Order in for a CTO P1 Gen 5, current ship-by date: Jul 30

[H-Atkinson]

I have an order in for a P1 Gen 5 with the i7-12800H, 3070ti, 165hz LCD, 64gb of RAM, and a 4tb SSD. Expecting to have it in August. Once the 30-day hold period is up on the Lenovo points from the order (and when its back in stock) I'm going to order a TB4 WS dock as well.

So, if anyone has questions about the P1G5, post them here and I'll try my best to answer them once I have the system in-hand.

Some things I'm already planning on looking into myself are:
-SSD OE for the 4tb drive
-thermals and power limits optimization
-quality of liquid metal application
-whether the LCD (which is the same panel as that on the Legion 5 Pro and 7) supports G-Sync with some software trickery (more on this bellow)

Some things I already know from people who have pre-configured machines in-hand are:
-TPfancontrol works
-you can adjust PL2 CPU limit and the Dynamic Boost GPU power cap
-Kioxia is the OE for the lower capacity gen4 drives at the moment
-RAM OE is Samsung at the moment
-the LCD is the same exact panel (NE160QDM-NY1) as that of the Legion 5 Pro and 7 models, but for some reason does not support G-Sync on GeForce models out of the box
-trackpad is glass
-all lids are carbon fiber
-TB4 only support PD3.0, not 3.1 (no USB-C chargers over 100w, sorry)
-vapor chamber models with LM have nickel-plated cold plates, so galvanic corrosion shouldn't be an issue

[H-Atkinson]

Ship by date got bumped to Aug 7, and again to Aug 30.

[H-Atkinson]

Update #2: ended up changing my order (re-ordering) since prices went down. Spent ~300 USD less and bumped up to an A4500 from the 3070ti, so I won't be able to figure out that G-Sync stuff. Ship date still Aug. 30.

[H-Atkinson]

Shipped from the LCFC facility in Chongqing, expected delivery on the 25th of August.

[H-Atkinson]

Delivered, will have details and pics soon.

[H-Atkinson]

Well, I wish I had good news, but I got a lemon.

-LCD flickers when pixels update
-LCD flashes black at random when doing anything that isn't the BIOS
Does this regardless of GPU selection, drivers, or OS. This makes it seem like the issue is a dead panel.

BUT it gets worse. Have had it hard-lock and refuse to boot until I cleared CMOS twice as well, would just roll the FN lock, mute, and mic mute lights in 1 second intervals and respond to no inputs at all.

[RealBlackStuff]

Lenono made yet another goof with this machine: a typo.
Instead of P1 Gen 5, it should have been: PIG 5.
I'd return it for a refund.

[H-Atkinson]

Yeah, that's what a smart person would do, but since I'm not paying for it, and I don't have the time or inclination to config and then wait for an ISV-certified Dell or HP (not to mention the fact that they won't fit the budget my IT just hands me), I'm going to have them fix or outright replace this one.

I'm also going to make them give me a Win10 ISO for it (even though I'm just going to dump LTSC on it myself). When I ordered with Win11, I was told that it included downgrade rights to Win10, but the only recovery media I can request is for Win11. I really wanted to give Win11 a chance since Alder Lake leans heavily on it with Thread Director, but I just can't. Its a bad OS in every other way, starting with the most important part for someone using it day-to-day, the UI. I'd genuinely rather kneecap my performance and/or battery life slightly than I would put up with Win11's UI and boneheaded feature-cuts and simplifications.

Really not impressed with Lenovo for these last few go-arounds. The last machine I got from them new with 0 issues was my P51, and everything since has had some sort of critical flaw. Bizarrely both P-series machines I've since purchased have shown up with faulty LCDs (P53 4k and now P1G5 165hz). Its been almost 12 hours since I submitted a Premier support ticket, and have heard nothing back... hopefully they haven't dropped the ball in that department too, since support has actually been the one thing I've always been able to count on Lenovo for.

[H-Atkinson]

Having them replace the system outright, issues are now as follows:
-flicker
-rolling-FN light on some boot attempts
-missing clips under bottom cover
-warped bottom cover
-trackpad deadzone
-failing self-PCIE test

[H-Atkinson]

Shipped today, expect it in a week.

