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Lenovo Thinkcentre/ThinkStation Tiny (Project TinyMiniMicro) Reference Thread

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kwyjibo

New Member
Apr 20, 2023
1
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1
I was just curious, has anyone using a 4x 2.5GbE network card found a baffle that works? I purchased one from superbuy for my 920q but unfortunately, it doesn't fit :(
 

TinyLenovo

New Member
Feb 1, 2023
14
7
3
I've been running that 4xM.2+SATA SSD setup with Truenas without any issue.
Confirming that you're running this in a Lenovo Tiny, and it recognizes all the HDs as a separate drives? Probably goes without saying, but wanted to be sure your experience wasn't on a different machine before I pull the trigger on one of these cards.
 

Maverick

New Member
Aug 10, 2022
2
0
1
I just bought 2 P360, each came with a T400 GPU and the riser FRU 5C50W00910. Afraid that a PCIe 2.0 10 Gbe card would not be recognized I bought a Mellanox MCX512A-ACAT. This one is correctly recognized but the temperature makes me afraid. It varies between 70 and 80° C idle. For those who have an AOC-STGN-I2S card, what temperatures do you have?
 

Parallax

Active Member
Nov 8, 2020
417
208
43
London, UK
I just bought 2 P360, each came with a T400 GPU and the riser FRU 5C50W00910. Afraid that a PCIe 2.0 10 Gbe card would not be recognized I bought a Mellanox MCX512A-ACAT. This one is correctly recognized but the temperature makes me afraid. It varies between 70 and 80° C idle. For those who have an AOC-STGN-I2S card, what temperatures do you have?
60-61C under normal use, but that's jammed right up at the top of a media cabinet with less than a cm of clearance between them and the shelf above and sitting on top of a TP-Link 10GbE switch, a KVM switch, and a Ruckus ICX7150. I'm going to relocate the Tinys one weekend to a shelf with more breathing room.
 

Zune

New Member
Apr 27, 2023
13
3
3
Brazil
Hi guys, good evening!

First of all, I'm really pleased to be part of this forum. It's kinda hard to find some forum focused about mini pcs, clusters etc where I live. So, nice to meet you all guys!

So, I'm starting to plan to make my own mini cluster project and at first I bought two NEC Mate tiny (asian version of Thinkcentre). Specifically, M710q with Intel B250 Chipset . The model that I bought comes to Intel Xeon E-2176M (6C-12T), but it doesn't have a PCIe slot and, because of that, I ended up changed some steps of my project (I don't know if I'm gonna sell these mini pcs yet) and I'm mounting two M90q Gen 1 since last week.

