the CPUs for a specific socket, and work down the list comparing prices on ebay.
@@aChairLeg thx a lot brother, I will try it out tomorrow
HDKGVD (thank you for the answer, i had the same question on my mind)
I did the same. Got a P500 for 100 Euro. Put in 64Gb server memory. But recased it in a XPG Defender case with an ordinary 1000 watt psu. (There's an adaptor available for that). Also put in a Asus Hyper M2 Nvme board with a 4x2Tb stripje because this board supports PCIE Burification. And my RTX 3070 without being a fire hazard because I use an ordinary 1000watt PSU. Still working on the front USB IO. Even with adapters to the Propriety Lenovo USB headers I've got clearance issues with my Gpu atm.
Surprisingly I ran a 1060 on a 240w PSU using a converter cable and surprisingly it worked of course that wasn’t a good long term solution so as long as you have sufficient PSU it should be fine
I bought a Thinkcentre not long ago, about two months, used obviously, grabbed an old 550W PSU I had, took 4 days to rewire everything correctly, had to go to alibaba and look at the 10 (9) pin to 24 pin adapter pages, because I had everything wired correctly except for the fact that I needed to keep the ps_on cable constantly bridge, so the psu and pc itself is on perpetually, thanks Lenovo, and I cant use my case USB 3 because of a stupid proprietary connector so I have the Lenovo front case dual USB 3 thingy dangling inside my case.
Got one of these this year as my first PC (wanted a p520, but those seem to be much harder to get here in the UK). First off, thank you for being one of the few people on youtube who've covered this thing. If you happen to see this, I'd like to Know if:
1. Has it been safe or did it actually catch on fire😅?
2. Anything els useful you've learned?
Thank you, and have a nice day
I love videos like these just making a gud pc out of old high ends
Thank you! Too many people just think you need the newest and greatest CPUs, but when you look past the consumer chips, and look into HEDT or server chips, there is serious power for really cheap.
@@aChairLeg literally its just so fun to see xeon workstations become gaming pcs with just a couple of upgrades altho sumtimes it gives tons of problems installing stuff but when u solve those it just feels worth it
Just buy an IR camera with USB-C (flir), plug it into your phone and take images of those Sata to 6-PIN connectors. If they are hot they are fire hazard. Just be sure to do it while doing the real workload you intend to use.
aChair Leg, are you running Win11, and does the Lenovo ThinkStation P500 have a TPM 2.0 module (for Win11)?
Also, does the P500 have eight DIMM slots?
I highly recommend getting a 6P to 8P adapter and use a 2 SATA to 6P adapter (just use your current 2S to 8P adapter but plug into the 6P connector on GPU). PCIe 6P/8P can easily do 200% overload from spec but I wouldnt trust SATA doing even 150% overload. Spec for 6P/8P/SATA is 75w/150w/50w and safe overloads would be 150w/300w/65w. This puts much less stress on the weakest link, the SATA cable, and greatly reduces catastrophic failures like melting cables.
Great video, I would like to see if run Ark survival evolved without bursting into fire, I would if possible split the 8pin power between two sata connectors on different strings rather that on the same one. 👍 Keep up the good work! 😄
I was very excited about copying this, however, I have a P520, and it uses the LGA 2066 socket type, not the LGA 2011 you mention when talking about Lenovo P series workstations. Do you know of an equivalent CPU for the P520 owners out there? Also please note, the P520 comes with 2x (6+2 pin) connectors from a 900W PSU. So you will never need to rig the wires, any gpu you want has connection provided.
Great build! I've built a similar machine for work, using the Dell T7910 dual socket 2011-3. The price to performance of this platform is absolutely off the charts. I spent quite a bit on mine but the result is nuts.
