Product Review: Page (1) of 1 - 07/28/09

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Lenovo ThinkStation S20 workstation

The Lenovo ThinkStation S20 is the company's mid range workstation that works well in a variety of creative environments, be it video and special effects creation to CAD and animation. Configured with the right graphics card, the unit will fit well in any creative environment. The S20 is larger than most mid-tower cases, and sports ample room inside for user upgrades.

Once inside the S20, the first noticeable change is that of the cable clutter, or lack thereof. Lenovo has finally gotten around to better organizing the cables inside the system. The power supply cables are now encased in a harness, mitigating the effect of cable clutter that was still an annoyance on the company's S10 (read review here. The S20's six memory slots are wide open for adding memory modules, as there is no cabling that you have to push out of the way. The S20 has space for three hard drives. To remove the drives, disengage the SATA cable and simply grab the pull rings and pull up. The pull rings make it super simple. The S20 also has room for two 5.25-inch optical drives. The 3.5-inch drive bay houses the memory card reader.

The S20 has a total of three fans; one exhaust fan and the dedicated CPU and power supply fans. The PCI expansion area offers support for full length PCI cards; though you wouldn't be able to populate all the slots with the Quadro FX 4800 present, though you might be able to fit a second Quadro FX 4800, for two graphics cards. As with the S10 and the Quadro FX 1700 card, the Quadro FX 4800 virtually makes the PCI slot next to it unusable.

Inside the system you'll find a clean look. The memory slots are easily accessed, and the hard drives can easily be swapped out without tools.

The Quadro FX 4800 does take up a bunch of space

 

The case door closes simply enough and features a lockable bracket. The case itself remains unremarkable. It has been Lenovo's standard case for many years. It still has a sturdy handle that protrudes away from the system and a metal handle located at the rear of the system. Not the best looking case, but it works well.

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