Lenovo Thinkcentre/ThinkStation Tiny (Project TinyMiniMicro) Reference Thread

[Rods]

The LED cable is for the Red LED light above the Think centre logo.

These are photos of the "sensor" I referred to and where it connects to the motherboard.

 

[Rods]

i'm not sure if i'm reading this correctly but is it me or is his CPU fan speed overall just unbelievably low?

cc @Rods

Like even in the 2nd photo from what i can make out at 95C your fan reading is 730 RPM

I assumed that would be a normal speed. These are the factory settings.

I believe the BIOS has fan curve options, but I think the noise will be too loud.

I checked and it's in balanced mode.

 

[besseddrest]

I assumed that would be a normal speed. These are the factory settings.

I believe the BIOS has fan curve options, but I think the noise will be too loud.

I checked and it's in balanced mode.

yeah i'm saying 730 RPM - if that is being read correctly by the sensor - is far from enough to cool down the CPU fr 95. That's almost idle

For reference i have a p3 tiny. It has a dGPU + fan cooler. When it's in full use the fan has to hit its max, 5600 RPM, just to keep the gpu temp at a reasonable level

 

[gadgethm]

These are photos of the "sensor" I referred to and where it connects to the motherboard.

Your friend is definitely wrong; its a LED:

 

[esto20]

I'm looking for a 2.5 gb NIC for an m920q. Are there no great baffles for dual port cards? I have seen some 4 port NICs with fans like this qnap:

QNAP QXG-2G4T-I225 Quad-Port 2.5 GbE Network Expansion Card - Newegg.com

Buy QNAP QXG-2G4T-I225 Quad-Port 2.5 GbE Network Expansion Card with fast shipping and top-rated customer service. Once you know, you Newegg!

www.newegg.com

And it seems like using the 4 port lenovo baffle might work with those? But, a dual port 2.5 gb with compatible baffle would be ideal...

 

[stegg]

Riser experts needed!

Hi folks, long time lurker here. I read almost every post on this thread before purchasing.
I have a Lenovo Tiny m90q GEN4 with I5-13500. I purchased a 5C50W00933 riser on aliexpress to add an Intel x710 nic. This nic works normally in another ATX motherboard, but it's NOT seen by my m90q gen4. The heatsink is warm so the nic receives voltage but no OS can see it; the BIOS says the pcie slot is empty.
What could it be? defective riser? or it has something to do with "direct PRSNT -> CLKREQ" (a thing I couldn't understand at all)?
Thanks in advance for any help

 

[WifiCable]

Photo of my P360 Tiny:
View attachment 48920

@WifiCable

Testing so far...

System: Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Tiny
Riser: Lenovo PCIe riser 5C50W00910

Device	Without Masked Pad	With Masked Pad
Nvidia T400
Intel X710-T4L
NVMe drives (Sabrent M.2 to PCIe adapter)

Hey, thanks for checking and testing stuff. Seems to support the theory mostly, though it's weird that the X710 doesn't work in either case. Not sure why that could be...

After some further tests and catching back up with the thread here:

It seems my x16 riser in the first test has bit the dust, and was why the dGPU wasn't showing up. Oof (probably from messing around with the enable pins a while ago)

Testing with a known good riser, the T1000 worked again,
but the x8 network card would have the system get stuck on the Lenovo splash screen on boot.

I removed the card, went into BIOS and disabled ASPM (credit @jja2000 for this reminder), saved and shut down, reinserted the card, it then booted up just fine and showed up in Proxmox.

The associated network adapters showed up as enp2XXXX instead of enp3XXXX when the card was working on the x4 riser, which should confirm that it is on the correct x16 PCIe bus now.

This is with the masked pin being 11 along the longer side of the CPU and 9 in from the shorter side.

Sorry for the blur, camera effects. the other should be decent.View attachment 48922View attachment 48923

Glad to hear that you also figured out what the issue was and it seems to be working with the masked pad now. Thanks for the photos of the masked pad!

Riser experts needed!