[H-Atkinson]

Delayed, scanned today in Incheon Korea.

[MikalE]

I hope your second model is better than the first. I'm glad I haven't had any trouble with my T16.

[H-Atkinson]

I hope your second model is better than the first. I'm glad I haven't had any trouble with my T16.

I hope so as well. I've been running a P52 P3200 for work for the last ~2 months, and its been struggling hard with some of my CAD work.

[MikalE]

I was itching to get a P series, but for what I use a computer for I couldn't justify the cost. It would have only been to have the best-of-the-best and bragging rights. If I needed to run CAD, do video editing, or other intensive hardware work I would have bought one instead of the T16.

Those P series workstations are nice machines.

[H-Atkinson]

They're very nice. I've quite liked my prior P-series machines, but the P1 is in the end a rebadged X1 Extreme. Only reason I didn't get a P16 is because the P16 is just so disappointing in the context of the machine it replaces. Losing ethernet is unacceptable in that laptop class. The LCD options aren't great either, and all of this for the obscenely high price. I'm hoping the P16 Gen 2 or 3 fixes this, and I can upgrade to it from my P1G5.

[H-Atkinson]

Its here, will get it set up tomorrow and post hopefully good news.

[2uzfev8]

Looking forward to hearing your feedback.

I landed on a P1 Gen 5 with 4k A3000 and 12800H. The thing is an absolute monster and the display is one of the best I have ever used. This is a huge upgrade even on my 10 year old 3930k 4.7GHZ hexa-core workstation that I built in 2012.

[H-Atkinson]

Have my system all set up now, and glad to say this one is not defective. The 12800H and A4500 are pretty obscenely fast, especially for a laptop this small, and shockingly it doesn't cook to death either. Sitting at ~85C on both under a max combined synthetic load. All of this is working fine under W10, and the battery life is notably better than my P52 when using it for light tasks. Obviously under load they both suck back 90 watt hours in no time. Only real complaint I have right now is S0 sleep, which has sucked on every system I've owned with it, but it wakes from hibernate so fast that I just use it instead of sleep.

[MikalE]

I too had to fool around with the setting for awhile before I could get the T16 to correctly sleep when I closed the lid.

[H-Atkinson]

What OS, and any idea what you did? As I understand it, S3 sleep just doesn't exist on Alder Lake M.

[MikalE]

Even though the monitor and drive are never turned off on AC power I had to use the 'balanced' power plan to get it to sleep when closing the lid.

I also had to make sure that I allowed the computer to manage USB power and allow it to turn off the ports if not being used.

I had to reset all of them after I turned off that option. The system wouldn't sleep if the USB ports were left on.

Windows 11 Pro.

[2uzfev8]

Which screen did you go with? Any chance you can run a TimeSpy benchmark for us? It's free.

[MikalE]

1920x1200 IPS touchscreen. No payware on this system. Sorry.

[H-Atkinson]

1600p 165hz. Lovely panel. Will bench it in a bit.

[2uzfev8]

Did you bench it yet? Still liking it?

[H-Atkinson]

Totally forgot to bench, will do this weekend. Loving it so far, and no issues to report.

[2uzfev8]

Glad to hear it - I would be curious to see how it scores in Time Spy free 3DMark benchmark.

[H-Atkinson]

Well, its almost like I cursed it by saying something is wrong. Its now throttling the CPU down to ~2.2 gHz even when I'm trying to load it. Weirdly alt-tabbing out of the application trying to use the CPU and then alt-tabbing back in gets it back up to 4.4ish gHz for a few seconds, but then it drops back down. I have no idea what prompted this. Will still try and bench tomorrow, but this might impact the results.

[2uzfev8]

That's disappointing - is the machine still throttling? There is a new BIOS update with updated "thermal tables" but no indication of what is actually changed.

[H-Atkinson]

I'm on N3JET26W 1.10 at the moment, which seems to be the latest. The throttling isn't thermal, the CPU will barely go over 80 C now if I manually set the fans to max.