I’m currently running a P320 as my home server with a 1230 V6 CPU, but have been looking at upgrading to a 1245 V6 for transcoding with Intel QSV. Now I have the opportunity to buy a TS150 with a 1245 V6 for only a bit more than the CPU alone.
I was going to jump on this right away because I figured the ThinkSERVER must be better than my ThinkSTATION, but comparing specs they seem extremely similar to me.
Same chipset, similar size, similar PSU, both I think I could get 5 drives in, and both have AMT. Curious if I’m missing something here. Does anyone have any thoughts on if this would be an upgrade (other than the CPU of course) or are these 2 platforms really this similar?
For reference, I’m running Truenas Scale as a file server plus a handful of apps.
We’ve been using an SR670 for a while now as one of our main VSphere / ESXI hosts. Lenovo always offers free bios updates and patches which you can do easily with Lenovo BOMC. HP lock their critical updates/bios/firmware down behind support contracts - I’d say Lenovo are a good option for homelab users or those who don’t have budgets to pay for said contacts.
As far as your question, why would you upgrade to something that has the same specs, yet is in a different form factor? At most you’d get some negligible benefits such as Lenovo’s equivalent to HP ILO if that is not already included in the Thinkstation. I’d upgrade the specs with a better Lenovo server if you can afford to.
Yeah that’s what I was confused about. It’s also essentially the same form factor. I guess I assumed there would be more differences between the 2 models. I’m not very experienced with the server management tools and whatnot so didn’t know if there was any benefit there.