Hi folks, long time lurker here. I read almost every post on this thread before purchasing.
I have a Lenovo Tiny m90q GEN4 with I5-13500. I purchased a 5C50W00933 riser on aliexpress to add an Intel x710 nic. This nic works normally in another ATX motherboard, but it's NOT seen by my m90q gen4. The heatsink is warm so the nic receives voltage but no OS can see it; the BIOS says the pcie slot is empty.
What could it be? defective riser? or it has something to do with "direct PRSNT -> CLKREQ" (a thing I couldn't understand at all)?
Thanks in advance for any help

As we recently discovered, these generations of tinies mistakenly have lane reversal activated, causing some cards not to work in the x8/x16 riser. You can try masking the pad as is shown in the other messages I'm replying to here, though one of them seems to inidicate it did not solve the problem with the X710 in particular. Would be interesting to know if it's the same for you though.
Also the PRSNT/CLKREQ note in my riser documentation is no longer really relevant I think. That was part of my theory for why cards weren't working before we figured out it was because of the lane reversal. The specific riser FRU you got shouldn't be an issue here.

 

[Rods]

Your friend is definitely wrong; its a LED:

Oh my God... its a red led light....

thanks a lot!

 

[Rods]

yeah i'm saying 730 RPM - if that is being read correctly by the sensor - is far from enough to cool down the CPU fr 95. That's almost idle

For reference i have a p3 tiny. It has a dGPU + fan cooler. When it's in full use the fan has to hit its max, 5600 RPM, just to keep the gpu temp at a reasonable level

That's interesting what you're saying. I have adGPU too, an a Nvidia A1000.

Because my fan should be the same as your P3's.

Could you tell me the FRU of your fan?

For your information, I currently have 44°C and 325 RPM.

Could you post a picture of your hardware monitor so I can see how your fan behaves?

 

[besseddrest]

That's interesting what you're saying. I have adGPU too, an a Nvidia A1000.

Because my fan should be the same as your P3's.

Could you tell me the FRU of your fan?

For your information, I currently have 44°C and 325 RPM.

Could you post a picture of your hardware monitor so I can see how your fan behaves?

So my dGPU is different - Radeon RX 6400 - and the fan shroud is just what comes stock with that dGPU - it's not a FRU and actually isn't one listed by Lenovo as compatible with my machine

the 730 RPM however, i believe is a reading of your CPU fan, not the dGPU, and now that I think of it, that value could be inaccurate because AFAIK the motherboard does not output a fan speed reading. I think the BIOS just adjusts the fan speed based on a curve (preset you've selected, aka Balanced) it's essentially reacting to the temp reading of the CPU and sending enough power to the fan to speed up or down.

Still, if the above is actually true, I don't understand how you're getting a variable reading from the 300rpms to 730rpm, I don't know how accurate that actually is. It shouldn't be receiving a fan speed reading at all.

Your dGPU should be reading temps and fan speeds accurately

If your CPU is hitting 95C and the fan ramps up its speed and is incredibly loud like you say, then it sounds like its working as expected, but only if your CPU temp manages to come back down. Meaning, the 95c reading might just be a snapshot of the max that it hit, and your system is just working as expected. AKA if it hits 95c, the balanced setting that you chose just didn't speed up in time to cool the CPU quicker. It should have eventually brought that temp back down

For my dGPU - my fan at fullspeed kinda keeps the GPU temp steady around 66%

I'm not on my personal comp right now and I"m only guessing what i'm seeing because i don't use windows

 

[Rods]

So my dGPU is different - Radeon RX 6400 - and the fan shroud is just what comes stock with that dGPU - it's not a FRU and actually isn't one listed by Lenovo as compatible with my machine

the 730 RPM however, i believe is a reading of your CPU fan, not the dGPU, and now that I think of it, that value could be inaccurate because AFAIK the motherboard does not output a fan speed reading. I think the BIOS just adjusts the fan speed based on a curve (preset you've selected, aka Balanced) it's essentially reacting to the temp reading of the CPU and sending enough power to the fan to speed up or down.

Still, if the above is actually true, I don't understand how you're getting a variable reading from the 300rpms to 730rpm, I don't know how accurate that actually is. It shouldn't be receiving a fan speed reading at all.

Your dGPU should be reading temps and fan speeds accurately

If your CPU is hitting 95C and the fan ramps up its speed and is incredibly loud like you say, then it sounds like its working as expected, but only if your CPU temp manages to come back down. Meaning, the 95c reading might just be a snapshot of the max that it hit, and your system is just working as expected. AKA if it hits 95c, the balanced setting that you chose just didn't speed up in time to cool the CPU quicker. It should have eventually brought that temp back down

For my dGPU - my fan at fullspeed kinda keeps the GPU temp steady around 66%

I'm not on my personal comp right now and I"m only guessing what i'm seeing because i don't use windows

My dGPU is running very cool.
I don't have information about its fan speed, but it remains under control.
All the temperatures I posted are for the i9 13900t.

