Lenovo Thinkcentre/ThinkStation Tiny (Project TinyMiniMicro) Reference Thread

[nulltrope]

Howdy! First time tiny owner here, I just purchased an m90q 3rd gen from eBay and despite everything I read online claiming it could accommodate 2x M.2 NVME drives I am having trouble identifying any familiar-looking NVME slot(s) on the motherboard... I see what looks to be almost the right slot at the bottom (circled red) but A) it's oriented in the wrong direction and B) it's certainly not keyed properly for a 2280 drive. There's also two other expansion looking connectors (circled blue) but they are too small to be any M.2 connector i've seen.



Did I just end up with a weird revision motherboard or something? I'm a bit bummed because although I do have the caddy/ribbon cable for a single 2.5" SATA drive, I really planned on doing a dual NVME RAID 1 for my OS.

Any advice is appreciated!

 

[smstewart_9554]

Howdy! First time tiny owner here, I just purchased an m90q 3rd gen from eBay and despite everything I read online claiming it could accommodate 2x M.2 NVME drives I am having trouble identifying any familiar-looking NVME slot(s) on the motherboard... I see what looks to be almost the right slot at the bottom (circled red) but A) it's oriented in the wrong direction and B) it's certainly not keyed properly for a 2280 drive. There's also two other expansion looking connectors (circled blue) but they are too small to be any M.2 connector i've seen.

View attachment 41617

Did I just end up with a weird revision motherboard or something? I'm a bit bummed because although I do have the caddy/ribbon cable for a single 2.5" SATA drive, I really planned on doing a dual NVME RAID 1 for my OS.

Any advice is appreciated!

The M.2 slots are usually on the bottom of the board along with the memory slots.

 

[svqj]

Howdy! First time tiny owner here, I just purchased an m90q 3rd gen from eBay and despite everything I read online claiming it could accommodate 2x M.2 NVME drives I am having trouble identifying any familiar-looking NVME slot(s) on the motherboard... I see what looks to be almost the right slot at the bottom (circled red) but A) it's oriented in the wrong direction and B) it's certainly not keyed properly for a 2280 drive. There's also two other expansion looking connectors (circled blue) but they are too small to be any M.2 connector i've seen.

View attachment 41617

Did I just end up with a weird revision motherboard or something? I'm a bit bummed because although I do have the caddy/ribbon cable for a single 2.5" SATA drive, I really planned on doing a dual NVME RAID 1 for my OS.

Any advice is appreciated!

Red one is m2 Wifi slot with a cheap converter from Aliexpress for about 10 bucks you can also add another (3rd one for your M90) nvme (I tried it) but it will not boot. The blue ones are for extra video ports (Displayport, HDMI and VGA). The nvme ports are in the back of the unit you need to pull the small cover. You can also see there 2 SODIMM slots

 

[Greg_E]

Will the blue ports work with 10gbps ethernet cards? Only a couple of these based on a Marvel chip, but that might be a nice way to add 10gbps.

 

[svqj]

Blue ones are not ports but proprietary connectors for video (DP, HDMI, VGA) and serial port and are custom lenovo. Never seen to fit anything else (except a USBC attachment)

 

[Parallax]

Will the blue ports work with 10gbps ethernet cards? Only a couple of these based on a Marvel chip, but that might be a nice way to add 10gbps.

No. You can add a 2.5GbE (A-E key) NIC to the WiFi slot easily though. You need to use the PCIe slot if you want to add 10GbE cards. I'm using a single port PCIe 10GbE card with a Marvel controller, it's working very well so far.

 

[Parallax]

And I assume you've followed the previous instructions and found your two m.2 slots okay? Just flip the unit over and slide out the bottom panel (the top cover must be removed first).

 

[sammyke007]

For a m720q: if I add my AOC-SGP-i2 dual NIC, can I also use the onboard ethernet in OPNsense? I need 3 ethernet ports in total (WAN/4GWAN/LAN) and I have this dual NIC lying around.

 

[Parallax]

For a m720q: if I add my AOC-SGP-i2 dual NIC, can I also use the onboard ethernet in OPNsense? I need 3 ethernet ports in total (WAN/4GWAN/LAN) and I have this dual NIC lying around.

Yes.

 

[aslater3]

Hi Everyone, hoping someone can help me out. I have just bought and setup a m920q running proxmox and 64gb RAM to replace my aging gen8 microserver!

I also bought a Coral TPU which I was hoping to get running in the WiFi slot but nothing I try seems to work! I have flashed the BIOS to the latest version and also set the serial / model to INVALID to try and clear the whitelist. Unfortunately using the F10 diagnostics or lspci in Proxmox, the card is not detected? I have also tried some older versions of the BIOS and they dont work either.

Is there anything else I can try to get this working? I was really hoping for some accelerated Frigate detection! Has anyone else struggled with this? Is there a custom BIOS or a way to clear the whitelist? I will try and test the card in another machine but I cant see how its DOA.

Thanks in advance!

 

[siroco97]

Hello everyone,

Having a lenovo tiny p360 with an intel 12700T and an nvidia T400 in proxmox I see only the igpu intel I do not see any nvidia iommu acitver and the Primary display is on auto have you a solution for both cards be seen?

