A couple of weeks ago, we took a look at Lenovo’s largest ThinkStation workstation, the ThinkStation PX. For today, we are going in the opposite direction with a look at the company’s smallest ThinkStation, the P3 Tiny Gen 2.
Officially positioned as an entry-level workstation by Lenovo – one step up from the low-end P2 series – the P3 Tiny is a unique offering within Lenovo’s ThinkStation lineup. While the bulk of the ThinkStation family is comprised of towers in some fashion (including P3 towers), the P3 Tiny is the sole 1-liter workstation design offered by Lenovo, living up (or rather, down) to the name Tiny.
| Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Tiny Gen 2 (Intel) Key Specs | |
| Processors | Intel Core Ultra 9 285 |
| Operating System | Windows 11 Pro |
| Memory | 32GB CSO-DIMM DDR5-6400 (1x32GB) |
| Storage | 1TB SSD (PCIe 5.0 x4 M.2 2280, TLC) |
| GPU | NVIDIA RTX A1000 8GB + Intel Graphics (4 GPU Cores) |
| PSU | 330W External PSU |
| Form Factor | Mini-PC (1L) |
| Dimensions | 179 x 37 x 182.9 mm (7 x 1.5 x 7.2 in) |
| Weight | 1.4kg (3.0 lbs) |
| Wireless | Wi-Fi 7 (2×2) + Bluetooth 5.4 (Intel BE200) |
| Color | Black |
| Ports | Front: 2x USB-A 10Gbps, 1x USB-C 20Gbps, 1x Combo Audio Rear: 1x HDMI 2.1 (TMDS), 1x DisplayPort 1.4, 4x MiniDP 1.4a (NVIDIA), 3x USB-A 10Gbps, 1x USB-A 5Gbps, 1x 1GbE LAN (RJ45, I219-LM) |
And inside the tiny P3 Tiny Gen 2, Lenovo packs a great deal of hardware into the system. Unlike a lot of other 1L designs, the P3 Tiny Gen 2 features a minimal number of soldered-down parts. Not only is the DDR5 RAM removable, but the company even uses a proper socketed desktop Intel Core Ultra Series 2 CPU, and to top that off there is room for a PCIe card as well. As a result, the P3 Tiny Gen 2 makes for an interesting fusion of a tiny desktop form factor with the component swapping and upgradability that normally defines workstations – and a noteworthy addition to our Project TinyMicroMicro series of mini-PC reviews.
If you wanted to find the Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Tiny Gen 2 online, here is an affiliate link for the family over at Lenovo’s web store or another for B&H Photo. Here is an Amazon affiliate link to a model Lenovo has there as well.
Lenovo ThinkStation P3 Tiny Gen 2 External Hardware Overview
With the significant space constraints on a 1L tiny PC, there is admittedly not a ton of room for innovation with regards to the shape and chassis of these mini PCs. But as we will see, Lenovo puts the form factor to good use, especially considering the relatively high amount of heat generated by all of these desktop components.
Perhaps the most immediate takeaway from looking at the PC is that most of the chassis is ventilation in some fashion. The front? That is vents. The top? That is also vents
And even the sides? That is yet more ventilation. Suffice it to say, this is a PC designed to channel a lot of airflow.
But amidst all of those vents, Lenovo has put together a pretty basic but effective collection of front I/O ports towards the bottom-right corner of the system. Besides the obligatory audio combo jack, the company has equipped the system with a pair of 10Gbps USB-A ports, as well as a 20Gbps USB-C port – and all four of them clearly and cleanly labeled. Surprisingly, this is the sole USB-C port on the entire system: as we will see on the flip, you will not find any USB-C ports at all in the rear. So USB-C aficionados will want to make note of the fact that there is only one native port to work with.
Otherwise when it comes to the P3 Tiny, the rest of the party is in the rear. And here Lenovo has wasted no space: virtually every inch is either a port, a thumbscrew, exhaust vents, or a PCIe bracket.
In terms of I/O, the rear side of the system offers 4 USB-A ports – three 10Gbps ports, and a single 5Gbps port. This is joined by a 1Gbps Ethernet jack that is driven by an Intel i219-LM controller, and finally an antenna connector for the installed Wi-Fi radio. As we have seen on some other Lenovo 1L designs, the chassis itself only features a single internal antenna running through it, requiring an external antenna for a second stream and better wireless reception overall.
Meanwhile, seeing as how our specific model of the P3 Tiny Gen 2 includes a discrete video card – an NVIDIA RTX A1000 – this version of the system also includes a plethora of display outputs. The NVIDIA card features 4 Mini DisplayPort 1.4a outputs, and meanwhile the integrated graphics on the Intel CPU is still available as well, allowing it to drive a full-sized DisplayPort 1.4, as well as an HDMI 2.1 port. So if need be, the P3 Tiny can drive up to 6 displays, which is not too shabby for such a small system.
As an aside, while the system itself is designed to house a standard half-height half-length video card, the I/O bracket being used here is custom to Lenovo. So if a user was ever to swap out the included video card for another card, they may need to hunt down or fabricate a bracket if they want it to match.