- Base T7910 with 1 CPU + 64gb RAM + 256 SSD ($400)
- Dual E5-2680 v4 (14 core each) ($50 each)
- 128GB DDR ECC RAM (supports 768GB RAM) ($90 for additional 64GB)
- Nvidia A4000 16GB (workstation ~3070) ($500 ex miner GPU)
- 1TB nvme via PCIE adapter ($100)
In total this cost me ~$1200 USD, most of the Dell T7910s come with a 1350 Watt PSU since they have 5 PCIE slots which suits me as I add more graphics cards. The Nvidia A4000 is a single slot with 3070 like performance, so you can jam easy 4 of these in one workstation. Ebay and Aliexpress is your friend when building an X99 based system, but I also highly recommend starting your platform off with one of these well known OEM systems from Lenovo/Dell/HP, and the rest of your hardware from ebay/aliexpress. 64GB of DDR4 2133 ECC ram is as cheap as $90 USD. Lots of great second hand deals to be had.
Also to note, the V4 E5 CPUs are a lot more power efficient than the V3s, especially at idle, if that matters to anyone.
Wow, that's an awesome build! I was considering a dual socket build, but wanted something that was a bit more of an all-rounder and closer to $500. I for sure want to try doing a dual socket build in the future though
@@aChairLeg yeah for gaming the single slot is way better value! Video editing and machine learning the dual socket platforms are amazing! So many deals on eBay all the time for these 2nd hand machines I might end up with another one if do any heavy AI model training that can justify it 😀.
I have the P520 Brickstation and it's a little different from the 500, mine has a 900W supply that came with two 6+2 power connectors for linking two cards like the RTX A2000 or something. I have the W-2135, 32GB of RAM, and a GTX 1070 OC which is fine for me because I only play Fallout 4 and Witcher 3 or older Bethesda games. If you only played games like Battlefield or Infinite I wouldn't recommend a server as your PC but it suits me fine for what I do.
Great video. I got a motherboard from China with Xeon E5 2699 V3 CPU and 128GB(8*16G) DDR4 ECC RAM Memory for (US $442.56) free shipping. It works well for me. It didn't limit me to put any PSU or hardware in general. That is why I stopped buying those branded workstations.
With each sata harness on the psu you can only draw so much power. You plugged both sata power cables into a single harness. You may find more power if you have a separate sata power supply for each side of the 8pin adapter 🤔
I ended up goin with a p520 work station and it’s an amazing deal. Comes with a 6 core 12 thread 3.7 ghz cpu. And it come with a 900w power supply. AND TWO 8 PIN POWER CABLES. So I threw a rx 5700 xt in it.
I did my "jankstation" about 4 years ago on a z620. the Hp sistem has 3 HDD drive, but you get 2 6pin connectors and a 850W platinum PSU (that is actually rated for some 1300W peaks), I put a 6to8 pin adaptor that hasn't burnt my house down yet, slotted in a 2080 and called it a day. worked great since then. Is it the most powerful gaming rig in the world? no. But I have 8c/16t 4Ghz, 128GB of ram (bought for less than 100€ LOL), 3 drives, and even the only m.2 boot drive ever on Ivy Bridge for the longest time and it's still decently fast today.
4:54 in:
That's some interesting cabling, and something I hadn't thought of before. Would the 6 pin bear the brunt of the load?
About those adapters,u should buy a spliter 6 pin to 2x 8pin is safter,6 pin conector is overspect as it is,i had sold tons of pc's with those adapters with r9 280/290 the most power hungry,and the cables wore just mild warm after 10 hours of continous load,however buy a quality adapter not a 5-10$ one.
I actually did get one, but decided to not show it off. With that cable though, my 1080ti was able to properly run games without crashing the whole pc.
On v3 chips you can also lock Turbo Boost on all cores.
This video really interested me into building my own.
I got a used P510 with 650W power supply that had a 8pin and a 6pin cable already there to avoid the fire hazard SATA to 6/8pin adapters. Installed a 3060 in it which I found just under MSRP and it is doing great.
I am going with 2699V3 which I am waiting on delivery. This thing came with 1650V3 which tbh is performing better than I thought, the only question I have is were you able to boot from your M2 NVME? I have read comments on other videos of P500/P510 where people are complaining about boot not working via PCIE M2 adapter unless you use flex cable adapter which seems to be more expensive then the P510 in UK.
Thanks again for the idea, this is really useful when the price of newer builds are touching all time high.