 

[besseddrest]

My dGPU is running very cool.
I don't have information about its fan speed, but it remains under control.
All the temperatures I posted are for the i9 13900t.

i know, i'm not talking about your dGPU, i'm just trying to unblurry the lines of the different fans and temp readings we're discussing. I'm trying to help by explaining what i can gather about your CPU temp situation

 

[stegg]

As we recently discovered, these generations of tinies mistakenly have lane reversal activated, causing some cards not to work in the x8/x16 riser. You can try masking the pad as is shown in the other messages I'm replying to here, though one of them seems to inidicate it did not solve the problem with the X710 in particular. Would be interesting to know if it's the same for you though.
Also the PRSNT/CLKREQ note in my riser documentation is no longer really relevant I think. That was part of my theory for why cards weren't working before we figured out it was because of the lane reversal. The specific riser FRU you got shouldn't be an issue here.

Thank you very much for your reply!
Do you think my M90Q G4 could work with a different nic, like Mellanox?
Unfortunately I don't have enough steady hand or a microscope to perform such a minuscule intervention on my cpu
Dang I should have purchased a P340 instead.

 

[WifiCable]

Thank you very much for your reply!
Do you think my M90Q G4 could work with a different nic, like Mellanox?
Unfortunately I don't have enough steady hand or a microscope to perform such a minuscule intervention on my cpu
Dang I should have purchased a P340 instead.

I don't know what would work without any intervention, there isn't really a sure way to tell without just testing it. It might be consistent across chip manufacturers at least.

 

[Rods]

i know, i'm not talking about your dGPU, i'm just trying to unblurry the lines of the different fans and temp readings we're discussing. I'm trying to help by explaining what i can gather about your CPU temp situation

i appreciate that! thaks a lot!

 

[besseddrest]

Thank you very much for your reply!
Do you think my M90Q G4 could work with a different nic, like Mellanox?
Unfortunately I don't have enough steady hand or a microscope to perform such a minuscule intervention on my cpu
Dang I should have purchased a P340 instead.

its harmless if you have a plastic spudger. at most its just frustrating trying to place something so tiny

 

[stegg]

its harmless if you have a plastic spudger. at most its just frustrating trying to place something so tiny

I don't have a spudger, maybe a toothpick can work? also, how do you cut such a small piece of (I suppose) kapton tape

and what is this mod doesn't work with my x710? how can I remove the tape safely?

@WifiCable my gen4 has an i5-13500; I just wonder what riser could work with my Tiny. I mean, is it ever possible Lenovo made risers that don't work??

 

[joeribl]

Oh my God... its a red led light....

thanks a lot!

I think only 5 people told you this already

 

[clustermaster]

Photo of my P360 Tiny:
View attachment 48920

@WifiCable

Testing so far...

System: Lenovo ThinkStation P360 Tiny
Riser: Lenovo PCIe riser 5C50W00910

Device	Without Masked Pad	With Masked Pad
Nvidia T400
Intel X710-T4L
NVMe drives (Sabrent M.2 to PCIe adapter)

I experience the very same problem when trying to use a Lekuo 10G SFP+ PR27R11 PCIe network card in my Lenovo M90q Gen3 Tiny with Intel i5 12500T CPU using a PCIe riser 5C50W00933, which is powered but not recognized at all, i.e. in lspci under Proxmox.
The PCB board layout looks exactly the same as in the photos of the Lenovo P360 tiny.
I also tested a Nvidia GPU card which was recognized immediately in the used hardware and the Lekuo 10G card works in an older Lenovo P320 tiny using ~ 3W with stable 10Gbps connectivity.

My questions:
- Did anybody succeed in getting those components to work?
- Somebody already tested removing the small resistor?
- I understand that my M90q Gen3 has the very same LGA1700 CPU socket although it is restricted to Intel 12th generation CPUs by the Lenovo BIOS. So, the described single pin padding could also work. Anyone tried this on a M90q Gen3?

Many thanks - servethehome is great!!