Powering the system, in turn, is a rather beefy 330-Watt external power supply. With the need to drive a full-power desktop CPU, a 50-Watt video card, as well as various internal components and USB peripherals, the P3 Tiny can consume quite a bit of power under full load. And at this level of power consumption, Lenovo is well over the limits for a standardized connector like USB-C, so we once again see Lenovo’s proprietary square DC power connector.
Having completed our tour of the outside of the P3 Tiny, let us dig into the internals.
Can I populate all nvme slots at the same time? Could I fit double sided nvme? With PLP?
@Florian
Yes, all of the M.2 slots can be populated at the same time. As for double-sided drives, I’m afraid I don’t have a well-informed answer for you. Lenovo provides no official guidance in their manuals; they don’t explicitly list DS drives as supposed, but they don’t list them as unsupported, either. Thermal pads are pretty squishy, though, so I would be surprised if you couldn’t make it work.
It really is a shame they didn’t opt for a bigger GPU, it might have needed a custom heatsink but the b2000 would be a huge upgrade and should fit inside the systems power profile
I don’t disagree in regards to a more performant video card. But heatsink size aside, the RTX Pro 2000 Blackwell is not a drop-in replacement. NVIDIA specs it as a 70 Watt card, which is much higher TDP than the 50 Watt A1000. It’s only a difference of 20 Watts, but that’s a significant difference for such a small PC. At the moment NVIDIA does not have another 50 Watt video card; they’ve yet to release a newer 1000-tier card for the desktop market.
Oh I’m not pretending the 20 watts doesn’t matter although I’m sure that power supply can keep up with it, I would imagine that they would need to use the lower profile he’s thinking probably make it out of copper possibly out of vapor chamber it’s not it insurmountable wattage when laptops have cards in that power range although they do have the advantage of more integrated cooling solutions than what would have to be used here. I’m sure that the unfortunate reality is that it’s not a high enough volume product to invest the engineering resources required into anything more than the custom I/O bracket for what’s probably otherwise a standard 1000 class card.
Ugh that should say lower profile heatsink, autocorrect strikes again. (We need a better comment system that we can edit)
The computer actually supports up to 8 displays if you use daisychaining or a MST-hub on the onboard Displayport.
But the benefit of the nvidia card is of course only available through the four Mini displayports.
Gjetting bigger GPUs in this chassis is usually prohibited by the length of the card (or the heatsink arrangement on the card).
New on this model is the third nvme slot.
It’s a sturdy powerpack actually tested and certified for Maritime use.
The little computer that could
Why, in 2026, are these still being shipped with a single 1Gbps ethernet port? Sure, you could throw a faster NIC in the PCIe slot, but I’d rather use that for other purposes. Would love to see a 10GbE port, but even 2.5GbE would be a big improvement.
Really happy to see new TinyMiniMicro content … I’d also love to see links to new articles & videos posted on Mastodon, if you can spare the time. Lots of engagement from a strong homelabber crowd there. Great work as always!
I have been looking for something like this. I like it. It could be glued to the back of a 4K TV and used as a media machine. No extra box sitting around, out of sight.
Agh, 1GBe ethernet port…. why oh why is this a thing still! 20 years ago I can understand, but now? Integrating 10GBe onto motherboards will drive down the cost, and increase rate of adoption.
Also, why oh why is it DP1.4. DP2.1 is superior, offers higher resolution and display rate.
With 10GBe this could rival the Minisforum MS-01 and MS-A2, which are great machines but have drawbacks with remore management and heat dissipitation (and perhaps warranty replacement…), and are not 1U in height.
@Alan
The DP1.4 outputs are a function of the video card. The A1000 is an Ampere architecture product; Ampere doesn’t support DP2.x. That didn’t come until the Blackwell architecture (RTX 5000 series/RTX PRO Blackwell).
In fact, there simply isn’t an RTX PRO video card available that would fit into the P3 Tiny that offers DP 2.1. This is the best card available in the single-wide HHHL form factor.
Just an FYI – while it’s nothing even remotely approximating cost effective, there are a small handful of potential GPU upgrade options for these machines, most pertinently the RTX 2000E Ada Generation (note the “e”). Priced at around a frankly absurd $750 US, it performs roughly on par with (if not a few percentage points better than) the previous gen RTX A2000 in most cases.
It’s essentially, the same card as the RTX 2000 Ada Generation, except with a single-slot cooler, and BIOS Throttled to pull only 50w. Given that the 2000E costs the same as its beefier twin brother, it’s not a very compelling purchase…but it is a pretty substantial upgrade over the A1000. Worth mentioning that the gulf in performance between the 2000E ada and the 2000 ada is about the same as the gulf between the A1000 and the A2000.
@CantankerousRex
That’s a great find! Thank you for that.
When I was putting together this article, I was looking solely at NVIDIA’s official listings. I never thought to look at PNY’s listings.
As best as I can tell, the 2000E is a PNY-exclusive card. So I won’t hazard a guess as to what OEM availability is like. But if nothing else, that is a very interesting option as an end-user upgrade. Ada has a huge performance advantage at iso-power, to say the least.