Lenovo Thinkcentre/ThinkStation Tiny (Project TinyMiniMicro) Reference Thread

[Jihays9]

I'm currently using an HP Prodesk 400 G3 SFF i5-6500 with OPNsense as a router/firewall. It's just too large and bulky, and it will take up too much volume in the network (wall mount) cabinet that I'm putting together. The form factor of this Lenovo tiny is just exactly what I need.

I can get the M720Q fitted with a g5400t or i5-8400T. Will I see any performance difference for this application? or just higher power consumption?

As for the NIC, the current HP box has a 4 port card (Gigabit N12075 BCM95709A0906G Cisco Broadcom PCI-E). From reading the specs that seems too long to fit in the M720Q, is that accurate? Guess I'm SOL and have to buy another NIC for the new M720Q?

 

[hashtagoctothorp]

Hi all, thanks for this awesome thread. I recently got my gen1 m90q in the mail and am waiting for a few parts to complete my first proxmox+opnsense+vms box, but noticed one thing with the root thread: the link for enabling SR-IOV is broken... it just points to href="http://Here%C2%A0is%20a%20thread%20with%20details%20from%20@zer0sum%20!"




Otherwise fingers crossed my MCX4121C rev E5 dell Mellanox card will work OOB / without too much fuss!

 

[cesar123]

Hi all, thanks for this awesome thread. I recently got my gen1 m90q in the mail and am waiting for a few parts to complete my first proxmox+opnsense+vms box, but noticed one thing with the root thread: the link for enabling SR-IOV is broken... it just points to href="http://Here%C2%A0is%20a%20thread%20with%20details%20from%20@zer0sum%20!"

View attachment 40428


Otherwise fingers crossed my MCX4121C rev E5 dell Mellanox card will work OOB / without too much fuss!

I think SR-IOV is available on Intel 12th gen and higher. For 10th gen you are looking for GVT-d

 

[columbus_uncle]

Hello everyone,

I’m facing a challenging issue with my home network setup and need help troubleshooting high latency on my Proxmox server. The problem appears related with use of the PCI express Intel i226-v NIC and seems specific to the Lenovo M920q hardware rather than any particular VM, including OPNsense. Here are the details of my setup and the steps I’ve taken so far:

Setup Details

• Host: Lenovo M920q (i7, 16GB RAM) running Proxmox (latest version, fully updated)
• NIC: Intel i226-v (PCIe card with 4 ports, purchased from AliExpress link)
• Guest OS: OPNsense VM (fully updated), but the issue persists across other VMs
• Use Case: Dedicated PCI passthrough of the NIC to a VM

This Intel i226-v was chosen for its compatibility with the M720q and M920q original cases, riser and bracket kit.

Issue
When using PCI passthrough of the Intel i226-v NIC on Proxmox, I experience inconsistent and high latency (>10ms) when pinging the VM from the LAN. This issue is seems to be not specific to OPNsense and occurs across multiple VMs and the Proxmox host itself.

Here’s an example of the latency behavior:


Reply from 192.168.56.253: bytes=32 time=49ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.56.253: bytes=32 time=12ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.56.253: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.56.253: bytes=32 time=27ms TTL=64
...
Reply from 192.168.56.253: bytes=32 time=114ms TTL=64
Reply from 192.168.56.253: bytes=32 time=2ms TTL=64

By comparison, VMs connected via the M920q’s internal LAN consistently have ~1ms latency.

I also tested assigning a direct IP to the Nic in Proxmox (with and without a bridge). The behavior varied between high latency and 1-2ms, but I couldn’t determine the exact conditions causing it to stabilize.

Troubleshooting Steps Taken

Virtual Machine

1. OPNsense:
   • Disabled all hardware offloading settings in OPNsense.
   • Tested with a clean OPNsense setup (only LAN and WAN configured) and an Ubuntu VM.

