Lenovo Thinkcentre/ThinkStation Tiny (Project TinyMiniMicro) Reference Thread

[vicking]

Hi all,

I would like to upgrade my network interface (i350-T4) to an interface with SFP so I can connect it directly to my ISP AON point.

Ive read that the Intel X520-DA2 is a good card but can become very hot in the m720q without airflow.. what options are left which doesn’t get too hot?

 

[Tich77]

I would like to upgrade my network interface (i350-T4) to an interface with SFP so I can connect it directly to my ISP AON point.

Ive read that the Intel X520-DA2 is a good card but can become very hot in the m720q without airflow.. what options are left which doesn’t get too hot?

Or, what cooling solutions have people used, or could suggest?

 

[Parallax]

Or, what cooling solutions have people used, or could suggest?

There's some fan shrouds you can print or buy, they run a small fan off one of the external USB ports, those help with temperatures. I also have P350s which has a vented top chassis cover, you can buy those or the equivalent for your Tiny gen as a spare part, I mention this in the first post.

One of the problems with the older cards is that they don't allow lower C-states, that makes the whole system warmer. So it's not just the temperature the card itself generates, it's also the impact on the whole unit.

So far I've gone from Supermicro AOC-STGN-I2S 2.0 to ConnectX-3 to the X-4, which is where I am at the moment. These allow lower C-states and have some extra features which can be useful.

 

[Parallax]

Yeah I saw they don't show it even though they break it out as a separate part.
I didn't think about using its contemporaries, as they all seem to use same basic chassis.
Appreciate the response!

Yeah it's part of the chassis, you can't buy a blank one separately and I'm not even sure you can buy the baffles Lenovo made for supported configurations (i350-T4 etc) separately either.

 

[andrea87]

I do have two lenovo machines (an m720q and an m920q), both running connect-x 3 single sfp cards. These aren't insanely hot, drawing about 5 watts more than the mini PC without any card installed. Only downside for the cx3 is that it doesn't support lower ASPM states. You would need to pick cards like the connectx-4 lx 10g cards for that.

This is probably the mostly known fan shroud mod that @Parallax mentioned, it's quite easy to print and does help a lot even with a 4010 blower:

Lenovo Tiny Fan Shroud by Matthew Neuforth | Download free STL model | Printables.com

A fan shroud to mount a cheap 4010 blower fan into the Lenovo tiny series, in order to cool off high perf network cards. | Download free 3D printable STL models

www.printables.com

Before printing it, what I did with moderate success is cutting open the side of the cpu's fan shroud, allowing some air to exit to the side to cool the card.



It's not pretty, but it did work quite well. The air is channeled just with some well placed pieces of masking tape, with a bit of airflow from the outside the card stays below 70°C, usually in the 65-68°C range. With the baffle and fan it's a whole different situation, the other machine I'm running with it is at 56°C. This at fall/winter room temps (20-22°C).

I would like to upgrade my network interface (i350-T4) to an interface with SFP so I can connect it directly to my ISP AON point.

Do you have an SFP ONT? make sure it does include the ethernet interface, some ISP do use SFPs that won't work outside their routers, as these have some non standard stuff inbuilt needed to interface the SFP mini ont.

 

[vicking]

Only downside for the cx3 is that it doesn't support lower ASPM states. You would need to pick cards like the connectx-4 lx 10g cards for that.

thanks, will have a look at the connectx-4 than as I would like to keep the usage as low as possible.. only downside is that it is a 25g card and I would also have enough with a 1g card as for now my isp provides 1gb fibre and the module I use is also for 1gb. 25g would be a bit of an overkill..

Do you have an SFP ONT? make sure it does include the ethernet interface, some ISP do use SFPs that won't work outside their routers, as these have some non standard stuff inbuilt needed to interface the SFP mini ont.

