Lenovo M700/M900 BIOS mod to Coffee Lake CPUs

[AnUrbanPenguin]

Exactly, it gets too hot and consumes too much. It even shuts down at full load.

Im guessing you installed the 8 core CPU in your M710Q? Was it boosting above 45w during stressful workloads? The xeon mobile chips have a configurable TDP which can be dropped to 35w instead of 45w. I wonder if there is a way that could be done to prevent any issues?

I assume the temperature issues were system related rather than CPU related? The 51w 6100 ran fine but warm so id expect a 45w direct die cooled chip would run cooler?

 

[agapitox]

Im guessing you installed the 8 core CPU in your M710Q? Was it boosting above 45w during stressful workloads? The xeon mobile chips have a configurable TDP which can be dropped to 35w instead of 45w. I wonder if there is a way that could be done to prevent any issues?

I assume the temperature issues were system related rather than CPU related? The 51w 6100 ran fine but warm so id expect a 45w direct die cooled chip would run cooler?

Yes... as I put previously I put the Chinese 8 core xeon (E-2286M).

The truth I have not seen where the TDP limit is modified, I will have to check in the bios.

Another thing, maybe the most annoying thing that happens to me, is that if I use the highest resolution at 4k, the video comes and goes when it wants randomly in a way that make the equipment unusable. On the other hand if I set it to lower resolutions 1080, it goes relatively well.

 

[agapitox]

Im guessing you installed the 8 core CPU in your M710Q? Was it boosting above 45w during stressful workloads? The xeon mobile chips have a configurable TDP which can be dropped to 35w instead of 45w. I wonder if there is a way that could be done to prevent any issues?

but lowering the TDP is no solution because you also lower the performance. I would have bought another processor. In theory the M710q could withstand the 35W of tdp of the xeon without problems ... but it is seen that it is not so.

 

[AnUrbanPenguin]

but lowering the TDP is no solution because you also lower the performance. I would have bought another processor. In theory the M710q could withstand the 35W of tdp of the xeon without problems ... but it is seen that it is not so.

Your still going to get much higher performance from an 8 core 16 thread CPU on a newer architecture at 35w than a 4c4t processor on an older architecture at 35w.

Perhaps the 6c12t CPUs could be a happy medium for this platform?

 

[agapitox]

Your still going to get much higher performance from an 8 core 16 thread CPU on a newer architecture at 35w than a 4c4t processor on an older architecture at 35w.

Perhaps the 6c12t CPUs could be a happy medium for this platform?

of course, now we know... but with the tdp specifications on the table, no one would say so.

 

[RolloZ170]

Exactly, it gets too hot and consumes too much. It even shuts down at full load.

nice, there is no BIOS blocking.
looks to me your cooler is too small and the VRM get onto OCP/OTP (overcurrentprot.,overtempprot.)

 

[paf]

If you have bought an E-2286M you should know that it comes with lots of warnings about the correct Motherboard and BIOS. Here is an example from Aliexpress:

So I would not expect the modified BIOS the vendors provide to work in Lenovo Tiny, and there are some comments form buyers about a good heatsink, and that in some cases, a discrete (additional) graphics card is needed..

 

[agapitox]

If you have bought an E-2286M you should know that it comes with lots of warnings about the correct Motherboard and BIOS. Here is an example from Aliexpress:
View attachment 25100
So I would not expect the modified BIOS the vendors provide to work in Lenovo Tiny, and there are some comments form buyers about a good heatsink, and that in some cases, a discrete (additional) graphics card is needed..

Ok... but that you comment is not clear at all... nothing is mentioned in relation to Lenovo tinys.

We could say the same for the rest of the processors, because they don't mention anything about Lenovo.

Anyway that's why I bought a M910x, because I have seen in the specs that it has a 65W processor, better vrm board, better copper heatsink and 135w power supply.

 

[paf]

If nothing is mentioned about Lenovo tinys I would not expect them to be supported...
Lenovo tinys have a list of supported processors. Lenovo tinys also have a custom bios to support the "special" Lenovo features.
Are you using the original Lenovo BIOS or a special BIOS supplied by the processor seller?
For an octa core processor the recommendation is to use a higher end Z370 motherboard.
The Lenovo M910x has a Q270 chipset.

 

[neggles]

Thanks for taking the time to reply. Its good to know these 9th Gen mobile chips will work fine and do not need a pin mod!

How are you finding the temperatures and boost clocks with the 8 core CPU? How much power is it drawing under heavy workloads too?

Hey! Sorry for the slow reply, I wrote one up halfway then neglected to actually finish/post it.