Virtualisation Layer

1. VM Configurations in Proxmox:
   • Switched between Q35 and i440fx machine types with different versions.
2. PCI Passthrough Configurations:
   • Tried settings such as All Functions=1 and PCI-Express=1.
3. Kernel Boot Parameters in Proxmox:
   • Tested configurations including:
     quiet pci=assign-busses intel_iommu=on iommu=pt pcie_acs_override=downstream,multifunction pcie_port_pm=off pcie_aspm.policy=performance disable_idle_d3=1 acpi=off
4. Kernel Downgrade:
   • Downgraded to proxmox-kernel-6.2.16-20-pve.
5. Alternative Configuration:
   • Removed PCI passthrough and used a bridged interface (vtnetX), but latency issues persisted.

Hardware Layer:

1. BIOS Settings on Lenovo:
   • Tested various configurations, including disabling ASPM.
2. Testing on Another Proxmox Node (same hardware):
   • Moved the NIC and VM to another Lenovo M920q node with different BIOS versions (2019 and 2024).

But when i tested on Another Desktop PC (not Mx20q, just a basic lenovo desktop PC):

• Moved the NIC to a different desktop PC with Proxmox, where latency was consistently ~1ms.

The issue seems to be specific to Proxmox on the Lenovo Mx20q series (M720q/M920q) as i tested on 2x. The Intel i226-v NIC performs as expected when used on a different Proxmox system (desktop PC), so seems the problem might stem from the Mx20q hardware or Proxmox configuration or kernel within Lenovo m920q hardware.

Has anyone encountered similar issues with Intel i226-v NIC on Lenovo Mx20q models? Any advice or guidance on additional steps to debug or resolve this would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks a lot in advance for your help.

Just want to share that I am having similar issues with an iocrest 4 port i225-V NIC I bought on Aliexpress for my M720Q to use with proxmox+opnsense. I am using linux bridge to get the NIC to opnsense, not passthrough but I still have the same issues. I am new to both proxmox and opnsense and would be interested to know if you are able to resolve this issue.

 

[Alfa147x]

I'm currently using an HP Prodesk 400 G3 SFF i5-6500 with OPNsense as a router/firewall. It's just too large and bulky, and it will take up too much volume in the network (wall mount) cabinet that I'm putting together. The form factor of this Lenovo tiny is just exactly what I need.

I can get the M720Q fitted with a g5400t or i5-8400T. Will I see any performance difference for this application? or just higher power consumption?

As for the NIC, the current HP box has a 4 port card (Gigabit N12075 BCM95709A0906G Cisco Broadcom PCI-E). From reading the specs that seems too long to fit in the M720Q, is that accurate? Guess I'm SOL and have to buy another NIC for the new M720Q?

Can you provide physical dimensions of your Gigabit N12075 card? Your other issue will be managing heat. Your intel CPU won’t be able to boost to high clock speeds bc of the tight formfactor + the 25gbe NIC (and SFP+) will dump a lot of heat too.

I have a m920x which i removed the 65w chip and replaced it with a 35w chip in hopes to keep the temps down. The card i have in the PCIe slot is The nvidia t1000 for Synology face recognition. Check out how the t1000 dimensions to your card. The t1000 was the upper limit of the m920x chassis as i had to remove a WiFi antenna tray and speaker to make room for it.

 

[Jihays9]

Can you provide physical dimensions of your Gigabit N12075 card? Your other issue will be managing heat. Your intel CPU won’t be able to boost to high clock speeds bc of the tight formfactor + the 25gbe NIC (and SFP+) will dump a lot of heat too.

I have a m920x which i removed the 65w chip and replaced it with a 35w chip in hopes to keep the temps down. The card i have in the PCIe slot is The nvidia t1000 for Synology face recognition. Check out how the t1000 dimensions to your card. The t1000 was the upper limit of the m920x chassis as i had to remove a WiFi antenna tray and speaker to make room for it.

