I bought a used Lenovo P700 workstation at an online auction for 80$. Will receive it on Monday.

The specs are:

• One Xeon E5-1660 V3 - MB supports two (3,5 GHz - Cores: 8 Threads: 16) similar performance as i7 8700 or i7 5960X. Almost 10 years old Xeon but supports AVX2 instruction-set which is a requirement for running Ableton 12
• 2TB HDD (plan to add M.2 and SSD, four storage slots available: 3,5"/2,5" plus M.2 and NVMe slots)
• 32GB DDR4 RAM (Max 384GB RAM per CPU, MB supports 2 CPU's)
• Nvidia NVS 310
• PSU 650W or 850W (don't know which will be included..)
• 1 Thunderbolt supported via optional PCIe adapter
  
• 5 PCIe + 1 PCI

I think for 80$ it's a bargain. And there are several upgrade possibilities (Graphics card, PSU, M.2 NVMe e t c)

Anyone has experience from Xeon E5 1660 V3 or Lenovo P700 in a DAW/music production-config?

 

Hey. As long as it works, the price you got it is a steal really. Good for you mate.
I did upgrade that very same machine some 6-7 years ago from a basic factory build. It is very well built and the case is aesthetically pleasing considering it is server. When i got my hands on it, it was like new the guy took care of it and he bought it 2nd hand about 1.5 years after release. For a server machine it does not make a lot of noise really, it's got a very good cooling system for the time but it's not liquid AIO or something that fancy. It has Intel's weird (at the time) 3 channel memory config, so it has 6 slots around each cpu slot. It supports ECC DDR4 2133mhz. It can easily become a sort of good NAS too, as this machine has very good convenience for expansion. It supports Lenovo's Flex adapters, the most interesting is the one for 2 additional pci-e SSDs.
https://support.lenovo.com/us/en/ac...ation-flex-adapter-overview-and-service-parts
In the same range but made from good old LSI there is another FLEX for SAS/SATA RAID.
https://sk.foxway.dk/shop/produkty/...kort/lsi-sassata-raid-flex-adaptor-00fc865-02
https://pubs.lenovo.com/x240/using_the_lsi_logic_configuration_utility_program
One thing if i may suggest, if you can keep making what you do with one cpu, don't upgrade the other slot. Dual cpu machines are prone to latency due to the dual cpu/dual chipset/dual memory config. They are just fine for number crunching, rendering etc etc, NOT for audio though.
All in all, it is a very good quality machine. Hope you get it in one piece
Cheers

 

Excellent!

This is an Avid Qualified system. See:
https://resources.avid.com/supportfiles/config_guides/AVID Lenovo P700 Config guide Rev B.pdf

My son is using a P510 with 64GB of RAM running Ableton Live Suite. He has multiple web pages open while he is working on projects & watching training videos, Has only complained once about system peaking out. Had to be all the open web pages & networks background services while connected.

The P700 & Xeon offers 4 channels of ECC with one CPU & 8 channels with two CPUs. Also more caches & PCIe lanes than a consumer CPU. This extra bandwidth keeps data flowing across components.

Keep your projects, samples & instruments libraries on an NVMe for fast read/load times.

 

Check the RAM to make sure all modules are the same type & preferably the same vendor.

Also look for a spare power supply (non-standard proprietary 12V PSU). You may never need it but, better safe than sorry.

 

i was gonna say no... but for 80 bucks, thats a steal bro. good shit