UK ALL GONE - Lenovo ThinkStation P350 Tiny new / i5 11500 / 8GB RAM / 256GB NVMe / 3 yr warranty NOW £420 (or less!) delivered

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adman_c

Active Member
Feb 14, 2016
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I reject their quote today. To be honest, I didn't like the way they handled this.
- First quote: They wanted to charge me UK VAT. So I'll be paying double VATs in this case. So 4 units (£1,399.96) + shipping to the Netherlands (£379.99) + VAT (£355.99) = £2,135.94 Then I pay my countr's VAT So 21% of £2,135.94. So 4 units is going to cost me: £2563

Then I asked them Why are you charging me UK VAT? Can we remove it?
- Second quote: 4 units (£1,399.96) + shipping to the Netherlands (£379.99) = £1,779.95

So I told them Shipping cost is really hard. Can we reduce it? Or I can opt-in for my on courier? and use card instead of direct transfer.
- Third quote: So 4 units (£1,399.96) + Card processing fee (£41.99) + UK VAT (£355.99) = £1,730.34

They added back the UK VAT after I told them that I'll bring my own courier.

I ended up passing and not proceeding with an order.
Oh wow yeah, that's bananas. Shipping 4 units to the US was substantially less than half what they want to go to the Netherlands. !!!!!
 

Parallax

Active Member
Nov 8, 2020
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London, UK
I mean, the capability of this box with the 11500 plus 3 drives and 10gbe is just off the charts for anything approaching its size. Put 32gb of ram in it and it’s a monster hypervisor in a teensy-weensy box.
Don't forget the P350 Tinys support 64GB in fact (2x 32GB). Theoretically the motherboard will support 128GB but 64GB DDR4 SODIMMs don't exist. Sigh.
 

adman_c

Active Member
Feb 14, 2016
257
135
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Chicago
Don't forget the P350 Tinys support 64GB in fact (2x 32GB). Theoretically the motherboard will support 128GB but 64GB DDR4 SODIMMs don't exist. Sigh.
Yeah, my mini-monster hypervisor will have either 32 or 64gb. Haven't decided yet. Plus a 256gb boot drive and 2x 2TB NVME. And if I decide to go really nuts, I might put a 11700K in there a la rafale77. Of course it's probably not worth that since the K CPU wouldn't ever be able to run anywhere near its boost clocks for more than a few seconds before throttling.
 

Parallax

Active Member
Nov 8, 2020
417
207
43
London, UK
Yeah, my mini-monster hypervisor will have either 32 or 64gb. Haven't decided yet. Plus a 256gb boot drive and 2x 2TB NVME. And if I decide to go really nuts, I might put a 11700K in there a la rafale77. Of course it's probably not worth that since the K CPU wouldn't ever be able to run anywhere near its boost clocks for more than a few seconds before throttling.
I run 64GB in one, largely because it runs my vSphere instance which is a memory hog; and my others are 32GB, which is fine especially if - like me - you're mostly running containers (k8s, firecracker, Docker etc) anyway.

Check the first post in the reference thread for comparisons of Passmark and single thread/multi core performance comparisons of most of the CPUs usually available for the Tinys. I think you'll find the performance uplift of minor benefit compared with the extra cost over the 11500 the box comes with, especially as I almost never find myself CPU-bound - memory is a more previous commodity, particularly for things like databases.
 

adman_c

Active Member
Feb 14, 2016
257
135
43
Chicago
I run 64GB in one, largely because it runs my vSphere instance which is a memory hog; and my others are 32GB, which is fine especially if - like me - you're mostly running containers (k8s, firecracker, Docker etc) anyway.

Check the first post in the reference thread for comparisons of Passmark and single thread/multi core performance comparisons of most of the CPUs usually available for the Tinys. I think you'll find the performance uplift of minor benefit compared with the extra cost over the 11500 the box comes with, especially as I almost never find myself CPU-bound - memory is a more previous commodity, particularly for things like databases.
I run proxmox and it seems to be relatively lightweight, so 32gb is probably ok. Agree on the marginal benefit of going from 11500 to 11700K, especially because a some portion of the performance uplift likely depends on running at higher boost clocks for longer, which just isn't possible in the Tiny's power/heat envelope.
 

