Conan11

Yeah... following a discussion on Lenovo forum, I purchased a bit thinner thermal pads to place under the SSDs. It's however difficult to say, if it helps. It's not so easy to test, as I'm not sure if the SSDs get lots of dedicated cooling, and their temperatures seem to depend on the loads on CPU and GPUs.

CrystalDiskMark shows: read (GB/s) write (GB/s) Seq1M Q8T1: 12.1 6.4 I wonder if the twice faster read comes from RAID1? Seq1M Q1T1: 4.1 4.7 Rnd4k Q32T1: 0.56 0.36 Rnd4k Q1T1: 0.061 0.12 Not sure how to interpret these numbers, but indeed I recall seeing several GB/s when copying large files, much less with many small files. Of course, only until the thermal throttling hits, which happened sometime during the 200 GB copy test. I eventually added thermal pads under the SSDs, but I'm not sure if it makes any sense. That would require some careful testing. With a pair of 4 TB drives, it isn't so bad. At least for me, at this time. The reason for RAID1 is that if a drive fails, my laptop doesn't stop to work. Yes I'm well aware it doesn't replace backup, neither rebuilding the array is guaranteed... but at least when a failure happens I can deal with it when I have time for it, on my conditions. But there are some other downsides to RAID1, besides loss of capacity, so maybe I'll change my mind.

After making a test of copying 200 GB of data from one partition to another both SSDs (setup in RAID1) go above 70°C. I wonder how bad sign is it? Perhaps I should I add I also stressed the CPU during the test with CPU-Z, so more tests are needed, I was just trying to exercise various scenarios. Edit: it isn't much different when the CPU is not stressed. The SSDs eventually throttle (a lot!), but only when they are quite above 70°C, which is the top temperature allowed in the specs. Also throttling alone doesn't seem to be enough to decrease the temperature. I wonder how it may affect more realistic use scenarios. In particular, if one SSD dies, and I replace it, would the other one just overheat and die during rebuilding the RAID1 array?...

Yes, this is exactly what I was trying, with no luck. The installer was able to load the drivers, but it still didn't see any drives in the computer. I tried both with the Intel driver you mention, and with the driver pack from the Lenovo website. Same observation here. The following thread https://www.spinics.net/lists/raid/msg69668.html includes: "Is RST support planned for mdadm?/AFAIK it is not planned." This is a bit sad, but perhaps I just don't understand the lingo? I wish to be proven wrong! Some more updates: I could create only up to two RAID volumes with IRS, in which case the size of the second one was fixed to the remainder of the available capacity. Therefore one cannot have two RAID volumes and also some non-RAID space. A new BIOS release (1.13) allows to disable the efficiency cores. Edit: and I'd forget: https://www.lenovo.com/us/en/p/accessories-and-software/docking/docking_thunderbolt-docks-(universal-cable-docks)/40b00300us This seems like a docking station for P16, 230W power delivery.

Update on installing a pair of double sided SSDs and configuring RAID Accessing the SSD slot under the keyboard is not as bad as one could think. Removing the drive itself is a bit difficult, as there is no space to put the fingers around it, but once I figured it out it was straightforward as well. Still, some care is needed. The original 1TB drive is single sided. It is pressed from the front by a heatsink, and from the back by a piece of rubber. A 4TB SSD recommended by Lenovo is double sided with the chips cover only part of the back side, so I presume the rubber doesn't press against the chips, but the flat piece of the card. These 4TB SSDs are not available to buy at the moment. I have a pair of Firecuda 530, and they have chips on the whole length of the card. They don't really fit well and they bend. The pieces of rubber can be easily removed (and possibly reinstalled) and then there is plenty of space. However then the drive under the keyboard is not tightly secured, as the screw is a bit too long. It's probably not completely loose, at it is pressed from the top by the heatsink, but I'd still feel better by adding a washer, or maybe some thinner spacer in place of the rubber piece. RAID is configured via Intel Rapid Storage, which is not a real RAID controller, but something partially dependent on the OS. It seems a standard in laptops advertised as having. When installing and removing the drives I noticed at some point BIOS trying to rebuild the degraded RAID, which I think is a good sign (some IRS versions work only using OS tools). I recommend turning BIOS into text mode for setting up RAID, as otherwise it's virtually impossible to set the volume capacity to anything else than the full drive size, due to buggy BIOS graphical interface. The only working way to install Windows is using Lenovo USB Recovery tool (https://pcsupport.lenovo.com/us/en/lenovorecovery). Regular Windows image seems to lack drivers to recognize the drives, and I failed to find the right drivers. I was not successful with installing Linux on RAID. Maybe this requires some more investigation, but perhaps the drivers are not ready. I noticed that in Dell Precision configurators you cannot select RAID with Linux, and this might be a hint. As I'm not really familiar with Intel Rapid Storage, neither with Bitlocker, I have some questions: As the Lenovo USB Recovery simply installs Windows on the full drive, I wonder how to configure dual booting? Perhaps the best is to setup several RAID volumes, for each OS, and for the shared data area? How much potential is there in Bitlocker preventing me from accessing my own data? Considering: accessing data drive from another OS, possible drive failure, and accidental wiping the keys from BIOS?