I would like to know if the M90q supports Intel Xeon or I need to modify my bios to accept the CPU. To comparison, I leave below the Xeon W-1290 vs Core i9 10900 to understand and make it clear if this is possible to do.
Intel Xeon W-1290PIntel Core i9-10900
Essentials
Architecture codenameComet LakeComet Lake
Launch date1 Apr 2020Q2'20
Launch price (MSRP)$539$439 - $449
Place in performance rating272384
Processor NumberW-1290Pi9-10900
SeriesIntel Xeon W Processor10th Generation Intel Core i9 Processors
StatusLaunchedLaunched
Vertical segmentWorkstationDesktop
Performance
64 bit support✔✔
Base frequency3.70 GHz2.80 GHz
Bus Speed8 GT/s8 GT/s
L3 cache20 MB20 MB
Manufacturing process technology14 nm14 nm
Maximum core temperature100°C100°C
Maximum frequency5.30 GHz5.20 GHz
Number of cores1010
Number of threads2020
L1 cache1280 KB
L2 cache2.5 MB
Memory
Max memory channels22
Maximum memory bandwidth45.8 GB/s45.8 GB/s
Maximum memory size128 GB128 GB
Supported memory typesDDR4-2933DDR4-2933
Graphics
Device ID0x9BC60x9BC5
Graphics base frequency350 MHz350 MHz
Graphics max dynamic frequency1.20 GHz1.20 GHz
Intel® Clear Video HD technology✔✔
Intel® Clear Video technology✔✔
Intel® InTru™ 3D technology✔✔
Intel® Quick Sync Video✔✔
Max video memory64 GB64 GB
Processor graphicsIntel UHD Graphics P630Intel UHD Graphics 630
Graphics interfaces
Number of displays supported33
Graphics image quality
4K resolution support✔✔
Max resolution over DisplayPort4096x2304@60Hz4096x2304@60Hz
Max resolution over eDP4096x2304@60Hz4096x2304@60Hz
Max resolution over HDMI 1.44096x2160@30Hz
Graphics API support
DirectX1212
OpenGL4.54.5
Compatibility
Configurable TDP-down95 Watt
Configurable TDP-down Frequency3.30 GHz
Max number of CPUs in a configuration11
Package Size37.5mm x 37.5mm37.5mm x 37.5mm
Sockets supportedFCLGA1200FCLGA1200
Thermal Design Power (TDP)125 Watt65 Watt
Thermal SolutionPCG 2015DPCG 2015C
Peripherals
Max number of PCIe lanes1616
PCI Express revision3.03.0
PCIe configurationsUp to 1x16, 2x8, 1x8+2x4Up to 1x16, 2x8, 1x8+2x4
Scalability1S Only1S Only
Security & Reliability
Execute Disable Bit (EDB)✔✔
Intel® Identity Protection technology✔✔
Intel® OS Guard✔✔
Intel® Secure Key technology✔✔
Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX)✔✔
Intel® Trusted Execution technology (TXT)✔✔
Secure Boot✔✔
Advanced Technologies
Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® technology✔✔
Idle States✔✔
Instruction set extensionsIntel SSE4.1, Intel SSE4.2, Intel AVX2Intel SSE4.1, Intel SSE4.2, Intel AVX2
Intel 64✔✔
Intel® AES New Instructions✔✔
Intel® Hyper-Threading technology✔✔
Intel® Optane™ Memory Supported✔✔
Intel® Thermal Velocity Boost✔✔
Intel® Turbo Boost technology✔✔
Thermal Monitoring✔✔
Intel® Stable Image Platform Program (SIPP)✔
Intel® vPro™ Platform Eligibility✔
Virtualization
Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x)✔✔
Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d)✔✔
Intel® VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT)✔✔
I know that Xeon get more TDP than Core i9, but it comes Intel vPro capability, get the same LGA socket and, overall, looks pretty similar to i9. But my question blow my mind just on Device ID. Do you guys think that B520 chipset allows this Xeon? Because in AliExpress I can purchase the Xeon costing less than i9 (both 10900 and 10900K).
 

home_company

New Member
Mar 21, 2023
25
7
3
Hi guys, good evening!

First of all, I'm really pleased to be part of this forum. It's kinda hard to find some forum focused about mini pcs, clusters etc where I live. So, nice to meet you all guys!

So, I'm starting to plan to make my own mini cluster project and at first I bought two NEC Mate tiny (asian version of Thinkcentre). Specifically, M710q with Intel B250 Chipset . The model that I bought comes to Intel Xeon E-2176M (6C-12T), but it doesn't have a PCIe slot and, because of that, I ended up changed some steps of my project (I don't know if I'm gonna sell these mini pcs yet) and I'm mounting two M90q Gen 1 since last week.