Wasmachineman_NL

Wittgenstein the Supercomputer FTW!
Aug 7, 2019
1,872
617
113
I reject their quote today. To be honest, I didn't like the way they handled this.
- First quote: They wanted to charge me UK VAT. So I'll be paying double VATs in this case. So 4 units (£1,399.96) + shipping to the Netherlands (£379.99) + VAT (£355.99) = £2,135.94 Then I pay my countr's VAT So 21% of £2,135.94. So 4 units is going to cost me: £2563

Then I asked them Why are you charging me UK VAT? Can we remove it?
- Second quote: 4 units (£1,399.96) + shipping to the Netherlands (£379.99) = £1,779.95

So I told them Shipping cost is really hard. Can we reduce it? Or I can opt-in for my on courier? and use card instead of direct transfer.
- Third quote: So 4 units (£1,399.96) + Card processing fee (£41.99) + UK VAT (£355.99) = £1,730.34

They added back the UK VAT after I told them that I'll bring my own courier.

I ended up passing and not proceeding with an order.
Welkom bij Brexit :^) meteen ook de reden dat ik NOOIT meer iets bestel in het VK.

@topic: Could these support 10th gen CPUs? 10 CML cores > 8 RKL cores
 

adman_c

Active Member
Feb 14, 2016
257
135
43
Chicago
Welkom bij Brexit :^) meteen ook de reden dat ik NOOIT meer iets bestel in het VK.

@topic: Could these support 10th gen CPUs? 10 CML cores > 8 RKL cores
I don’t see why not. Per the Lenovo Tiny reference thread the P350 was available with 10th and 11th gen processors.
 

adman_c

Active Member
Feb 14, 2016
257
135
43
Chicago
They arrived! LOL the box is huge. I've only ever bought these things second hand, so it didn't occur to me that each one would come with a full-size keyboard.
 
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adman_c

Active Member
Feb 14, 2016
257
135
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Chicago
So it looks like there's no issue with the warranty coverage in the US even though these are UK SKUs. Registered and it's currently showing 28 months remaining. I submitted my proof of purchase so that I get the full 3 years.
 
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adman_c

Active Member
Feb 14, 2016
257
135
43
Chicago
Currently planning to sell two at a hopefully modest profit on the 'bay to make my cost even slightly cheaper. I'll put one into my Tiny cluster as my beefiest node with 32gb/2x 2TB NVME, 10GbE, and a small SATA SSD to boot from. And then I'll either replace another of my Tinys or sell the final one. Haven't decided yet.
 
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Parallax

Active Member
Nov 8, 2020
417
207
43
London, UK
I have 2x P350s and 2x M70qs. Now that IT Bay's stock is down to 20 units, I might buy two more P350s and I should be able to sell 2x M70q for £250 each or so (which would actually be a profit on what I paid for them). Then I have the PCIe slot and 2x m.2 and I should be good for another 3 years, at least until the warranty runs out. Hmmm.
 

Parallax

Active Member
Nov 8, 2020
417
207
43
London, UK
Currently planning to sell two at a hopefully modest profit on the 'bay to make my cost even slightly cheaper. I'll put one into my Tiny cluster as my beefiest node with 32gb/2x 2TB NVME, 10GbE and a small SATA SSD to boot from. And then I'll either replace another of my Tinys or sell the final one. Haven't decided yet.
Which 10GbE card are you thinking of using?
 

adman_c

Active Member
Feb 14, 2016
257
135
43
Chicago
Which 10GbE card are you thinking of using?
For my Tiny-but-mighty hypervisor, I actually think I'm going to go for the Mellanox CX311A. It's even teenier than the SuperMicro AOC v2 and should use less power/run cooler. Also, for this machine's purpose I really only need the single 10GbE connection (I'm frankly running out of ports in my switch). And it lets me use the 4x riser that I got from Encompass without hacking a hole in the back of it. Which I may still do anyway, so I can at least dry-fit the SuperMicro NIC.
 
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