Lenovo Thinkcentre/ThinkStation Tiny (Project TinyMiniMicro) Reference Thread

[Nozle]

No reports I've seen of anyone doing so, although the motherboard is the same in the Gen 3 and 4 so it might just be a matter of flashing the newer firmware. Or you brick it.

I want to install 13500 or 14500 but I don't know what I have to do in the bios

 

[InsaneNutter]

Has anyone successfully got a GPU to work in the M90q Gen 3?

The RX 6400 I ordered arrived today, however when in the M90q Gen 3 the fan on the RX 6400 spins up when powered on, it will never output anything on the Bios and is not detected in Windows. (The Bios / Windows will still output on the iGPU with the RX 6400 present).

I’ve attempted changing the active video from Auto to PEG for PCIe, along with changing the PCIe version in the Bios between 3 and 4.

• 5C50W00933 / BA7K78 Rev1.2 PCIe x16 riser purchased directly from Lenovo
• XFX SWFT105 Radeon RX 6400 Low profile Gpu
• 230w Lenovo power supply

The RX 6400 does work in another machine to rule out that been faulty.

 

[realg]

Well that's only because both are expensive.

Yeah, crazy that a 3.5" spinny HDD is still half the price per GB compared to a bog standard SATA SSD... and that a slow SATA SSD is the same price as a super performant PCIe gen 4.0 NVME M.2 drive. Feels like the chip market still hasn't fully recovered from COVID.

...so I'm replacing it with a UGreen DXP6800 Pro. I'm replacing the fans with Noctuas. This (or the 4800) might be an option, it's quiet and pretty compact but you'll get a lot more functionality out of it for storage. I missed the Kickstarter price but bought it from TaoBao for about the same price (~£530) delivered to the UK. That's a very good deal given the savings you can make on storage that way, you can use one or two NVMe as hot storage then automatically move older files to spinning rust.

I did also look at the UGreen NAS boxes, they look pretty slick, but the MSRP seems super high and they looked hard to get in the UK, so gave up on that pretty quickly. Out of interest can you re-image the OS on them to TrueNAS or a regular linux distro? I'm not sure I'd trust UGreen to make and maintain a stable OS...


Sorry for the diversion, back to the topic of this thread.

Does M90q Gen 3 support pcie bifurcation? I'd like to run two M.2 NVMEs on the PCIE riser, and my understanding is the cheap pcie-to-m2 adapters require bifurcation support.
Alternatively, there seem to be more expensive adapters (like the Startech PEX8M2E2) that claim to not need bifurcation support. Can anyone confirm if this would work in a M90q?

To answer my own question, and for anyone else trying to cram a bunch of NVMEs into a M90q gen3, I can confirm that a ASM2824-based PCIe card works with the 5C50W00910 (x16) riser. Both NVMEs detected and working at PCIe gen 3.0 x4 speeds.
I ended up buying a Lycom DT-130, which seems to be identical to the Startech PEX8M2E2 at less than half the cost (bought a used one on eBay for under £80).

 

[livingtiny]

Has anyone successfully got a GPU to work in the M90q Gen 3?

The RX 6400 I ordered arrived today, however when in the M90q Gen 3 the fan on the RX 6400 spins up when powered on, it will never output anything on the Bios and is not detected in Windows. (The Bios / Windows will still output on the iGPU with the RX 6400 present).

I’ve attempted changing the active video from Auto to PEG for PCIe, along with changing the PCIe version in the Bios between 3 and 4.

• 5C50W00933 / BA7K78 Rev1.2 PCIe x16 riser purchased directly from Lenovo
• XFX SWFT105 Radeon RX 6400 Low profile Gpu
• 230w Lenovo power supply

The RX 6400 does work in another machine to rule out that been faulty.

I've tested PCI cards on the m90q Gen 3 with the following results

• PNY Quadro T series : Works fine with the 0933 riser (from aliexpress)
• Intel Arc 310 Eco : Won't work using the same riser, works fine tho in a m920q
• 4-port intel nic 1gb : Also won't work, but as previous.. will work fine on a m920q

I've posted here before more details about what I've done but thats pretty much a summary.

 

[InsaneNutter]

I've tested PCI cards on the m90q Gen 3 with the following results

• PNY Quadro T series : Works fine with the 0933 riser (from aliexpress)
• Intel Arc 310 Eco : Won't work using the same riser, works fine tho in a m920q
• 4-port intel nic 1gb : Also won't work, but as previous.. will work fine on a m920q

I've posted here before more details about what I've done but thats pretty much a summary.