Thanks

 

[dionua]

@siroco97 Can you share `lspci` output? My experience is that on P360 Tiny both AUTO and PEG primary display is exactly same..

 

[siroco97]

@dionua Here is the shell of lscpi.

 

[dionua]

@siroco97 that's strange for AUTO. On my system AUTO is same as PEG. So you see both cards by default.

You may try to change it to PEG. In such cases both cards will be visible but NVIDIA card will be 'main' (used for BIOS access and tty consoles). SO you'll need to plug your monitor to one of these mini display port connectors... This is known issue of P360 generation... There is no way to use NVIDIA card as 'secondary'.. Previous generation works properly (P350 Tiny). Feel free to register and post comment here: English Community-Lenovo Community

It's possible to workaround this by disabling/unloading framebuffer drivers. But you'll never see boot loader or BIOS setup on Intel output.
Updated BIOS may change AUTO behavior. But in any case there is no way to make NVIDIA GPU secondary with latest BIOS.

PS. I've P360 Tiny with T1000. But most likely T400 will have same behavior.

 

[chaperone5986]

I can't get an AMD GPU running either on a M90q Gen 3 / P360. I tried installing a Sapphire RX 6400 with a 5C50W00910 (Rev 1.1) riser; the fan spins and card turns on but doesn't get detected by the OS.

Also tried bridging A1 pin to the B48 pin (also tested B31) as mentioned here:

OK, so I found a solution to my AOC-SGP-i4 issue...

No cigar. I may have done something wrong, so I encourage others to play around.

It may be the BIOS' from Gen 3 onward no longer support AMD cards?

 

[dionua]

@chaperone5986 These cards were never supported officially.

I own P360 Tiny. There is definitely some integration code in BIOS that works with officially supported NVIDIA cards. At least BIOS is smart enough to control system (CPU) fan when NVIDIA GPU overheats (one of officially supported cards comes with just heatpipe and small heatsink that is cooled down by CPU fan). See this post for details: https://forums.servethehome.com/ind...o-reference-thread.34925/page-114#post-456292

Also even with officially supported NVIDIA card if you choose primary GPU as 'IGD' (Integrated) for some absurd reason NVIDIA card disappears from system. And yes, it'll still consume power and turn on fan. I've created topic about this here: English Community-Lenovo Community

I'm sure that it's just buggy BIOS implementation. And since Lenovo don't want to fix it for officially supported GPU, I'm sure they will just ignore you with RX6400.. Sorry..

I can suggest you to try changing this 'Primary GPU' BIOS setting. But it could happens that this system is so stupid that there will be no way to revert this setting at all (unless you have supported NVIDIA card laying somewhere to plug it temporary).

Another thing to try is to use 4x riser. I know it sucks and much worse than 8x, but it could happens that this will 'workaround' this logic in BIOS that disables GPU based on BIOS settings.. But keep in mind that this is gray and untested area...

I think that I'm extremely lucky that I decided to not try AMD graphics with this machine. 90% of times I need external GPU only to pass it to Windows VM. So my first idea was to purchase that RX6400 card just becuse AMD works much better under Linux.. But I decided to stay with NVIDIA because of potential "error 43" error with AMD Windows guest drivers.. Now I see that it's not that easy at all..

I know for sure that P350 Tiny has no such issues... At least with official GPU. So if it's critical you man want to just downgrade..
In any case please let me know how it goes.. If you'll be able to solve it somehow I'll try to repeat this..

 

[Medivh]

I got a P330 Tiny with i7-8700T & P620. Tried to upgrade the GPU with T1000 & T1000 8GB but both T1000's are shutting off with GPU load.
I tried undervolting with MSI Afterburner but it didn't let me edit the curve/MHz. I was able to reduce the power limit but even with that certain games will stutter & run unstable. Could it be issue with my motherboard? RAMs were tested fine, I tried DDU with different versions of drivers.. Tried 2 different risers.. I've seen posts of others saying T1000 works fine with M720q & M920's without undervolting so I am just confused why mine isn't accepting T1000 well.. Power supplies used were 135W & 230W with same issue.

 

[NateR]

According to intel i7-12700T in the M90Q Gen 3 supports a maximum of 128GB RAM. I just picked up a pair of 48GB SODIMMs and will test them this evening.

Any luck?

 

[hashtagoctothorp]

Anyone have a link or good source for a Tiny6 (m90q gen1) pice bracket 3d model, even a blank one? Having trouble finding options on thingiverse/similar for this specific model. Found one for the gen3 (tiny 7?) and my exact mellanox x-4 card, but the bracket itself looks differently shaped. I'm running bracket-less atm, but am really worried about accidentally yanking the DAC and unseating / shorting the pice card. Thanks!

 

[Rundell]

Hey, nice build and thank you for sharing. Would you mind providing more details about the "Dual 2.5 Gigabit M.2 M+B Key Ethernet" you're using?

This is the one I got: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/3256805663944958.html

There are several other sellers under different brand names but its all from IOCrest: M.2 to Dual 10/100/1000M/2.5G Ethernet Card，IO-M2F8125B-2GLAN - M.2/Mini PCIe - Networking - My web

Here's a few more pics of it and how it fits. The one modification I had to make was file down the end of the card to fit around the metal post. Otherwise, it was a perfect fit using a M920x with the stock AMD graphics and custom riser.