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Lenovo Thinkcentre/ThinkStation Tiny (Project TinyMiniMicro) Reference Thread

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WifiCable

WifiCable

Active Member
Dec 18, 2023
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stegg said:
Dang. ordered!
Thank you for your reply!
I'll try this (expensive) one, and if it fails, I'll mod my cpu... but before I wanna try all the alternatives :D
I ordered the nic without SR/LR as I plan to use a short DAC cable, hoping no mistake here
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Bruh, that's expensive as hell lol. I don't know where you live but at least in the USA and most of the EU it's literally cheaper to buy that riser directly from Lenovo:
1785490145068.png1785490155247.png
Is it really worth that to not try putting a little piece of tape on your CPU? It's not a particularly invasive mod...
 
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stegg

New Member
May 1, 2023
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doh, didn't know that! I though all risers were out of stock. 5C50W00933 is out of stock here.
the 5C50W00909 is less than 45 euros shipping included, thank you; Lenovo site states it's not compatible with my M90q Gen 4 (type 12EL), but from this thread I understood it has the same motherboard as P360.
if my nic still won't work I'll surrender and try the mod!
 
WifiCable

WifiCable

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Dec 18, 2023
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It'll work fine in the M90q Gen 4. Lenovo's compatibility matching is a bit weird like that. As long as it has the Tiny8 riser slot (which it does), it's compatible.
If your NIC doesn't work with this riser then there's something else going on, and the tape mod won't change anything for the x4 riser, it only affects the CPU's lanes used by the x8/x16 riser.
 
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stegg

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May 1, 2023
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Appreciate, thanks again. I'm gonna buy the Lekuo 10G SFP+, it's PCIe 4 x1. Just a doubt, do you think the PCH connection will affect the NIC speed? I mean, could other lanes connected through the chipset and shared with other peripherals affect the NIC speed?
 
WifiCable

WifiCable

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Dec 18, 2023
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If it's anything like the M90q Gen 3, then the riser slot's PCH lanes should also support PCIe gen 4. For the rest you're right in that it'll be sharing bandwidth with everything else on the PCH. The PCH has a DMI 4.0 x8 uplink to the CPU which it has to share with the bottom NVMe slots, Wifi card, USB ports, SATA ports, onboard ethernet and the riser slot PCH lanes. In theory the 2 NVMe slots on the bottom are capable of saturating the uplink by themselves, so under specific conditions you could run into a bottleneck there. If the SSDs won't see more activity than the NIC can pass (like if you're using it as a NAS through that port) then you shouldn't have any issues though.
 
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adminpldt

New Member
Jul 8, 2026
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Hello people! I got an m710q, previously owned by a large outsourcing company. I'm sure this was directly from the company. What's interesting is, the m710q had a fully unlocked BIOS. Full system agent config, PCH-IO config, everything.

Everything I had to unlock on my m720q, the m710q already had. It even had out of the box 9th gen, and Xeon e3 v6 support. Has anyone heard of this level of customization? And a little info about the company, it's not Chinese, but the BIOS had its language set to Chinese (thankfully it can be changed). I'm assuming they bought this directly from Lenovo China?
 
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kazooie

New Member
Jul 29, 2026
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WifiCable said:
This PCIe x1 NIC won't work in the riser they have without the fix to un-reverse the lanes, nothing smaller than x8 will.
It *would* work if they got the PCIe x4 PCH-lanes riser instead.

Also I'm guessing that the SR and LR options for the NIC you linked are about the inclusion of a short range or long range SFP+ fiber optic module.
Click to expand...

What I still don’t fully understand is why my Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX isn’t working. It’s an x8 card, and I specifically bought it because the x4 cards weren’t working.

It produces the same error as the X520-DA2 (10Gtek) and the Aquantia. In another system, it’s recognized without any issues.

What am I missing here?

