Lenovo Thinkcentre/ThinkStation Tiny (Project TinyMiniMicro) Reference Thread

[WarlockSyno]

I've also been creating a from scratch design that is 100% printable on it's face. So, if you want to texture the face, you can. It print in about 1/2 the time and uses 1/3 the material.


Normal version:


Print Flat version:


The downside to this design is you can't really put labeled text on the face, unless you're using something like a 0.2 nozzle. And you have to have a printer that accurate enough to print the vent holes. I've printed about 30 of these on my K1C and P1S printers without issue though.

 

[kayson]

I've also made a couple brackets that are printable on their faces, if anyone has:

• Intel X710-DA2 - https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6753777
• SolarFlare SFN5152F - https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:6753783

 

[hunter11385]

anyone know if the USB feature work on 01AJ939 when the monitor has both usbc input and hub feature?

 

[BARMANIA]

Hi, I'm in need of some help, I just got my m720q and want to try using an Nvidia A2000 in it. Now I've bought 2 different PCIe risers, one from AliExpress and one from Amazon (added the product-links to these risers). They both do not seem to work, the fan spins on the card, but I cant seem to get screen output. The onboard video will stay enabled, and the A2000 won't show up in the windows device manager. Has anyone succeeded in getting an A2000 to work? And do i need a specific riser? I thought searching for 01AJ940 would have done the trick... Thanks!

 

[M_server]

I picked up an M75Q-1 (R5 Pro 3400GE) and and M75Q-2 (R3 Pro 4350GE) recently. I updated both to their most recent bios (M2FKT34A/1.0.0.34) and (M3CKT3BA/1.0.0.59).

My goal is to be able to get one of these working with both ECC and a Vermeer or Cezanne PRO APU. Currently ECC works in the Gen 1, but not Vermeer or Cezanne (wont post) , and Gen 2 supports the later APUs, but not ECC (also wont post). Both are the AMD 500 chipset, which looks like its not actually a chipset but just direct connection to the cpu, like A300. I can't find documentation of this chipset anywhere though, looks like it is lenovo proprietary. Mostly wondering what the wlan slot is (probably pcie 3.0 x1)

My impression is that AMD never updated the Gen 1 Bios purposely as a market segmentation thing. I am wondering if they can be convinced to as I don't believe its a physical hardware limitation stopping them from supporting Zen 3 (but not 100% sure) The latest gen 1 bios uses Combo-AM4 1.0.0.3, which is why there is no support for Vermeer+. I may make a post in lenovo forums about this, I'm not sure if these machines are vulnerable to logofail because of this, but maybe there's a security arguement for getting lenovo to update to Combo-AM4v2.

AGESA - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

For the Gen 2, I'm not sure why they don't work with ECC and not exactly sure where to start. They ostensibly have the same chipset, but I can't find a verified record of anyone getting this to work. But again, I suspect this is a bios issue not a hardware limitation. OpenSIL when?

 

[kayson]

Hi all - curious what kind of idle power people are seeing with M920qs. I get about 6.4W headless with nothing but CPU/RAM (+netboot). I can't seem to get the PKG Cstate to go below C2, even with this limited hardware setup. I'm using Debian and powertop --auto-tune. Anyone have any recommendations? Bios settings? etc? Thanks!

Edit: turns out the issue was that I'd added nomodeset to the kernel boot params so vPro remote desktop would work headless. Weirdly this does something that prevents C7 and uses more power than having an actual monitor plugged in. Going to just use some hdmi dummy plugs instead. Now I'm getting 2.7W idle!

 

[seamelody]

Hi, I am impressed with the amount of knowledge in this thread.

My m920q will be delivered tomorrow along with an additional 2.5” sata caddy. Will such a set have a place for additional 2230 drive with a/e key adapter?

 

[WifiCable]

I picked up an M75Q-1 (R5 Pro 3400GE) and and M75Q-2 (R3 Pro 4350GE) recently. I updated both to their most recent bios (M2FKT34A/1.0.0.34) and (M3CKT3BA/1.0.0.59).

My goal is to be able to get one of these working with both ECC and a Vermeer or Cezanne PRO APU. Currently ECC works in the Gen 1, but not Vermeer or Cezanne (wont post) , and Gen 2 supports the later APUs, but not ECC (also wont post). Both are the AMD 500 chipset, which looks like its not actually a chipset but just direct connection to the cpu, like A300. I can't find documentation of this chipset anywhere though, looks like it is lenovo proprietary. Mostly wondering what the wlan slot is (probably pcie 3.0 x1)

My impression is that AMD never updated the Gen 1 Bios purposely as a market segmentation thing. I am wondering if they can be convinced to as I don't believe its a physical hardware limitation stopping them from supporting Zen 3 (but not 100% sure) The latest gen 1 bios uses Combo-AM4 1.0.0.3, which is why there is no support for Vermeer+. I may make a post in lenovo forums about this, I'm not sure if these machines are vulnerable to logofail because of this, but maybe there's a security arguement for getting lenovo to update to Combo-AM4v2.