I went back and found your post, thanks for providing all your testing.

The m90q Gen 3's sister the P360 does officially support Nvidia GPU's up to the T1000, so I wonder what is special / different about these GPU's compared to the RX 6400 and Arc 310?

Makes me wonder if the RTX A1000 might work, however I really don't want to spend £400 on one of these to try!

My goal was to make a little Steam like machine running Bazzite for some 1080p gaming and emulation, so the RX 6400 would have been ideal.

Hello All, I recently purchased a secondhand p360 tiny gen 8 with a 12700. I have no problems booting the system with iGPU into windows. My problem is that when I go to install an external graphics card, I cant get the system to use the Dedicated Graphics card.

Did you ever get anywhere with this? it seems the M90q Gen 3 / P360 are not as upgradable compared to past models sadly. I kind of regret spending a bit more upfront to get a more futureproofed model now.

 

[Nozle]

No reports I've seen of anyone doing so, although the motherboard is the same in the Gen 3 and 4 so it might just be a matter of flashing the newer firmware. Or you brick it.

I just installed 13500 on the m90q gen 3 but it turns off after two seconds of starting

 

[Nozle]

I try 13500 and 14500 in m90q gen 3

I also installed a 14500 and same problem, I wanted to try both, in case someone finds these tests useful too. So unfortunately and sadly now, we will return to 12500 with great sadness, knowing that 13500 or 14500 does not work in a simple way and that no one before has tested and made it work

 

[Antec]

I have a m720q with 8400t cpu and using it with proxmox and Opnsense lxc. Currently at 12-13w idle with 16gb ram, Nvme and a Intel I225 Chips 4 Port 2.5G RJ45 Network adapter.

Wanting to achieve maximum power savings, is there anyway to switch off the igpu of the cpu in bios? Also does switching off usb ports actually save power? I’ve already disabled the onboard WiFi. Shall I take the WiFi card out too?

any other bios tips to save energy? I’ve enabled c states etc and running power saving Kernal in Proxmox.

 

[Phycoforce]

Ah yes, I did do it with the BA7H70 1.2. ALso of course, you're using an m90q.
I wont tell you to try that then, I think you have valid concerns around that.
Also you seem to at least be hitting the splash screen, while my issue seems to be centered around cold boot loading data into memory. Reaching the splash feels like something a bit different there. The steps you outlined trying are pretty much everything I'm going to end up doing when the items arrive. Hopefully I have better luck...

When it comes to the thing I did to make it work, hopefully someone can confirm whether that's actually safe or not. There's a reason why I'd rather having it work from cold boot as normal. I don't like doing it either...

So the X710-DA2 worked flawless in my second M720Q. No messing about, just worked with ease. The working M720Q is a 10T8, while the one with issues requiring the warm boot fix is a 10T7. Interestingly enough, the 10T7 will always turn on when power is plugged in, regardless of last power state settings. While the 10T8 which works flawlessly, actually respects that setting. I'm wondering if the board on the 10T7 is just degraded, or if a short somewhere could be a reason for this?

 

[jolness]

I have a m720q with 8400t cpu and using it with proxmox and Opnsense lxc. Currently at 12-13w idle with 16gb ram, Nvme and a Intel I225 Chips 4 Port 2.5G RJ45 Network adapter.

Wanting to achieve maximum power savings, is there anyway to switch off the igpu of the cpu in bios? Also does switching off usb ports actually save power? I’ve already disabled the onboard WiFi. Shall I take the WiFi card out too?

any other bios tips to save energy? I’ve enabled c states etc and running power saving Kernal in Proxmox.

The iGPU is likely drawing next to no power since it isn't doing anything and disabling USB ports might save you another insignificant amount of power. The only thing I can think of is using something like powertop --auto-tune (will need to be run every reboot or you can persist but I would test them out to be sure they don't cause issues. Shouldn't but just in case) and set the CPU governor to powersave using the scripts here Proxmox VE Scripts. Might be some stuff you can do with cpupower but I wouldn't expect miracles. Maybe 1W at most with all of that? Could end up being far less though so YMMV. I haven't done any of this personally but have seen folks who have with mixed savings. Around 1W seems to be best case. Even at 40 cents/kwh, that's $3.51 (USD) per year saved out of around $49 a year. And 40cents is very high. I pay 12 and 15 seems average in the US. At 15 cents, that is $19 for 14w of power and $1.31 saved per year for that 1W just for context!