Awesome build! Yes, I was able to install windows to my m.2 ssd in the adaptor, and boot off it with almost no issues. Some pcie slots didn't like it, though. I believe I had to install it in the bottom slot for it to work on mine.
@@aChairLeg Ah okay make sense, will give it a shot. Thanks!
I have a bad habit of doing the server version of this. I end up assembling a server from a bunch of random eBay parts that fit my needs. I haven't built anything in a few years, but it's hilarious how cheap some enterprise gear is.
Thing is, it becomes worthless quickly.
Manufacturers of enterprise level computer hardware typically hike support prices after 5 years, encouraging anyone on old platforms to quickly switch off. Also heightened power consumption effectively make it cheaper to buy new more power efficient models, and get rid of the old ones.
However I do see why it would make sense for consumer use, as consumers tend not to get punished for high grid usage in the same way buisnesses do.
Most hilarious is the power/performance ratio, followed by an electricity bill 12 months later. Those enterprise customers are saving money just a few months later by upgrading to something more recent, probably even sooner if they manage to sell it for a good price to some sucker on eBay.
I don’t remember much but years ago I had an r9 380x in a dell xps 630i with a 750w power supply by dell. It only had two 6 pin connectors and I needed a 6 pin along with an 8 pin to power my card. I ended up using a sketchy molex and sata to 8 pin and it worked fine for the first few days until I started smelling smoke and the plastic housing was melting on the sketchy adapter about to be set on fire lol. Idk I don’t think Im ever gonna attempt to use those adapters again. Luckily everything was fine, but if I didn’t catch that smell earlier I’m not sure what would’ve happened…
I am currently using a HP Z440 with a E5 1650 V4, 128gb of ram in 8 slots, 1.5TB of ssd storage, and a RX 5700 XT compared to the RTX 2070 Super which was my other option it outperformed for a cheaper price.
That's why I think for the price you can get these old workstations is great because it can trade blows with even stuff like intel 12th gen.
Not with the power consumption and dated architecture it has.
@@samialameddine7308 When I look at the i3 12100 and the i5 12400 it does trade blows.
Yes the power consumption is a lot and the dated architecture has it's disadvantages but I would say this would be able to beat the dell optiplex's no problem.
Those 12 and 16 core Ryzen parts finally make sense to me... They're great for streaming.
The gtx 1080 (atleast the aorus model) has a single 8 pin connecter. So pretty recommended for this type of pc.
GPU pools around 275 w, 6-pin can push 175 w, PCI Express can push 75 w, sata is rated for 50 w so you have a small headroom for spikes
Under normal load it will never draw the maximum it can
*This specific lenovo probably doesn't have any molex connectors, but 2x molex - 6+2 adpater is a safer option. The issue with sata is the contacts themselves are very small and create a lot of resistance, and get hot, and start to melt lol. YOUR best bet is to just get an 8pin gpu Y cable (1 8pin connector to 2x 6+2 connectors), your much less likely to overdraw the gpu connectors. Cool video though, I've always wanted to attempt this with the right retired hardware, if your interested in retired enterprise stuff that I might have kicking around let me know!
Sata adapters only allow around 54 watts to go to the GPU, in my past experiences using these cables you usually wont have issues with lower end cards like the 1050 ti. I have had some cards refuse to boot using the sata adapters.
The power supply is usually going to be your biggest bottleneck when hacking together OEM builds.
If you are willing to break out the Dremel then you can find adapters online to connect standard ATX power supplies into OEM boards.
Oh that's easy man! Get a RTX 3060. It uses only 1x8pin. As you may observe in any PSU, the 8 pin connector is actually a 6+2 but there's more to it: The +2 are daisy chained! Get a "6 pin to 8 pin" adapter from your favourite site and that's done with as little conflicts as possible.
If you still need another 6 pin for like a RTX 3070, get a "6 pin to 6+8 pin adapter". As these proprietary PSU's are quite reliable and cheap, you should have no issues unless the PSU has an actual limiter on how much current/power can be sent.
Should you have any issues with the later adapter, use the "2xSATA to 8 pin" and that's done :)
EXCELLENT CONTENT brother.......Keep up he good work........
Thank you!