I would like to know if the M90q supports Intel Xeon or I need to modify my bios to accept the CPU. To comparison, I leave below the Xeon W-1290 vs Core i9 10900 to understand and make it clear if this is possible to do.
Intel Xeon W-1290PIntel Core i9-10900
Essentials
Architecture codenameComet LakeComet Lake
Launch date1 Apr 2020Q2'20
Launch price (MSRP)$539$439 - $449
Place in performance rating272384
Processor NumberW-1290Pi9-10900
SeriesIntel Xeon W Processor10th Generation Intel Core i9 Processors
StatusLaunchedLaunched
Vertical segmentWorkstationDesktop
Performance
64 bit support✔✔
Base frequency3.70 GHz2.80 GHz
Bus Speed8 GT/s8 GT/s
L3 cache20 MB20 MB
Manufacturing process technology14 nm14 nm
Maximum core temperature100°C100°C
Maximum frequency5.30 GHz5.20 GHz
Number of cores1010
Number of threads2020
L1 cache1280 KB
L2 cache2.5 MB
Memory
Max memory channels22
Maximum memory bandwidth45.8 GB/s45.8 GB/s
Maximum memory size128 GB128 GB
Supported memory typesDDR4-2933DDR4-2933
Graphics
Device ID0x9BC60x9BC5
Graphics base frequency350 MHz350 MHz
Graphics max dynamic frequency1.20 GHz1.20 GHz
Intel® Clear Video HD technology✔✔
Intel® Clear Video technology✔✔
Intel® InTru™ 3D technology✔✔
Intel® Quick Sync Video✔✔
Max video memory64 GB64 GB
Processor graphicsIntel UHD Graphics P630Intel UHD Graphics 630
Graphics interfaces
Number of displays supported33
Graphics image quality
4K resolution support✔✔
Max resolution over DisplayPort4096x2304@60Hz4096x2304@60Hz
Max resolution over eDP4096x2304@60Hz4096x2304@60Hz
Max resolution over HDMI 1.44096x2160@30Hz
Graphics API support
DirectX1212
OpenGL4.54.5
Compatibility
Configurable TDP-down95 Watt
Configurable TDP-down Frequency3.30 GHz
Max number of CPUs in a configuration11
Package Size37.5mm x 37.5mm37.5mm x 37.5mm
Sockets supportedFCLGA1200FCLGA1200
Thermal Design Power (TDP)125 Watt65 Watt
Thermal SolutionPCG 2015DPCG 2015C
Peripherals
Max number of PCIe lanes1616
PCI Express revision3.03.0
PCIe configurationsUp to 1x16, 2x8, 1x8+2x4Up to 1x16, 2x8, 1x8+2x4
Scalability1S Only1S Only
Security & Reliability
Execute Disable Bit (EDB)✔✔
Intel® Identity Protection technology✔✔
Intel® OS Guard✔✔
Intel® Secure Key technology✔✔
Intel® Software Guard Extensions (Intel® SGX)✔✔
Intel® Trusted Execution technology (TXT)✔✔
Secure Boot✔✔
Advanced Technologies
Enhanced Intel SpeedStep® technology✔✔
Idle States✔✔
Instruction set extensionsIntel SSE4.1, Intel SSE4.2, Intel AVX2Intel SSE4.1, Intel SSE4.2, Intel AVX2
Intel 64✔✔
Intel® AES New Instructions✔✔
Intel® Hyper-Threading technology✔✔
Intel® Optane™ Memory Supported✔✔
Intel® Thermal Velocity Boost✔✔
Intel® Turbo Boost technology✔✔
Thermal Monitoring✔✔
Intel® Stable Image Platform Program (SIPP)✔
Intel® vPro™ Platform Eligibility✔
Virtualization
Intel® Virtualization Technology (VT-x)✔✔
Intel® Virtualization Technology for Directed I/O (VT-d)✔✔
Intel® VT-x with Extended Page Tables (EPT)✔✔
I know that Xeon get more TDP than Core i9, but it comes Intel vPro capability, get the same LGA socket and, overall, looks pretty similar to i9. But my question blow my mind just on Device ID. Do you guys think that B520 chipset allows this Xeon? Because in AliExpress I can purchase the Xeon costing less than i9 (both 10900 and 10900K).

There is no bios mod after M710 and M910 as Lenovo implement Bios guard in the bios. We cannot modify microcode by using the hardware programmer. I don't know there is a way to disable bios guard yet. If anyone know please let me know

I saw a vendor (in China) selling M710q could help modifying VRM, second NVME slot and even adding the extra PCI-E slot with the modded bios support everything. The modding fee was around 25 USD on top of the device cost. Or buy a M910X directly (recommend)
 
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Zune

New Member
Apr 27, 2023
13
3
3
Brazil
There is no bios mod after M710 and M910 as Lenovo implement Bios guard in the bios. We cannot modify microcode by using the hardware programmer. I don't know there is a way to disable bios guard yet. If anyone know please let me know

I saw a vendor (in China) selling M710q could help modifying VRM, second NVME slot and even adding the extra PCI-E slot with the modded bios support everything. The modding fee was around 25 USD on top of the device cost. Or buy a M910X directly (recommend)
Thanks dude to share these infos. I didn't know that Lenovo has blocked via BIOS guard any modify microcode.

Do you know if the Xeon W-1290 can be compatible with M90q? It would be very interesting to know because It would open a gap to have a potential cluster.

PS.: My two M710q by NEC has arrived and it looks so cool! But I already put them up for sale.





 

Parallax

Active Member
Nov 8, 2020
417
208
43
London, UK
Do you know if the Xeon W-1290 can be compatible with M90q? It would be very interesting to know because It would open a gap to have a potential cluster.

PS.: My two M710q by NEC has arrived and it looks so cool! But I already put them up for sale.
I'm not aware of anyone who has tried with Xeons. The boxes can get hot and the premium of adding a Xeon over an i5 say doesn't make sense. For a 65W CPUs strictly speaking you should use one of the models designed for that, eg the M90q versions, since they have uprated heatsinks etc. You can do the heatsink replacement etc yourself - I made some notes in the original post - but it can become expensive quickly.