The i5-8400T the pc comes with is already a 35W TDP chip. I can’t find the dimensions of my current NIC, which is actually 4x1gbe (not 25Gbit) rj45. I went ahead and got a Mellanox dual port 10gbe sfp+ card with dimensions that should fit:


For comparison your gpu is 156mm long.

The T1000 has a 50W tdp with 250w suggested psu. That seems more powerful than a dual port 10gbe sfp+. I specifically choose sfp+ instead of rj45 for 10Gbit because it’s more power efficient, although the current NIC I have draws 2A max at 3.3V, which overall seems low (but it’s not 10Gbit).

How does people manage heat in this tiny form factor? In a router/firmware application is the cpu boosting to high clock speeds? For reference, my current router reports 1-5% cpu usage under normal operation, ocasionally spiking up to 10 or 20%.

 

[Rttg]

How does people manage heat in this tiny form factor?

I haven't found it to be a problem. My m920x with a full-fat i5-8500 (65W) and similar load averages never gets that hot (current sensors output below).

The ConnectX-4LX in the box did get a bit warm (~90°C) before I added a small 5V blower fan (kapton taped to the non-port end of the card, running off 3.3V from the PCIe connector and blowing air across the heatsink to the rear). That said, even before adding that fan, I hadn't encountered any issues with the NIC heat impacting the rest of the platform - it was just a bit too toasty for my liking.

pve:~# sensors

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Package id 0:  +42.0°C  (high = +82.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0:        +42.0°C  (high = +82.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1:        +42.0°C  (high = +82.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 2:        +41.0°C  (high = +82.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 3:        +40.0°C  (high = +82.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 4:        +41.0°C  (high = +82.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 5:        +42.0°C  (high = +82.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

mlx5-pci-0100
Adapter: PCI adapter
sensor0:      +55.0°C  (crit = +105.0°C, highest = +73.0°C)

 

[Jihays9]

I haven't found it to be a problem. My m920x with a full-fat i5-8500 (65W) and similar load averages never gets that hot (current sensors output below).

The ConnectX-4LX in the box did get a bit warm (~90°C) before I added a small 5V blower fan (kapton taped to the non-port end of the card, running off 3.3V from the PCIe connector and blowing air across the heatsink to the rear). That said, even before adding that fan, I hadn't encountered any issues with the NIC heat impacting the rest of the platform - it was just a bit too toasty for my liking.

pve:~# sensors

coretemp-isa-0000
Adapter: ISA adapter
Package id 0:  +42.0°C  (high = +82.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 0:        +42.0°C  (high = +82.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 1:        +42.0°C  (high = +82.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 2:        +41.0°C  (high = +82.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 3:        +40.0°C  (high = +82.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 4:        +41.0°C  (high = +82.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)
Core 5:        +42.0°C  (high = +82.0°C, crit = +100.0°C)

mlx5-pci-0100
Adapter: PCI adapter
sensor0:      +55.0°C  (crit = +105.0°C, highest = +73.0°C)

Your temperatures seem very very reasonable!! BTW, how loud is that blower fan? I'm gonna go print one of this while I wait for parts in case I need it in the future.

Can you run a 2.5" SSD with a nic installed in the pice slot? or you have to run nvme because it won't fit all of it?

 

[sw1]

Hey guys, finally getting my hands on a M920q. I currently have a HP Prodesk 600 G4 that I use as a HA and Plex server, but it has some quirks when the electricity goes away and I also want to try OPNsense so I'm replacing it with a M920q.

On my current server I have a 256GB NVMe boot drive and a 1TB 2.5" mechanical SATA drive for media storage (for Plex), and I'd like to have 2 drives on my new server as well, but I'm not sure as to how to achieve that.

For the M920q I'll be getting an Intel I350-T4 V2 network card (this is the eBay listing I bought it from; if the pictures shown are from the actual item, it seems to be geniune) with the 01AJ940 riser and baffle (this is the eBay listing I ordered from; most likely not genuine but hopefully they'll work/fit) which means I'll lose access to the 2.5" caddy.