What have you gotten in Warzone in terms of performance. Currently have a 5960X (Haswell-E) and this thing fluctuates and goes as low as 15fps with highs of 90.
You did well getting the power supply for $34 I'm in the UK and they are expensive on eBay. Also sent for a sata to 6+2 cable.
About the GPU power, Founders edition 3060ti/3070 only use a single 8 pin connector.
I built my budget workstation a while ago. I got mine from an ebay that does liquidations and i bought a genesis from puget systems. Dual xeon e5 2687w with a 1070 and a tesla p100 later and i have a beast of a pc for ai.
I find it funny that Ryzen has 79xx when intels X299 did 5 years ago too! hehe
I have a Thinkstation P500 with a 1650 v3. 11 year old machine can still keep up with modern PCs.
What's the feasibility of using a second standard PSU externally just to run the GPU? Too messy?
I remember my boss had me use those Sata to 8 pin adapters once and the PSU blew up. Then again this was just some cheap psu but it made one heck of a bang when we decided to stress test the computer and the GPU pulled 150W from the Sata power rails.
for low power GPU's you might be able to get the Nvidia RTX A4000/A4500/A5000 cards to work since they all take a single 8-pin plug and only use 200W max. The A4500 has performance roughly similar to RTX 3070
I have a Thinkstation P520 That comes with a 900W psu and the Intel Xeon W-2135 with a base clock of 3.7 Ghz and 6 cores. So far its pretty nice
54 watt per SATA port. So a dual SATA to 8 pin should work depending on the graphics card. As long as your card isn't drawing more than 179 watts MAX then you should be fine. Also make sure to not plug into a daisy chained port, it's gotta be 2 separate ports.
i would recommend Molex over SATA adapter if the PSU has Molex and if you using adapters use a 6pin to 8 pin pcie adapter for the main PCIE power plug in this video as they can support 150w, and use the sata adapters for the 6pin power but use the adapter on two separate data cords to prevent overheating the single cord with 3 SATA power connectors, and with NVME getting cheaper as sata SSD you can probally use a soder iron and make your own 8pin pcie power, if you dont need sata power, save one cord for sata, but you can get a NVME cheap and and NVME or PCI adapter and it works like plug in play, i did the NVME adapeter on an old Core 2 Quad on a PCIE 4x lane Gen 1 and no better than a Sata 3 SSD speeds lol but no extra cables if your using an old system
nice budget pc! what's that song used that starts from the begining of the vid it's so nice
For the love of god, use two rails to pin those sata plugs. If at all possible, do not use either of the rails for anything else. It is basically like plugging 2 high output PSUs to a power strip because you have been told not to plug them in to a single 25a wall outlet. You are still drawing the same power, through the same outlet, just with an additional point of failure in between. There are a bunch of issues you could have, including voltage instability, "Hot wires", and even fire.
I remember CV computer parts sponsored a vid for me on CZcams back when I was a freshman in highschool those guys are awesome, I still buy some CPUs from them
something about these oem power supplies in prebuilds from dell hp lenevo or any other major brand is that they are really high quality units. many of these end up in bulk deployment at hospitals and offices and universities where they do not want a single failure. and so u can actually draw full power from these psus without worrying much , u will never find a 650w 40$ new atx psu that would come close to the quality of that lite on psu. maybe 100$-150$ ones have parts that come close to the quality . and if its delta or fsp you can overload them and not worry about fire or explosion.
You can, but firsthand, those units do tend to fail en masse after around 7 years. and I don't recommend overloading the PSU in any case. Old, overloaded PSUs *will* create a worry of fire no matter the quality. I've had IBM units fail firsthand in production, while only at half capacity. There is a reason why server equipment tends to have dual PSU. Not only for increased power, but for increased reliability
Fun video! Since you prove that it is able to run 6 Mario Sunshine on Dolphin at the same time, why not trying heavier emulators like RPCS3 or Yuzu?
I might need to, last I checked RPCS3 barely opened most games, but it seems to be completely different nowadays
Mine came with a 6 pin and 8 pin connector, I guess if they came with 650w psu out of the box, it will come with the extra 8 pin, then I just got a 6 to 8 pin adapter. Running 3070, all good