It depends on your usecase, but I've had no issues building clusters of various types (Proxmox, k8s, XCP-ng, VSphere, LXD etc) on i5 based Tinys.
 
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Zune

New Member
Apr 27, 2023
13
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Brazil
I'm not aware of anyone who has tried with Xeons. The boxes can get hot and the premium of adding a Xeon over an i5 say doesn't make sense. For a 65W CPUs strictly speaking you should use one of the models designed for that, eg the M90q versions, since they have uprated heatsinks etc. You can do the heatsink replacement etc yourself - I made some notes in the original post - but it can become expensive quickly.

It depends on your usecase, but I've had no issues building clusters of various types (Proxmox, k8s, XCP-ng, VSphere, LXD etc) on i5 based Tinys.
Yes, W-1290P has 95W and because of that I'm looking for other SKUs like W-1290 or W-1270. Core i7 10700 is on my list as well as the i9 10900.
 

Zune

New Member
Apr 27, 2023
13
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Brazil
Update: I've just bought one i9 10900 for a good price. Now I need to purchase one M90q mobo and the second mini PC will be equipped with Xeon.
 

Parallax

Active Member
Nov 8, 2020
417
208
43
London, UK
Yes, W-1290P has 95W and because of that I'm looking for other SKUs like W-1290 or W-1270. Core i7 10700 is on my list as well as the i9 10900.
Since power here in the UK is expensive I'm going towards getting the highest possible density of use out of my servers so I can keep most of them off until I need them - to turn up a k8s cluster, say.

I was finding that spinning up VMs causes you to allocate a lot of cores, drives, and RAM, but actual utilisation of each one is quite low so you end up buying more resources than you actually need and the intensity of resource utilisation is poor.

One answer is Docker; but not everything can go efficiently in a Docker container, and they are supposed to be ephemeral rather than long running workloads. It's also quite messy from a security perspective, I ended up running a container registry to find and fix vulnerabilities and then you're effectively regression testing the patching of pre-packaged apps which is not what I want to spend my homelab time doing. Every container uses a different base image and relies on different versions of the dependencies.

So to Linux containers (LXCs). You get most of the benefits of VMs with less overhead and without the need to pre-allocate CPU, RAM, or drive space. My long running workloads are fairly idle most of the time with spikes of activity, that's a good model for an LXC. Sharing the kernel is increasingly efficient vs VMs the more workloads you run.

So with that in mind I've tried various hypervisors and for now I'm on LXD. I can focus on one Linux distro for the majority of my workloads and I get most of the destroy-and-replace benefit of a Docker container but with centralised vulnerability management. If I need another distro for a project, I can spin one up in a couple of seconds - much faster than Ansible or turning up a VM. Moving off Docker brought a considerable disk performance benefit (I run ZFS) as well. I have more than 20 LXCs running on one server and average CPU utilisation is around 15% and RAM is 19%, which is not anything like the ideal level of ~80%, but I have a lot of other projects I want to add so it will improve. I get a granular view of CPU, memory and disk per project or workload.

This is a long way of asking - do you really need that amount of CPU? I ran an i9-9900T for a while in a M920q because I was needing cores to allocate to VMs, but it was overkill almost all the time. The CPU was expensive to buy and expensive to run, and resale value was poor afterwards. CPUs today offer an enormous amount of compute - I'm on non-T i5 11500s now and it takes a hell of a lot to max one out and even then it's usually only for a few seconds. Would a midrange consumer CPU not suit? Otherwise it seems to me you're trying to make a Tiny into a shrunk rackmount and that isn't the benefit of using the Tiny format.
 
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Zune

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Apr 27, 2023
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Since power here in the UK is expensive I'm going towards getting the highest possible density of use out of my servers so I can keep most of them off until I need them - to turn up a k8s cluster, say.

I was finding that spinning up VMs causes you to allocate a lot of cores, drives, and RAM, but actual utilisation of each one is quite low so you end up buying more resources than you actually need and the intensity of resource utilisation is poor.

One answer is Docker; but not everything can go efficiently in a Docker container, and they are supposed to be ephemeral rather than long running workloads. It's also quite messy from a security perspective, I ended up running a container registry to find and fix vulnerabilities and then you're effectively regression testing the patching of pre-packaged apps which is not what I want to spend my homelab time doing. Every container uses a different base image and relies on different versions of the dependencies.