 

[KevinR]

For comparison the official price capped rate in the UK is 24.5p/kWh which is 31cents USD.

 

[mrwireman]

Just want to add that we pay $0.39-61/kWh (and increasing every 3 months, f**k PG&E) in Northern CA so I'm very appreciative of all of the ongoing power saving tips. Thank you! Every watt adds up... every switch, every power supply, every 10g NIC that demands a certain C state. I'm still trying to trim hundreds of idle watts around the house and have a garage full of enterprise gear that's essentially worthless to me due to how power hungry it all is.

I've moved many workloads over to a cluster of m90q gen 3s thanks to this thread. Also tried 2x 48GB to no avail, so stuck at 64GB.

 

[ShelbyGT500]

picked up a m920x with a 8500, thinking i can replace a 7700k as my plex server, power costs are crazy high here in southern CA, made a parts list, has anybody tried a adt-link m.2 to PCIe adaptor to install a 10gb nic or hba? I have 5gig fiber from ATT

heres what i have so far

m920x Intel 8500
G.skill 2x32gb sodimms
WD 1TB sn730
Trendnet 10g sfp nic TEG-10GECSFP

What Im thinking of buying

BA7H70 1.2(need a good supplier)

ADT-Link M.2 NVMe to PCI-Express x4

https://www.amazon.com/ADT-Link-PCI-Express-Right-Gen3-0-Extender/dp/B0BZVCMJLR?th=1

Ive also seen oculink boards, look like they might work better?

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0BP1ZWHHV/ref=ewc_pr_img_1?smid=A2OKSEIX7OEK0B&th=1

and a 16i HBA board, probably a mix of 8-10 18TB hdds and 4 2.5" ssd

 

[MBastian]

I have a m720q with 8400t cpu and using it with proxmox and Opnsense lxc. Currently at 12-13w idle with 16gb ram, Nvme and a Intel I225 Chips 4 Port 2.5G RJ45 Network adapter.
...
any other bios tips to save energy? I’ve enabled c states etc and running power saving Kernal in Proxmox.

Depending on the bandwidth of you internet uplink and you average traffic you should check your averages. I run a m920x with OPNSense in libvirt with an I350-T4 NIC at ~10W idle. But without clamping down the CPU cores to 1.3GHz even maxing out my paltry 200Mbit/s uplink can bring the box up to 30W or more. If I limit it it's still ~20W. See this thread for details. Right now it's fine for me but with a faster connection I would definitely consider moving my firewall back to hardware again.

 

[dionua]

Hi,

Anybody was able to get 96GB RAM working on P360 Tiny? I've found only 'older' post: https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...yminimicro-reference-thread.34925/post-395088

I've purchased 2x48GB Kit from Crucial and it doesn't work (beeps 3 times). I can boot system with one 16GB module and one 48GB, But system detects only 16GB. Also tried to 'borrow' 'known to be working' kit from different machine and same thing happens. Latest BIOS.

I know that P3 Tiny supports it officially. But wondering maybe it's possible to do something with P360 Tiny

PS. I can find a few '96 GB kits' in google using 'P360 tiny 96GB RAM' query. But most likely this is just CEO.

 

[CantankerousRex]

I went back and found your post, thanks for providing all your testing.

The m90q Gen 3's sister the P360 does officially support Nvidia GPU's up to the T1000, so I wonder what is special / different about these GPU's compared to the RX 6400 and Arc 310?

Makes me wonder if the RTX A1000 might work, however I really don't want to spend £400 on one of these to try!

My goal was to make a little Steam like machine running Bazzite for some 1080p gaming and emulation, so the RX 6400 would have been ideal.

Did you ever get anywhere with this? it seems the M90q Gen 3 / P360 are not as upgradable compared to past models sadly. I kind of regret spending a bit more upfront to get a more futureproofed model now.

Not precisely the M90q Gen3 but I wager they're close enough: I can confirm that the The A1000 does work in the P360 more or less out-of-box - although you will need to bend (or rather, straighten one of the bends of) the bluetooth antenna bracket for the GPU to fit in the case. This is thankfully not difficult to remove. The fan aligns well with the air intake.
I can also confirm that I couldn't get either an A310 or A380 to work in the P360 - but I DID get them working in a P330. Need to do more testing with the rx6400 but I think I might've found some means of getting it to play nice.

There's a *lot* more to this post, but I 've done some fairly extensive testing; the tl;dr version though is that you'll probably have better luck with a Tiny5 (p330 or equivalent) machine for portable gaming, and your performance won't likely be very different anyway.