So, without access to the caddy, and the soldering mod to turn the M920q into a M920x thus enabling the second NVMe slot on the back of the motherboard beyond my skills, what options do I have to get a second drive working?

From what I read on some of the posts here an adapter to connect a 2230 NVMe on the wireless card bay should work (something like this one on eBay), especially if this one is used for storage and not as the boot drive (from what I read here trying to make it the boot drive is complicated). Also, how slow would the drive be running from here?

Are there any other alternatives? I found this adapter on AliExpress to get 2 SATA ports from the same wireless card slot, but not sure about how it'd be possible to wire even 1 drive and keep in inside the case while connecting it to one of these SATA ports.

 

[hashtagoctothorp]

Your temperatures seem very very reasonable!! BTW, how loud is that blower fan? I'm gonna go print one of this while I wait for parts in case I need it in the future.

Can you run a 2.5" SSD with a nic installed in the pice slot? or you have to run nvme because it won't fit all of it?

From what I've read on the threads, people that run both will "shuck" the SSD, removing the outer casing and wrapping with electrical tape or similar.

 

[hashtagoctothorp]

Just want to share that I am having similar issues with an iocrest 4 port i225-V NIC I bought on Aliexpress for my M720Q to use with proxmox+opnsense. I am using linux bridge to get the NIC to opnsense, not passthrough but I still have the same issues. I am new to both proxmox and opnsense and would be interested to know if you are able to resolve this issue.

I'm glad I didn't end up going this route, if y'all are having issues with the 4port nics; I was def contemplating one vs the 10gb SFP+ options. Still waiting for my riser to ship from China before I can verify it all works though :/

 

[sw1]

From what I've read on the threads, people that run both will "shuck" the SSD, removing the outer casing and wrapping with electrical tape or similar.

Do you have pictures of that? When you say "removing the outer casing" do you mean the caddy or the actual metal casing of the hard drive?

 

[Parallax]

Do you have pictures of that? When you say "removing the outer casing" do you mean the caddy or the actual metal casing of the hard drive?

The plastic casing of the SSD. They are mostly air inside and the actual functioning bit of the SSD is almost always a small circuit board the width of the casing and maybe 3-4cm (about an inch to an inch and a half) long. You wrap it in electrical tape to stop it shorting something on the motherboard and stuff it in (this is a technical term) wherever there is space left over after you have inserted your PCIe card.

I'm about to try this with an x710-DA2 which is about as long a card as you can fit in the chassis, so that'll be interesting. I currently use a ConnectX-4 and a small (256GB) shucked SSD, which works fine although it can get toasty (~70C).

 

[sw1]

The plastic casing of the SSD. They are mostly air inside and the actual functioning bit of the SSD is almost always a small circuit board the width of the casing and maybe 3-4cm (about an inch to an inch and a half) long. You wrap it in electrical tape to stop it shorting something on the motherboard and stuff it in (this is a technical term) wherever there is space left over after you have inserted your PCIe card.

I'm about to try this with an x710-DA2 which is about as long a card as you can fit in the chassis, so that'll be interesting. I currently use a ConnectX-4 and a small (256GB) shucked SSD, which works fine although it can get toasty (~70C).

Huh, sounds a little scary. Is 2230 M.2 drive not a viable option for you?

 

[columbus_uncle]

I'm glad I didn't end up going this route, if y'all are having issues with the 4port nics; I was def contemplating one vs the 10gb SFP+ options. Still waiting for my riser to ship from China before I can verify it all works though :/

I just swapped out my 4 port 2.5 nic for a 4 port i350-T4 and it works great now. I might try the 2.5 nic in a different machine to try and troubleshoot it but I'm glad I have a working opnsense box now.

 

[Parallax]

Huh, sounds a little scary. Is 2230 M.2 drive not a viable option for you?

No, because we're taking about the internal SATA port here.