Yes I have! I am already using it with my Edgerouter 4 and SFP module at the moment because I am still deciding on which NIC to put in my m720q haha. So for the meantime I use this edgerouter directly on my SFP ONT which also works fine for now

 

[andrea87]

thanks, will have a look at the connectx-4 than as I would like to keep the usage as low as possible.. only downside is that it is a 25g card and I would also have enough with a 1g card as for now my isp provides 1gb fibre and the module I use is also for 1gb. 25g would be a bit of an overkill..

Look at the data sheet, most of these cards are backward compatible with both 10G and 1G modes.

https://network.nvidia.com/files/doc-2020/pb-connectx-4-lx-en-card.pdf

The MCX4121A-XCAT does 10/1gb and from what I see is about 50€ on ebay.

The alternative would be using a switch with sfp+ ports, running your ont sfp in it and transporting the right vlans to the m720q.

 

[vicking]

The MCX4121A-XCAT does 10/1gb and from what I see is about 50€ on ebay.

The alternative would be using a switch with sfp+ ports, running your ont sfp in it and transporting the right vlans to the m720q.

Thanks, I will take a look at eBay!

Well my switch doesn’t have sfp, so the next question is, what should I do when I got my wan up and running using SFP.

I could use the onboard lan port of the m720q to configure it as a lan port and wire it to my switch, or I could put a RJ45 module in the Connectx4 maybe, but which is the correct one than, or I can swap my switch for a version with SFP but then I would need two more modules, one on the Connectx4 side and one on the switch side?

 

[vicking]

Ordered the Mellanox MCX4121A-XCAT. Any ideas which module I can use to connect the second port to my switch which only has RJ45 connectors?

 

[BlueLineSwinger]

Searched back through maybe a couple dozen pages but didn't see this covered:

Looking at he M920q (and other generations), it would appear that the m.2 WiFi slot supports standard PCIe given that it could be optioned with non-Intel wireless cards (i.e., not restricted to CVNio). Has anyone tried connecting a small (e.g., 2230) SSD to the WiFi m.2 slot using a A/E key adapter, and if it works is it bootable?

I'm considering getting a set of these for a small Proxmox cluster and if possible would use the m.2 WiFi slot for the boot drive, reserving the underside 2280 x4 slot for the datastore SSD. I'd like to keep the PCIe slot available for possible NIC expansion/upgrade (which would also preclude using a SATA SSD).

 

[vicking]

Oké my Mellanox MCX4121A-ACAT came in and so I installed it and updated to the latest firmware. Inserted a 1g bidi module to connect to my ISP. Enabled the onboard LAN port again which goes to my switch.

Everything is working fine but one thing I noticed is the high power usage.. I went from 11W idle to 19W idle after installing the card and enabling the onboard LAN port. Did I miss something? Running opnsense bare metal on it with Powerd enabled set on adaptive..

Edit: after some googling I found this post;

Connectx-4 Lx 2x 25GbE with ASPM support + idle power consumption measurements

If LnkCap: shows ASPM support your card should be fine. I had similar situation on sketchy chinese erying motherboard. You could try different motherboard or play with settings in configuration menu.

forum.level1techs.com

Mentioning that the card with 1sfp module adds 7,55w. So going from around 11 to 19w idle with one module installed seems to be oké!

 

[Khaveer]

Searched back through maybe a couple dozen pages but didn't see this covered:

Looking at he M920q (and other generations), it would appear that the m.2 WiFi slot supports standard PCIe given that it could be optioned with non-Intel wireless cards (i.e., not restricted to CVNio). Has anyone tried connecting a small (e.g., 2230) SSD to the WiFi m.2 slot using a A/E key adapter, and if it works is it bootable?

I'm considering getting a set of these for a small Proxmox cluster and if possible would use the m.2 WiFi slot for the boot drive, reserving the underside 2280 x4 slot for the datastore SSD. I'd like to keep the PCIe slot available for possible NIC expansion/upgrade (which would also preclude using a SATA SSD).

I'm running such setup in an M920x (those share the same UEFI image) and ESXi on an nvme ssd in the wlan slot. It works fine, but doesn't show up as a boot option in BIOS. You need to ensure that no other drives in the system are bootable and then it will automatically boot from that drive.

