Stefan Mileschin

Don't let that headline fool you: although Lenovo technically just unveiled one product, the ThinkStation E31 workstation, it actually shoehorned two distinct machines into one press release. Behold: a budget workstation available as a conventionally sized tower, as well as compact one. Whichever you choose, both support up to 32GB of RAM and are available with either an Intel Xeon E3-1200 CPU or a range of Ivy Bridge processors. Regardless of the size, you'll get nine USB ports, including four of the 3.0 variety. And, in addition to Windows 7 / XP, they're Windows 8-ready, and can run Red Hat as well.

It's at this juncture, though, that the specs start to diverge, with the heftier machine naturally offering more expandability. The full-size tower, for instance, can accommodate up to three HDDs, or 9TB of hard drive storage, while the smaller number makes room for two HDDs, or 6TB of space. (Either way, you can opt for solid-state drives.) On the graphics front, both will be offered with Intel's HD P4000 solution, but the upgrade options once again differ: expect a max offering of NVIDIA Quadro Q4000 graphics on the tower, and Quadro Q600 on the smaller guy. Intrigued? Both systems will start at $629, with the fuller-sized tower arriving on June 5th and the compact model following on June 13th.

http://www.engadget.com/2012/05/14/l...nkstation-E31/