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Lenovo Thinkcentre/ThinkStation Tiny (Project TinyMiniMicro) Reference Thread

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unmesh

Active Member
Apr 17, 2017
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Pretty much all of the HP "tiny's" G6 and newer have 2x m.2 slots. Some of the G4 models did too. On all of them using the 2nd m.2 slot requires that you do not install a 2.5" SATA.
As does my HP MP9 G4 which is essentially a Prodesk 600 G4 Mini
 

legit

Member
Dec 24, 2021
33
18
8
Tried on the P350 running proxmox 8.04 - no dice

Just wanted @Parallax to add something I've just recently discovered.
I've so far only tested it on P320 Tiny but I expect it to work on a broad lineup of Lenovo TMM, if you want sensors and probably even pwm fancontrol in Linux:
modprobe nct6683 force=on
 

legit

Member
Dec 24, 2021
33
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Anyone try using a Trendnet 10g NIC? TEG-10GECSFP or TEG-10GECTX? They seem to use less power and more importantly generate less heat.
 

flame7487

New Member
Jul 10, 2022
16
0
1
Has anyone tried painting the entire cover of the Tiny with graphene paint (1500 W/Km) ?
The theory is that nano graphene paint gives 15% more heat dissipation. Plus IMO no more than 20~30% placebo effect.
My purchase is Brand: Carbonfeng | Model: TF-H-001 | 100ml bottle will last for many paints.
"Nano graphene conductive coating, carbon nanotube, blackbody heat dissipation coating, black graphene antistatic coating".
"Color selection: Pure graphene water-based heat dissipation 100ml 50-260 degrees"

https://item.taobao.com/item.htm?id=717704857921&mt= price 100ml ~$53.30 + freight
(after purchase, Ch. export restrictions were mentioned)
For painting with a normal brush (no more than 5ml per cover), after degreasing the surface with alcohol.
Water-based solution of 100% graphene. Working temperature 50~260°C ;
Dries very quickly and bonds well ; Antistatic ; Black : Semi-matt ; Electrical conductivity .
IMVHO Model: TF-H-001
- Not suitable as an adhesive - holds even large hangings poorly .
- Not suitable as a filler - cracks in fillings when dry .
- Not flexible .
- Not known sensitivity to vibration and bending .
- Unknown flammability .
- Non-toxic ?
- Unknown for use as thermal paste for CPU .
- Unknown ageing process .
PS I have just upgraded the cooler in an old (2010y) Lenovo ThP x201s laptop with this TF-H-001
Positive results (20°C difference at rest)
but not yet slowing down (at work, win10 upg, however, it slowly reaches 90°C)
 

Sealside

Active Member
May 10, 2019
134
46
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Stockholm/Sweden
Has anyone tested to add one serial port (com1) while using a pcix card with riser on m920q? I guess you could put the actual connector through the back if the cable is long enough?

Would be neat to add a gps with serial interface without having to give up the additional nic.
 

bleomycin

Member
Nov 22, 2014
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I'm considering one of these, possibly an m90q Gen 3. Searching this thread I haven't seen anyone mention Wake on Lan support. One of the big appeals of these to me is vpro combined with WoL for OOB management for a remote installation. What gives me some concern is I bought a 12th gen intel nuc with vpro brand new recently specifically for these features.

The way intel implements WoL on this generation of NUC requires Windows to be installed, and for the machine to be shutdown or put to sleep from windows. If you're running linux it does not work at all, the nic gets completely powered off. It's absolute insanity that i've never seen before and intel support has no interest in addressing this limitation.

Just wanted to make sure these machines don't suffer from a similar issue?
 

thecodercat

New Member
Aug 29, 2023
1
6
3
hi folks,

I got this in the mail today and thought i would share some info with you. not sure if any one has talked about this, i'm only half way though the thread, joined the bandwagon very recently.

in japan we can find some tiny boxes with nec branded but obviously were manufactured by lenovo. they are basically lenovo thinkcentre/thinkstation tiny series in white/navy color way. the documents/datasheets for them are next to nonexistent. i tried to look for them but with my basic japanese level, the results were equally basic (a table with number of usb ports, ram, storage,… no infomation about mainboard chipset, no info about possible pci-e slot inside, no official inside diagrams or pictures, not even supported cpus for each model,... you know, the stuffs that people in this thread are actually interested in). newer generation is ridiculously expensive i didnt even bother to look further.