So to Linux containers (LXCs). You get most of the benefits of VMs with less overhead and without the need to pre-allocate CPU, RAM, or drive space. My long running workloads are fairly idle most of the time with spikes of activity, that's a good model for an LXC. Sharing the kernel is increasingly efficient vs VMs the more workloads you run.

So with that in mind I've tried various hypervisors and for now I'm on LXD. I can focus on one Linux distro for the majority of my workloads and I get most of the destroy-and-replace benefit of a Docker container but with centralised vulnerability management. If I need another distro for a project, I can spin one up in a couple of seconds - much faster than Ansible or turning up a VM. Moving off Docker brought a considerable disk performance benefit (I run ZFS) as well. I have more than 20 LXCs running on one server and average CPU utilisation is around 15% and RAM is 19%, which is not anything like the ideal level of ~80%, but I have a lot of other projects I want to add so it will improve. I get a granular view of CPU, memory and disk per project or workload.

This is a long way of asking - do you really need that amount of CPU? I ran an i9-9900T for a while in a M920q because I was needing cores to allocate to VMs, but it was overkill almost all the time. The CPU was expensive to buy and expensive to run, and resale value was poor afterwards. CPUs today offer an enormous amount of compute - I'm on non-T i5 11500s now and it takes a hell of a lot to max one out and even then it's usually only for a few seconds. Would a midrange consumer CPU not suit? Otherwise it seems to me you're trying to make a Tiny into a shrunk rackmount and that isn't the benefit of using the Tiny format.
I totally agree with you, Parallax. I've been searching a lot before making this decision because, as you said, CPU prices are very expensive and, because of that, resources used in my future cluster may not be so aggressive in terms of CPU utilization and It's resources.

Speaking of i9, I bought It just because the price (It came out cheaper than I expected) and the opportunity to have a good and powerful mini PC. But yes, a i5 10400T It would be fine and I'd get a lot of resources to work with lower consumption (CPU, RAM, cache, resources) as well. My enthusiast side spoke louder than rational . So, I plan to keep my final setup and play more when the mini PCs are finished.

I'll keep you all updated about my project!
 
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legit

Member
Dec 24, 2021
32
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8
Made a weird discovery with my p350-

it has:

2x 2TB NVME drives
1x 512g mSATA connected via an msata->sata adapter
1x256g m.2 2230 drive connected to the m.2 e-key port reserved for wifi

I wasn't able to get the 2230 drive boot natively from bios, but i was able to install proxmox to it.
I also installed proxmox to the msata drive, and selected it as the primary boot drive.

So, it boots, but then somehow kicks over to the 2230 drive as the active OS drive. Maybe it just uses the mSATA drive as a boot loader and then enumerates the first available bootable partition across drives in alphabetical order (/dev/nvme comes before /dev/sda).
 

owens

New Member
Apr 9, 2023
2
1
3
Semi-short time lurker, short time member here:

I recently got a m90q off eBay with the intention of turning into a ESXi box with PfSense and a few other things.

OP was quite comprehensive to make sure I got the right model and bought the PCI-E slot and riser separately.
However, there are a couple references mentioning that the maximum length of a PCI-E card can be "150mm or less".

I can report I was able to fit a Draytek Vigor 132f card in which is 155mm total, and there is still room left over near the front.

The total length I measured is actually 166mm from back to front:

PXL_20230510_100147922.jpg
 
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Parallax

Active Member
Nov 8, 2020
417
208
43
London, UK
Semi-short time lurker, short time member here:

I recently got a m90q off eBay with the intention of turning into a ESXi box with PfSense and a few other things.

OP was quite comprehensive to make sure I got the right model and bought the PCI-E slot and riser separately.
However, there are a couple references mentioning that the maximum length of a PCI-E card can be "150mm or less".

I can report I was able to fit a Draytek Vigor 132f card in which is 155mm total, and there is still room left over near the front.

The total length I measured is actually 166mm from back to front:

View attachment 28878
I did measure some 18 months ago on an earlier Tiny, so it's possible they've rearranged the front antenna assembly to give a little more room. We've had people with issues with cards smaller than yours and some who had to take off (and replace afterwards) the front fascia to fit cards in, so I did try to be a little conservative (but not 16mm conservative!).

But I'll take your advice and re-measure, if we can expand the range of cards that will fit that's a good thing.