Could an x4 riser solve the problem? The Mellanox is supposedly downward compatible, even though I'm unsure how it would physically fit ^^

Thanks, by the way, for all the input you've already given about the tiny8 PCIe/riser problem. It was very helpful.
 
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WifiCable

WifiCable

Active Member
Dec 18, 2023
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kazooie said:
What I still don’t fully understand is why my Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX isn’t working. It’s an x8 card, and I specifically bought it because the x4 cards weren’t working.

It produces the same error as the X520-DA2 (10Gtek) and the Aquantia. In another system, it’s recognized without any issues.

What am I missing here?

Could an x4 riser solve the problem? The Mellanox is supposedly downward compatible, even though I'm unsure how it would physically fit ^^

Thanks, by the way, for all the input you've already given about the tiny8 PCIe/riser problem. It was very helpful.
Click to expand...
It's sadly not as simple as every x8 or wider card working fine, the card also has to support lane reversal to work with this. Has anyone else had that particular card work in a Tiny8 machine with the x8/x16 riser?
It should work with the x4 riser at least, if you cut open the end of the slot. And I'm sure you're aware of the potential bandwidth limitations with that.
 
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alkersan

Member
Jun 15, 2025
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malda said:
Hello there, anyone tried to add 2,5GbE (and maybe 10GbE) to M75q Gen5 to the WLAN slot, is it even possible? I need to use both M.2 2280 for NVMe SSDs.

I found these cards, but I couldn't find any experience related to the M75q Gen5.
2,5GbE: Amazon.com
10GbE: M20E M.2 10GbE – Auvidea

Thanks in advance!
M
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Items like this (E-key https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005008904049465.html#nav-review) do have positive reviews in various lenovo M machines, thus I believe it should work okay.

As for 10Gbit - wi-fi slot connects to just a single lane of PCIe. Now, this m75q gen5 is a Zen4 board, meaning that the PCIe bus is 4.0, so in theory it should yield 16Gbit, but I've never seen how that Auvidea adapter behaves in real tests.
 
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malda

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Jun 12, 2026
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alkersan: you're right, there are positive reviews in a lot of Lenovo machines - but not a single one in this one :) I was just curious, if there is anyone with real experience. I have one unit sitting here waiting to be opened or sent back. 1Gb ethernet is the only downside for me...
 
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nimik

Member
Jan 4, 2022
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kazooie said:
What I still don’t fully understand is why my Mellanox ConnectX-4 LX isn’t working. It’s an x8 card, and I specifically bought it because the x4 cards weren’t working.

It produces the same error as the X520-DA2 (10Gtek) and the Aquantia. In another system, it’s recognized without any issues.

What am I missing here?

Could an x4 riser solve the problem? The Mellanox is supposedly downward compatible, even though I'm unsure how it would physically fit ^^

Thanks, by the way, for all the input you've already given about the tiny8 PCIe/riser problem. It was very helpful.
Click to expand...
I've used a X520-DA2 and CX-4 Lx in a P360 Tiny (same as the M90q Gen 3) with the x16 riser. I had detection issues with various NICs, but consistently fixed it by physically unplugging and re-plugging the power cable after a boot with no-detect. It would behave normally after that, including sleep and reboots.

I had a 230W or 300W PSU. The 170W PSU with an i5 CPU should also be fine.
 
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alkersan

Member
Jun 15, 2025
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DagB said:
Anyone got a 3D model for a baffle suitable for dual port intel xl710 in p340/m90q ?
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I'm planning to make one, once receive the card (had to return one already, dell branded x710 as it prevented m720q from shutting down, ordered lenovo). But the plan is to have it together with shroud for fan, like i did here for this rtl8127 card to also cool the xgspon stick
 
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norsemangrey

New Member
Apr 27, 2021
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Can anyone confirm a working 2 x NIC 10GbE network card + riser card combination for the P360 Tiny / M90Q G3? I have read through most of the posts can't seem to determine a working combo. This is for use with Proxmox.
 
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