AGESA - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

For the Gen 2, I'm not sure why they don't work with ECC and not exactly sure where to start. They ostensibly have the same chipset, but I can't find a verified record of anyone getting this to work. But again, I suspect this is a bios issue not a hardware limitation. OpenSIL when?

Interesting experiments!

I have both the M75q gen 1 and gen 2 motherboard schematics here and decided to compare, and sadly it seems that on the Gen 2 the memory bus ECC signals aren't hooked up while they are on the Gen 1. (gen 1 on the left, gen 2 on the right)


I do wonder why newer CPUs won't work on the gen 1 too, with these systems the motherboard isn't much more than a breakout board for the CPU since there is no real chipset. I wonder if the Gen 2's bios works on the Gen 1. The boards are designed by different companies, so they might be too different but maybe there's some way to combine the images?

And by the way, the WLAN slot is PCIe 3.0 x1 as you thought yeah, as well as USB 2.0. If you have any other questions about the hardware on these lemme know, the board schematics basically tell everything you could possibly want to know lol.

 

[mrprez]

For those with network cards installed in the pci-e slot: did you have to do anything special to get the card to appear? I have two AOC-STGN-i2S and I get activity lights with fiber connected but I can't get the card detected anywhere. I even tried that presence shorting mod with no luck.

 

[kayson]

For those with network cards installed in the pci-e slot: did you have to do anything special to get the card to appear? I have two AOC-STGN-i2S and I get activity lights with fiber connected but I can't get the card detected anywhere. I even tried that presence shorting mod with no luck.

Are you sure you have the right riser? You'll get activity lights even if the PCIe link isn't up because the NIC link is.

 

[mrprez]

Are you sure you have the right riser? You'll get activity lights even if the PCIe link isn't up because the NIC link is.

I have the P330 and it came with the x16 riser that is electrically x8. From my brief research that seems to be the best one to have.
EDIT: Also it came with the P620 so it should definitely work.

 

[kayson]

I have the P330 and it came with the x16 riser that is electrically x8. From my brief research that seems to be the best one to have.
EDIT: Also it came with the P620 so it should definitely work.

Does it show up if you run lspci? Any dmesg errors?

 

[mrprez]

Does it show up if you run lspci? Any dmesg errors?

It looks like it may be a different issue. I put the P620 back and that didn't even work. Then I tested the NIC in another machine and it shows up with no issues with lspci. I did the fan mod on the first machine and maybe I've made a mistake that is causing the pcie slot not to work.

 

[zerodayz]

Hi, I'm looking for a quad-port 2.5Gbe NIC to go into my m920q. The consensus in this thread seems to be to use the Realtek 8125. I can't seem to find out what baffle I would need for such a card, or even the exact model of card that is known to work with this device.

If anyone has a link or can recommend a particular card/riser/baffle that would be great.

 

[mrprez]

Does it show up if you run lspci? Any dmesg errors?

It looks like it may be a different issue. I put the P620 back and that didn't even work. Then I tested the NIC in another machine and it shows up with no issues with lspci. I did the fan mod on the first machine and maybe I've made a mistake that is causing the pcie slot not to work.

Turns out I just needed to reseat the CPU. I'd purchased an 9900 ES a while back and didn't notice the loss of PCIe since I wasn't using the graphics card.

 

[M_server]

This is very helpful! Wish I had known before I bought a g2. What an annoying move by lenovo + vendors. Few questions I have that might be in those diagrams.

1. Are they both shown to be AMD Pro 500 in the schematics? Like you said it's not a chipset so I'm not sure how that is represented.

2. Do you know if the bios chip size is the same in the g1 and g2?

The g1 board definitely wont work for newer CPUS because the current bios AGESA firmware doesn't support it, flat out, too old of a version. I suspect these are vulnerable to logofail for that reason, not sure if AMD would be right to ask to confirm, I can't find a list of AGESA cutoff but my latest g1 bios has a 2020 AGESA. I don't think there's a hardware limitation beyond that like the non connected ECC memory bus, but there might be. If you recall, AMD outright lied and said 300 and 400 series motherboards wouldnt't support zen 3 due to chip size and then reversed that after pushback.

