Lenovo has just announced a small workstation that packs the kind of components you'd find in a traditional mid-tower chassis into a 4L shell, with a few corners cut along the way to achieve that level of compression.
The ThinkStation P360 Ultra supports Intel Alder Lake processors up to the 9-core Core i12900-16K processor, up to 128GB of DDR5 memory, and up to an Nvidia RTX A5000 mobile device. Expansion capabilities are limited; there are two PCIe Gen 4x4 M.2 slots and a 2,5-inch SATA port for an optional SSD or HDD, as well as a PCIe 4.0 x 16 expansion slot for the GPU and another for a single PCIe 3.0 x4 card.
Considering its size, Lenovo has done a great job when it comes to connectivity. Although there are no card readers, you'll get four USB ports, two LAN ports (1GbE and 2,5GbE), up to three full-size DisplayPort ports (powering monitors up to 8K), and up to WiFi-6E (Intel AX211) on vPro compatible system.
small power plant
Unsurprisingly, the P360 Ultra's case has more holes than Swiss cheese to help dissipate heat as quickly as possible, along with a powerful (and probably noisy) fan. The CPU alone has a maximum turbo power dissipation of 241 W, and the GPU TGP tops out at 150 W under load.
As for powering the parts, Lenovo has wisely removed the power supply from the outside of the chassis, which helps cool down a bit. Since these PSUs top out at 300W, they are unlikely to be the new compact GaN model. It might be a good idea to compare it to mobile workstations if you're not worried about the form factor.
Lenovo makes even smaller workstations; the P360 Tiny is a 1L mini PC, but it can't quite compete with the Ultra when it comes to grunt.
The cheapest P360 Ultra will cost around €1,299 when it launches in a few days. Lenovo has yet to confirm whether the workstation will be widely available outside of the United States.