The M910q BIOS appears to limit this chip to a PL1 of 40W and a PL2 of 60W, and with those settings it caps out at about 68-70C under a 10-minute looped Cinebench R23 multi-core load. It maintains the full 2.7GHz all-core boost clock, and doesn't thermal throttle (though it does pin the fan at 100%)

In theory this chip should be able to go a bit higher on power draw / all-core boost, but I've not gotten around to removing the post-Plundervolt BIOS locks on power control to try undervolting / overclocking yet. Either way, as-is it's quite a major bump from the i5-6600T!

-- edit after reading the remaining posts in the thread --

@agapitox I suspect the shutdown issue you're seeing is not load-related, but is related to the Intel ME drivers. After I made a few more tweaks to the BIOS (trying to un-hide some of the hidden menus), the system started hard-locking a few minutes after reboot no matter the load level. Disabling AMT/ME in the BIOS, or reverting those tweaks, stops this from happening and my system is totally stable under looping Cinebench R23 tests for >30 minutes. It also doesn't happen under Linux.

Do keep in mind that Prime95 in AVX512/small FFTs mode generates an unrealistic and utterly unreasonable amount of heat, too, and is not remotely representative of any real-world workloads.

All that said, the M910x is definitely a better choice, as it has a much nicer heatsink and has the PCIe riser slot available.

M910q heatsink:


M910x heatsink:


I only used an M910q because I was able to pick one up for about US$100, and the cheapest M910x/P320 Tiny was almost 3x that price. If you can get the model with the better heatsink for a reasonable price, definitely do that.

@paf this thread starts out with a somewhat haphazard guide for hacking up the BIOS of an M700, combining it with the BIOS of the M710q/M910q, and patching it with CoffeeTime (a tool which can be found on the win-raid forums) to make it work; the M700 and M710 are similar enough internally (near identical PCBs) for that to work, and of course you don't need to do the BIOS core replacement if you're starting with an M710/M910.

All the AliExpress sellers are doing when you send them a BIOS dump, is applying the correct set of patches to it in CoffeeTime (and maybe one or two special ones). There's nothing particularly magic about what they do, and the same approach can (and does) work on essentially any motherboard which has Kaby Lake support in the BIOS.

 

[The_Overseer]

Hey guys! So I tried making this work before and...it didn't go so well. I have a few of those China ordered CPUs, including the nice 35W QNVH 6c12t. I have an interest in making this work however, and I see many of you seem to have gotten that same model booting them.

I have a Lenovo M710Q, currently expected to have a bad firmware flash, but I double backed it up before I flashed it then did a binary compare of the two reads, ensuring they were identical. (This is my standard process, I learned it from the Xbox 360 days.)

Once I restore it, what steps can I take to make CoffeeTime properly handle the modifications? Is there a new version I should be aware about?

Thank you in advance for all the help...

- Overseer

 

[The_Overseer]

I did almost exactly this today, but with an E-2286M rather than the E-2276M. Worked great - take M910Q, dump BIOS with SPI flash clip, feed into Coffee Time, push all the buttons, upgrade the UEFI GOP, add various microcode, end up with something like this:

View attachment 25059

Those microcodes will boot any Coffee Lake chip, as well as production Skylake and Kaby Lake chips - the i5-6500T booted just fine, and the E-2286M does too:

View attachment 25060

Long story short, yep, should work fine

I need to do the bios advanced menu unlock still, but, details.

Any chance you'd be willing to help me? I've been wanting to do something like this for a full year and have come up woefully short. My model is the 710Q, and I have the CPUs prepared for it, I just have no idea what I've been doing wrong...

 

[AnUrbanPenguin]

Hey! Sorry for the slow reply, I wrote one up halfway then neglected to actually finish/post it.

The M910q BIOS appears to limit this chip to a PL1 of 40W and a PL2 of 60W, and with those settings it caps out at about 68-70C under a 10-minute looped Cinebench R23 multi-core load. It maintains the full 2.7GHz all-core boost clock, and doesn't thermal throttle (though it does pin the fan at 100%)

In theory this chip should be able to go a bit higher on power draw / all-core boost, but I've not gotten around to removing the post-Plundervolt BIOS locks on power control to try undervolting / overclocking yet. Either way, as-is it's quite a major bump from the i5-6600T!

-- edit after reading the remaining posts in the thread --

@agapitox I suspect the shutdown issue you're seeing is not load-related, but is related to the Intel ME drivers. After I made a few more tweaks to the BIOS (trying to un-hide some of the hidden menus), the system started hard-locking a few minutes after reboot no matter the load level. Disabling AMT/ME in the BIOS, or reverting those tweaks, stops this from happening and my system is totally stable under looping Cinebench R23 tests for >30 minutes. It also doesn't happen under Linux.