3. Somewhat related, do you have the schematic to check ecc for the M75S-1 and M75-2?

I found a reddit post saying that zen 3 doesnt work in M75S-1 (bet it's the same AGESA bs, but I found another claiming that M75-2 supports both zen 3 and ECC. They have different chipsets, Pro 560 and Pro 565, which I also can't find info on. I've found that SFF versions of these tinys are very close in idle power if you get one with a platinum PSU, so not a bad option unless super space constrained. I'm trying to find a cheap off the shelf SFF with ECC support, low idle power, and the ability to run 2 NVME drives in raid 1, a sfp28 connectx4 card, and whatever for a boot drive.

Interesting experiments!

I have both the M75q gen 1 and gen 2 motherboard schematics here and decided to compare, and sadly it seems that on the Gen 2 the memory bus ECC signals aren't hooked up while they are on the Gen 1. (gen 1 on the left, gen 2 on the right)
View attachment 41235View attachment 41236

I do wonder why newer CPUs won't work on the gen 1 too, with these systems the motherboard isn't much more than a breakout board for the CPU since there is no real chipset. I wonder if the Gen 2's bios works on the Gen 1. The boards are designed by different companies, so they might be too different but maybe there's some way to combine the images?

And by the way, the WLAN slot is PCIe 3.0 x1 as you thought yeah, as well as USB 2.0. If you have any other questions about the hardware on these lemme know, the board schematics basically tell everything you could possibly want to know lol.

 

[dxx-223]

Certified TMM nut here... I have a pile of 18 Lenovo's ranging from M700 to M710q to M720q to P330. Will have to do a write up of my home lab at some point.

A couple of random questions as I've been have been pulling my hair out today... I've had a 4 node Nutanix CE cluster running on my M700's just fine (albeit a tad slow) so have been attempting to build a new cluster on 4 M720q's (with i5-9400T's if it's relevant) but I've hit a problem or two...

First node built just fine. The other 3 fail because the CVM won't boot as the video card isn't passing through (or so it seems based on the error). I see two differences between the working node and the failing nodes, wondering if anyone has anything else to add and if they can help...

The differences I see are:

BIOS is older on the failing nodes however I can't update it - the update process starts but then the PC fails to shutdown - the BIOS upgrade triggers the shutdown but fails to power cycle the device, it just hangs with power on and no video output and no response from the keyboard (caps lock light doesn't come on). Removing the power and rebooting recovers the device but the BIOS doesn't get upgraded.

Second difference is the CPU microcode is older on the non-working machines. Not sure if relevant.

Ring any bells for anyone?

Are you trying to pass through the iGPU?
Asking because I have an M720q with a i7-9700T and I can't get the UHD 630 iGPU to work in a Win10 VM any more.
I did have it working previously but that was a while back and then I went on a PCIe bifurcation journey and forgot my original setup!
It might have worked for me using an older UEFI or a different CPU - maybe i5-8500T?
I'm currently using UEFI M1UKT74A - I don't have any spare CPUs.

Do you have any known working/broken hardware-UEFI-CPU combos (e.g. M720q+M1UKT74A+i5-8500T) to help confirm (or not) whether some CPUs just don't work?

 

[Parallax]

Hi, I'm looking for a quad-port 2.5Gbe NIC to go into my m920q. The consensus in this thread seems to be to use the Realtek 8125. I can't seem to find out what baffle I would need for such a card, or even the exact model of card that is known to work with this device.

If anyone has a link or can recommend a particular card/riser/baffle that would be great.

Any PCIe card should work, as long as it fits (max length is in the first post). There won't be a compatible baffle unless you're lucky and the i350-T4 one is a match, but I've not seen one so I don't have measurements. You'll most likely need a 3D printer and make your own baffle, or you can leave it *gasp* naked and it should be ok as long as you don't shake your Tiny around.

 

[BARMANIA]

Hi, I'm in need of some help, I just got my m720q and want to try using an Nvidia A2000 in it. Now I've bought 2 different PCIe risers, one from AliExpress and one from Amazon (added the product-links to these risers). They both do not seem to work, the fan spins on the card, but I cant seem to get screen output. The onboard video will stay enabled, and the A2000 won't show up in the windows device manager. Has anyone succeeded in getting an A2000 to work? And do i need a specific riser? I thought searching for 01AJ940 would have done the trick... Thanks!

So turned out the videocard was dead, bummer, would have been nice...

 

[harblhat]

Thanks to everyone's contributions in this thread. I recently bought an old m720q and installed the 01AJ940 riser with a Mellanox MCX312A (IBM OEM part) dual port 10GB NIC to use as an opnsense router. So far so good and no real hiccups other than discovering the NIC was an IBM and firmware wasn't easily flashed to OEM, so I left it. However opnsense recognized it with the standard driver set so no biggie. NIC low profile bracket didn't fit, but a bit of bending solved that and it's stable enough.