I'll follow up on this next week sometime with a much more comprehensive set of tests/results.

 

[WarlockSyno]

If any one is interested, I've designed a plug to fill in the WiFi hole if you removed it.

Lenovo Tiny Antenna Delete by Matthew Neuforth | Download free STL model | Printables.com

Plug the antenna hole on a Lenovo Tiny | Download free 3D printable STL models

www.printables.com

 

[WarlockSyno]

Not precisely the M90q Gen3 but I wager they're close enough: I can confirm that the The A1000 does work in the P360 more or less out-of-box - although you will need to bend (or rather, straighten one of the bends of) the bluetooth antenna bracket for the GPU to fit in the case. This is thankfully not difficult to remove. The fan aligns well with the air intake.
I can also confirm that I couldn't get either an A310 or A380 to work in the P360 - but I DID get them working in a P330. Need to do more testing with the rx6400 but I think I might've found some means of getting it to play nice.

There's a *lot* more to this post, but I 've done some fairly extensive testing; the tl;dr version though is that you'll probably have better luck with a Tiny5 (p330 or equivalent) machine for portable gaming, and your performance won't likely be very different anyway.

I'll follow up on this next week sometime with a much more comprehensive set of tests/results.

I've been trying to an RTX A2000 12GB to work in a M720q for a hot minute.

Using a LOTUS branded riser, system will no turn on. No power or lights.
Using a Foxconn branded riser, system boots up no problem. Using the latest Nvidia driver, BIOS, firmware, and Windows updates - System acts fine, can run Furmark no problem, can run Half-Life 2 no problem, but the second Borderlands 3 or Remnant tries to load anything graphic intensive, it will completely shut down. Sometimes it reboots and sometimes it requires me to press the power button.

Using MSI Afterburner, if I knock the GPU clock down by -500hz, it will actually load the menus, but you try to actually run a benchmark or load into the game, it shuts down again.

 

[jackfrost]

I've been trying to an RTX A2000 12GB to work in a M720q for a hot minute.

Using a LOTUS branded riser, system will no turn on. No power or lights.
Using a Foxconn branded riser, system boots up no problem. Using the latest Nvidia driver, BIOS, firmware, and Windows updates - System acts fine, can run Furmark no problem, can run Half-Life 2 no problem, but the second Borderlands 3 or Remnant tries to load anything graphic intensive, it will completely shut down. Sometimes it reboots and sometimes it requires me to press the power button.

Using MSI Afterburner, if I knock the GPU clock down by -500hz, it will actually load the menus, but you try to actually run a benchmark or load into the game, it shuts down again.

Sounds like a bad riser, I use that brand no problem.

Anyways, the problem you're having with the working riser is related to the voltage, the card (when left to its defaults) will spike too high and shut the system off.

If you adjust the frequency/voltage curve in afterburner, you can limit it to avoid spiking... the lazy way (and way I did it) was just to not let it go above 1522mhz (although this is on a yeston 3050 low profile single slot, but 1500mhz worked on an a2000 when I had one in an m720q), but you can set the curve properly to maximize performance if you want to.

You could also just try setting -600mhz, because iirc the spike is up to 2100mhz...

 

[ConfusedAgain]

Hello all, I've been checking this thread for a while and I currently have a M75Q and P330, it's been very helpful. I only wish that the thread was further separated (maybe one thread for 2-3 generations?) so the discussions are more specific. With 75 pages of information, it seems like this has been more popular than originally anticipated.

I currently have a GPU installed in the P330 and it seems like there's enough space to cram in a small SATA SSD, but the cable isn't long enough to snake around the GPU. I see that there's a longer cable originally for Lenovo laptops (5B40S22058, available on ebay and aliexpress), but I can't find any anecdotes of it working out.

Has anyone else found a longer SATA cable which is compatible with a Lenovo Tiny?

P330 This one works long enough to reach behind GPU mSATA to sata adapter( these would be ideal https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005004143931026.html?algo_exp_id=ba032f1c-0ce6-4e1b-a517-0c5d5cf68772-0&utparam-url=scene:search|query_from:) 4 hard drives installed
Fleshy Leaf Sata HDD Hard Drive Connector Cable Replacement for Acer Aspire 3 A315-T33 N17C4 NBX0002CZ00

https://www.amazon.ca/dp/B0B66DR7DX?ref=ppx_yo2ov_dt_b_fed_asin_title