 

[gripoil91]

Hey guys, finally getting my hands on a M920q. I currently have a HP Prodesk 600 G4 that I use as a HA and Plex server, but it has some quirks when the electricity goes away and I also want to try OPNsense so I'm replacing it with a M920q.

On my current server I have a 256GB NVMe boot drive and a 1TB 2.5" mechanical SATA drive for media storage (for Plex), and I'd like to have 2 drives on my new server as well, but I'm not sure as to how to achieve that.

For the M920q I'll be getting an Intel I350-T4 V2 network card (this is the eBay listing I bought it from; if the pictures shown are from the actual item, it seems to be geniune) with the 01AJ940 riser and baffle (this is the eBay listing I ordered from; most likely not genuine but hopefully they'll work/fit) which means I'll lose access to the 2.5" caddy.

So, without access to the caddy, and the soldering mod to turn the M920q into a M920x thus enabling the second NVMe slot on the back of the motherboard beyond my skills, what options do I have to get a second drive working?

From what I read on some of the posts here an adapter to connect a 2230 NVMe on the wireless card bay should work (something like this one on eBay), especially if this one is used for storage and not as the boot drive (from what I read here trying to make it the boot drive is complicated). Also, how slow would the drive be running from here?

Are there any other alternatives? I found this adapter on AliExpress to get 2 SATA ports from the same wireless card slot, but not sure about how it'd be possible to wire even 1 drive and keep in inside the case while connecting it to one of these SATA ports.

Hello,

Got 5 m920q with a small 2230 to boot Proxmox, a large 2To on the M2 port for SSD cephFS (to store LXC and VM), and a 2x10G NIC for the cluster network (AOC-STGN-I2S).
For large storage I use an external DAS on USB 3.2 10G (Terramaster D4-320) with 4 HDD drives on each node (a total of 200TiB ;-))
Some photos to show the installation inside the tiny.
There is still some place to add an half side SSD on the SATA port (did not try yet).

Franck

 

[Mark Linton]

Hey guys, finally getting my hands on a M920q. I currently have a HP Prodesk 600 G4 that I use as a HA and Plex server, but it has some quirks when the electricity goes away and I also want to try OPNsense so I'm replacing it with a M920q.

On my current server I have a 256GB NVMe boot drive and a 1TB 2.5" mechanical SATA drive for media storage (for Plex), and I'd like to have 2 drives on my new server as well, but I'm not sure as to how to achieve that.

For the M920q I'll be getting an Intel I350-T4 V2 network card (this is the eBay listing I bought it from; if the pictures shown are from the actual item, it seems to be geniune) with the 01AJ940 riser and baffle (this is the eBay listing I ordered from; most likely not genuine but hopefully they'll work/fit) which means I'll lose access to the 2.5" caddy.

So, without access to the caddy, and the soldering mod to turn the M920q into a M920x thus enabling the second NVMe slot on the back of the motherboard beyond my skills, what options do I have to get a second drive working?

From what I read on some of the posts here an adapter to connect a 2230 NVMe on the wireless card bay should work (something like this one on eBay), especially if this one is used for storage and not as the boot drive (from what I read here trying to make it the boot drive is complicated). Also, how slow would the drive be running from here?

Are there any other alternatives? I found this adapter on AliExpress to get 2 SATA ports from the same wireless card slot, but not sure about how it'd be possible to wire even 1 drive and keep in inside the case while connecting it to one of these SATA ports.

Here is a pci riser that gives you an extra nvme slot. -- Tinyriser - a better Lenovo Tiny PC riser by FairywrenTech on Tindie

 

[Alfa147x]

Intel I226-V M.2 A+E NIC adapter + m920x

 

[Bruno Carvalho]

I'm currently running a Mellanox MCX314A-BCCT 40Gb

Hi,
Do you use this mellanox and obtain 40gb? Works fine? Do you use on proxmox?
I have 3 M920 and in Brazil, is cheaper import 3 mellanox like yours than buying 3 10gb network cards.