Does any of the Precision workstations have an actual RAID controller, or is it all Intel Rapid Storage?

i9-12900HX/A4500/WQUXGA some first impressions: Immediately after turning on the computer the fans don't run at all. If the computer gets warmer they start to run in the slowest setting, and then it takes very long time for them to turn off again, even in "best power efficiency mode", and the computer doing nothing. I'd be grateful for advice on further reducing the power consumption when there's no need for lot's of computing power. In the slowest setting the fans are quiet, but not inaudible. The main sources of the noise is the air movement through the exhaust on the back and the air intake on the bottom, and the audibility depends on your position with respect to the laptop. At the next, higher speed, the fans start to be clearly audible, and at the maximum speed the noise is very loud. Perhaps it's fine if you leave the computer alone to crunch some numbers, but I can't imagine working for any longer periods of time this way. I guess it would also disturb other people in the room. I have impression that that at high loads the battery is drained, but I need to test it more. By waving my hand in front of the screen I see no PWM, even at the lowest brightness setting The keyboard has a good layout, but also quite shallow action The empty SSD slot includes a heatsink

Isn't it why they put two USB-C with power delivery next to each other on the back? Anyway, if you need to connect a hub with one USB-C cable and power adapter with another cable, this is the same number of cables as connecting a docking station with two USB-C cables, so not much difference in terms of convenience. I'm asking only because I'm curious.

Um, might it be it just won't accept a two digit number of watts?

Hmm, but P16 specs mention power delivery, while P15 Gen2 don't. Perhaps P16 simply refuses to use 96W charger? But I guess that's more of a question to Lenovo.

Do you know if the laptop be powered via USB-C? The specs say "power delivery 3.0", but I'm not sure if it means it can receive, or provide power. I can't find any dock providing more than 100W in Lenovo store, and that's way less than needed. DELL docks like WD19DC specs state they provide high power only to DELL laptops, but perhaps there is some way to work around this? Hmm: HP Thunderbolt Dock 230W G2? Edit: ah, Power Delivery 3.0 allows for 100W per USB-C port, so perhaps 200W per 2 ports? It's still less than 230W from the charger distributed with the unit.

In the other thread you mentioned observations about fan noise. That would be interesting to learn about.

Could you write more about it? How loud are the fan at the lowest (but not off) speed? I guess it would be really useful if you could start a P16 thread, like Aaron did for 7770.

Yeah, I'm also afraid that these Lenovo specs are just a copy/paste mistake...

Isn't it a bright pixel/subpixel? Dell advertises their policy to replace a panel with just a single bright pixel https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000126004/dell-display-pixel-guidelines#premium-panel-guarantee The definition they use is "a white or colored (red, green, or blue) dot on a black background" This is actually disappointing for a system advertised as "quiet". There are situations where even a short period of fan noise can be very undesired, think of a meeting, studying at a library, audio recording... perhaps this is something they can improve in firmware or software? Do you plan to report this to Dell?