Do keep in mind that Prime95 in AVX512/small FFTs mode generates an unrealistic and utterly unreasonable amount of heat, too, and is not remotely representative of any real-world workloads.

All that said, the M910x is definitely a better choice, as it has a much nicer heatsink and has the PCIe riser slot available.

M910q heatsink:
View attachment 25129

M910x heatsink:
View attachment 25130

I only used an M910q because I was able to pick one up for about US$100, and the cheapest M910x/P320 Tiny was almost 3x that price. If you can get the model with the better heatsink for a reasonable price, definitely do that.

@paf this thread starts out with a somewhat haphazard guide for hacking up the BIOS of an M700, combining it with the BIOS of the M710q/M910q, and patching it with CoffeeTime (a tool which can be found on the win-raid forums) to make it work; the M700 and M710 are similar enough internally (near identical PCBs) for that to work, and of course you don't need to do the BIOS core replacement if you're starting with an M710/M910.

All the AliExpress sellers are doing when you send them a BIOS dump, is applying the correct set of patches to it in CoffeeTime (and maybe one or two special ones). There's nothing particularly magic about what they do, and the same approach can (and does) work on essentially any motherboard which has Kaby Lake support in the BIOS.

Thanks for taking the time to get back to us. I finally got my CH341A reader / programmer so looking into doing the actual BIOS mod now. Im pretty sure ive identified the correct chip (see attached photo). To me it looks like 25Q128JVSQ. However the closest thing available to that in AsProgrammer is 25Q128JV (missing the SQ).



When I use that and read the chip all I am getting is FF in every field from top to bottom so something clearly isnt right. Any ideas?

 

[mobilenvidia]

I don't have access to a M910q but am thinking the BIOS chip is elsewhere
There are 3 more 8 pin chips as per picture
Am leaning to one closest to Battery

 

[mobilenvidia]

Upon closer inpsection you have the correct location for BIOS chip
Make sure the connector is on the right way round and all pins are connected, this can take couple of goes sometimes

What ASProgrammer finds is good

 

[neggles]

Upload your dump somewhere and I'll be happy to do the necessary bits and pieces to make it behave, though I didn't really do much outside of clicking all the buttons in coffeetime (and loading all the middle and left side microcode) other than to use a custom ME image, which i later found out is basically the same as the one it uses.

A hint for CoffeeTime: it *does* have documentation, but the documentation is all in tooltips. Hover over the various fields and you'll get a popup with details.

 

[neggles]

Thanks for taking the time to get back to us. I finally got my CH341A reader / programmer so looking into doing the actual BIOS mod now. Im pretty sure ive identified the correct chip (see attached photo). To me it looks like 25Q128JVSQ. However the closest thing available to that in AsProgrammer is 25Q128JV (missing the SQ).

View attachment 25271

When I use that and read the chip all I am getting is FF in every field from top to bottom so something clearly isnt right. Any ideas?

Missed this - pull the BIOS battery out before you dump it, use `flashrom -p ch341a_spi` on a Linux box rather than the garbage software they come with, and check if you need to do the "make it actually be 3.3v" mod...

The "SQ" is immaterial here, it just refers to a specific subtype/package of the chip.

 

[The_Overseer]

Upload your dump somewhere and I'll be happy to do the necessary bits and pieces to make it behave, though I didn't really do much outside of clicking all the buttons in coffeetime (and loading all the middle and left side microcode) other than to use a custom ME image, which i later found out is basically the same as the one it uses.

A hint for CoffeeTime: it *does* have documentation, but the documentation is all in tooltips. Hover over the various fields and you'll get a popup with details.

Hmmm. Okay, I'll give it another try. Is updating the firmware before you apply Coffeetime a critical part of the process? The ironic thing is I've actually used it before to modify another firmware and it worked out fine. But in this one, not so much...

 

[neggles]

Hmmm. Okay, I'll give it another try. Is updating the firmware before you apply Coffeetime a critical part of the process? The ironic thing is I've actually used it before to modify another firmware and it worked out fine. But in this one, not so much...

If you mean applying a BIOS update through the normal update methods, you definitely cannot do that after flashing a CoffeeTime-modified BIOS - well, you can, but it'll break the thing entirely.

I don't believe updating the ME the way I did was necessary, but it is a good idea to swap out the ME image for the one included in CoffeeTime with a matching major/minor version and SKU. Doing the swap causes it to re-set-up some internal variables and the like which seems to make it happier.

When all's said and done, your coffeetime windows should look something like this:

 

[Herkatus]

Hello, all. I have both a M700 SFF (G4400) and a M900 SFF (i5-6500) and I would love to use i5-8500 in both. Before buying anything, I would love to know:

1. Will it work?
   1. If so, is there anything that would be broken?
2. Would you advise me against the update?

Thanks in advance