I imagine that someone skilled could patch the bios to add that hidden boot option, but I tried and I couldn't figure that out.

 

[BlueLineSwinger]

I'm running such setup in an M920x (those share the same UEFI image) and ESXi on an nvme ssd in the wlan slot. It works fine, but doesn't show up as a boot option in BIOS. You need to ensure that no other drives in the system are bootable and then it will automatically boot from that drive.

I imagine that someone skilled could patch the bios to add that hidden boot option, but I tried and I couldn't figure that out.

Cool, that'll work. Not too surprising it doesn't show as an option in UEFI, but that shouldn't be an obstacle.

 

[vicking]

Oké my Mellanox MCX4121A-ACAT came in and so I installed it and updated to the latest firmware. Inserted a 1g bidi module to connect to my ISP. Enabled the onboard LAN port again which goes to my switch.

Everything is working fine but one thing I noticed is the high power usage.. I went from 11W idle to 19W idle after installing the card and enabling the onboard LAN port. Did I miss something? Running opnsense bare metal on it with Powerd enabled set on adaptive..

Edit: after some googling I found this post;

Connectx-4 Lx 2x 25GbE with ASPM support + idle power consumption measurements

If LnkCap: shows ASPM support your card should be fine. I had similar situation on sketchy chinese erying motherboard. You could try different motherboard or play with settings in configuration menu.

forum.level1techs.com

Mentioning that the card with 1sfp module adds 7,55w. So going from around 11 to 19w idle with one module installed seems to be oké!

Curious what numbers other people get with sfp+ nics installed

 

[vicking]

I noticed that when running bare metal Opnsense on the m720q with a connectx-4, even with ASPM enabled and supported, the lowest C state is C1. Even when C3 is supported. So I have a feeling that power consumption can go a bit lower if correct C states are applied. Any ideas what could cause the device being stuck at C1?

 

[joeribl]

I noticed that when running bare metal Opnsense on the m720q with a connectx-4, even with ASPM enabled and supported, the lowest C state is C1. Even when C3 is supported. So I have a feeling that power consumption can go a bit lower if correct C states are applied. Any ideas what could cause the device being stuck at C1?

I think you should read this topic: https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...ds-with-aspm-support.36817/page-4#post-439726

There are very few cards which have ASPM correctly working.

 

[vicking]

I think you should read this topic: https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...ds-with-aspm-support.36817/page-4#post-439726

There are very few cards which have ASPM correctly working.

I’ve seen it indeed. I checked my card, after upgrading to the latest firmware, and the result of lspci is: LnkCtl: ASPM L1 Enabled

which makes me think that I have luck and indeed a card which supports ASPM. But the Lenovo doesn’t have much bios settings about ASPM I could find…

 

[joeribl]

I’ve seen it indeed. I checked my card, after upgrading to the latest firmware, and the result of lspci is: LnkCtl: ASPM L1 Enabled

which makes me think that I have luck and indeed a card which supports ASPM. But the Lenovo doesn’t have much bios settings about ASPM I could find…

It has nothing to do with the Lenovo in this case. It will not work with your card: ConnectX4 LX: High Idle power consumption despite every requirement on

 

[JalapenoBagels]

Tried reading the thread abit but was looking for a bit more info, sorry if this has been answered already.
I have a m90q Gen 3 and I'm trying to put a intel x710 x8 card in it and get it detected. Is cromo's post with shorting the riser with a wire still the solution people are using or has a better alternative been found? also are there any guides with more pictures showing the process?

 

[Nozle]

Hello, I currently have a m90q gen 3 and m90q gen 2, in the generation 3 I have a box of 5 disks connected via USB and I wanted to increase the reliability, installing a sata controller to be able to install at least 5-6 disks and have greater reliability and performance, would this be possible? Any recommended option? I wouldn't like to drill a hole in the box or have to modify it to get the cables to a box where the discs are stored...