i spent sometimes look for older generation and found some more info through secondhand market (read: eyeballing the description photos to look for clues).

there are two models i know for sure that have pcie slot: mc-3 and mc-5. come with 8th (mc-3) and 9th (mc-5) gen of 35w intel cpus. the rest are either too old, weak, uninteresting (and actually inexpensive, like half the price of a raspberry pi these days) or ridiculously priced (both new and secondhand).

i was ogling them for a while and finally found a “good deal” for one so i jumped on it. the model i received today is nec mate mc-5. came with everything except storage, i was hoping it would be m920q equivalent but the the chipset is B360, so it’s m720q equivalent. a bummer but for the price i paid for it, it’s hard to actually complain.

after received the box, i cloned the os (windows 11) from p330 tiny (to save some setup time) to another drive and boot the mc-5 up, it went ahead and updated the bios from p330 (lol!), my heart skipped a beat there but it's gone smoothly and booted into windows (whew!)

here's the most detailed specs sheet i found for this particular model:

my p330 tiny has nvidia p620 laying around so decided to give it a shot. i took the ****er apart and slapped the gpu (the whole combo of riser and gpu from p330) into the mc-5, it booted right up, and the gpu was recognized no problem. so there you go, lenovo tiny 5 no doubt.

i'll attach some photos i took, nec mc-5 and lenovo thinkstation p330 tiny for anyone who's interested. feast your eyeballs ;)

i'm planning to grab a mc-3 model at some point to see what's inside, you know, for science.

update 1 (23/09/19):
found out there's another model with pcie slot in nec mate mc line up: the mc-4
apparently people can equip it with a x2 sfp network card right out of the gate (the card showed in the photo is fujitsu branded tho [?])
added some more photos for this particular mc-4 (photos from the marketplace, not mine)


some more interesting articles about nec mc series (all japanese):
mc-3 (intel 8th gen):
mc-c (intel 12th gen):
a mad man put an i7 6700k in a mc-u (aluminum heatsink and it didnt explode, lol)
 

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Parallax

Active Member
Nov 8, 2020
448
225
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London, UK
I'm considering one of these, possibly an m90q Gen 3. Searching this thread I haven't seen anyone mention Wake on Lan support. One of the big appeals of these to me is vpro combined with WoL for OOB management for a remote installation. What gives me some concern is I bought a 12th gen intel nuc with vpro brand new recently specifically for these features.

The way intel implements WoL on this generation of NUC requires Windows to be installed, and for the machine to be shutdown or put to sleep from windows. If you're running linux it does not work at all, the nic gets completely powered off. It's absolute insanity that i've never seen before and intel support has no interest in addressing this limitation.

Just wanted to make sure these machines don't suffer from a similar issue?
I WoLed over time all my Tinys so I know it works on M720q, M920q, M75q Gen 1 and 2, M70q and P350 (= M90q Gen 2) at least, so I think you should be ok with pretty much any model.
 
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Parallax

Active Member
Nov 8, 2020
448
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London, UK
I replaced my Supermicro AOC-STGN-I2S v2.0 cards with Mellanox Connect-X3 CX-312Bs, so I took the chance to measure the space for PCIe cards in my P350 Tinys. It's 16.7cm from front chassis plate to rear chassis plate.

I'll update the original post. Sorry for being so slow on this update, life's been busy lately!

PS anyone want to buy the Supermicro cards? I have four with 3D printed baffles suitable for the new style Tiny chassis (M90q and later). PM me!
 

Phenic

Member
Mar 17, 2015
56
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I replaced my Supermicro AOC-STGN-I2S v2.0 cards with Mellanox Connect-X3 CX-312Bs, so I took the chance to measure the space for PCIe cards in my P350 Tinys. It's 16.7cm from front chassis plate to rear chassis plate.

I'll update the original post. Sorry for being so slow on this update, life's been busy lately!

PS anyone want to buy the Supermicro cards? I have four with 3D printed baffles suitable for the new style Tiny chassis (M90q and later). PM me!
Just curious, why the change from the Supermicro to the Mellanox?
 

Helzy

Active Member
Oct 19, 2017
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What seems to be the RAID controller of choice for Lenovo Tiny units? Having weird issues with a Marvell 9125 4 port sata controller (not raid) but i'm thinking of dumping that card and going with a pci-e unit thinking something like an LSI 9211-8i 6Gbps Internal SAS SATA 8 Ports HBA PCI-E SAS RAID Controller Card although I only need 4 ports.