Lenovo Thinkcentre/ThinkStation Tiny (Project TinyMiniMicro) Reference Thread

[Parallax]

The entire purpose of this is to install opnSense and it needs two nics. I do not thing a USB to Ethernet would work.

It would work fine, plenty of people use USB NICs - I've used both 1GbE and 2.5GbE for years with no issues.

Otherwise, the first post gives you the information on what you need to look for to use the WiFi slot for a NIC, again you can add 1GbE or 2.5GbE.

 

[jackfrost]

Thank you. Do not think it is worth the effort. I also have a M715q. I have seen a few methods to add a second nic but the little card they come with is different than the slot on my board. I have what looks lie a mini pci slot and a nvme slot for an ssd. I could swap that for a sata and use that spot. But kinda stumped as to where to start.

Thanks again

I believe the M900 tiny and the M715q motherboard layouts are similar, if you look here someone posted pictures of them using this product and fitting it in the case.

That's a couple of years old now, so there's probably better options etc... but basically what you'd need is a m.2 e key (actually an a+e key most likely since those are more popular) to gigabit adapter... the one linked above is a 2230 sized m.2 adapter with the cable connector pins pointed forward instead of upward for spacing.

I don't personally have an m715q nor an m900 tiny, so while the specs say that the slot there is a 2242 sized slot, I'm not sure how everything would fit together if you got a 2242 sized variant.

 

[986box]

I have a m90q gen 3 on the way. Before I order the riser, are there issues with x16 5C50W00910? Or I should stick with x8 5C50W00909? Plan on sticking a single port CX-3 nic in there.

 

[Parallax]

I have a m90q gen 3 on the way. Before I order the riser, are there issues with x16 5C50W00910? Or I should stick with x8 5C50W00909? Plan on sticking a single port CX-3 nic in there.

The only negative reports I've seen are what are noted in the first post, there may be some issues with very old PCIe 2.0 cards. The CX-3 should be OK being a generation newer.

I'm on to CX-4 dual port cards, hoping to get lower power states. They're not much more than CX-3s.

 

[mariachi1243]

I'm eyeing a Lenovo ThinkCentre M910q i5-6500T 4x2.5GHz 32GB 480GB SSD selling for 178EUR. Sounds like a great deal! I already have a Synology NAS and now need something to run some services I self-host, maybe some personal sites, torrents, etc, experiment with FreeBSD. Nothing crazy.

Is it a good deal, taking into account it's refurbished? My only frame of reference are RPis which makes this an incredible deal.

And another questions: I don't have a screen, only laptops and an 2012 iMac at home. I can setup the ssd directly with an external reader, but in case I ever need to open the BIOS is it possible to use one of the laptop or imac e.g. via some software as a screen? for the rest I'm happy with SSH.

 

[andrea87]

I'm eyeing a Lenovo ThinkCentre M910q i5-6500T 4x2.5GHz 32GB 480GB SSD selling for 178EUR. Sounds like a great deal! I already have a Synology NAS and now need something to run some services I self-host, maybe some personal sites, torrents, etc, experiment with FreeBSD. Nothing crazy.

The 6500t is roughly equal to a newer i3 8100t from the m720q and m920q generations. 32gb of ddr4 is ~60€ new, and probably a fair bit less used. I think you're still paying a bit too much for the barebone itself.

you could easily find a m720q or m920q for less. Around a month ago I bought a m920q with an i3 8100t and 8gb ddr4 for ~120€, with the current prices of ddr4 sodimms I would rather go towards another machine and add ram if needed in the future. Both my m720q (running opnsense and a few other containers in proxmox) and m920q (torrent, 2tb quick storage, home assistant backup and a couple other vms) do have 16gb ram and it's been quite plenty so far.

 

[986box]

The only negative reports I've seen are what are noted in the first post, there may be some issues with very old PCIe 2.0 cards. The CX-3 should be OK being a generation newer.

I'm on to CX-4 dual port cards, hoping to get lower power states. They're not much more than CX-3s.

Ordered x16 riser. Do you know what are the part numbers for WIFI 6 and bluetooth components? Lenovo website do not list them at all when entering the PC serial no.

 

[Parallax]

Ordered x16 riser. Do you know what are the part numbers for WIFI 6 and bluetooth components? Lenovo website do not list them at all when entering the PC serial no.

I don't, but the service manual for the system is usually the best source of part numbers if you don't want to go through the whole parts site.

 

[Hahaburger]

Help needed! I bought a used m720q on ebay a few days ago which turned on but won’t boot into BIOS and beep 4 times (3 long and 1 short). I have tried 1) booting with/without SSD; 2) booting with one and two stick(a) of ram (both are perfectly fine as they work on other systems); 3) clearing CMOS and 4) re-seating the battery.

It has been almost a year since this was asked but I want to share and ask:

I had the same problem with m920q, not booting with 3 long and 1 short beeps.
Tried changing the cpu, ram and bios battery, didn't work.

Then I suspected Bios corruption and found some *fixed* bios files over the net.
After I have flashed two files(one for the small and one for the big flash), my m920q came back to life.
So, it was really a Bios corruption.

Now my question: I would like to restore the original device ID and Windows key back.
Can I fix the original Bios files I have myself and how can I do it?
I am guessing simply hex editing the patched bioses will not work.

 

[awc]

I just got my m90q Gen1 i9-10900 and PNY T1000 8 GB GPU (normal fan model - not Lenovo custom heat pipe version). Additional required part was 5C50W00877 PCIe 3.0 x16 riser and 5M10U50348 bezel to give some support at the rear of the card. Would be doable with only the riser.

I played a bit of CS:GO (Auto:High settings @ 1440p) with FPS ranging roughly between 60 and 120.

Thermals rise quite fast to the thermal limits of both CPU and GPU. Logically full power CPU didn't come near to it's power limit while the 50 W GPU throttled from either power or thermals.

Despite thermal throttling the gaming experience was nice however I will try to figure out could there be some way to make the components more efficient. As far as I know there is no way to undervolt Intel 10th gen CPUs anymore but perhaps there is something that can be done to the T1000. I'm not doing any professional work on the machine so some rare instability is acceptable.

Starting gaming:
View attachment 24734

While gaming:
View attachment 24735

just found this forum. This is exactly what I was looking for, thank you. I tried a m720Q with a rx 6500 and i7 8700 (non T) and had power issues when gaming, the PC would black screen and fully power off. I was using a 135w brick. I thought it was due to using a 65w CPU with a GPU. I have a p340 now and its great to hear you don't have any power issues gaming with a 65w CPU + GPU.

 

[Spucke]

Ich habe ein P350 Tiny(64Gb RAM Kingston cl20 Intel 11900t und einer Nvidia T1000 8GB mit Lenovo Headpipe) als Netzteil verwende ich das 170W habe aber noch das 230W. Ich habe bis jetzt keine Freese oder Bluescreens. Spiele ebenfalls CS 2 aber auch Shadows of the Tomb Raider lief in Full HD ohne Probleme!

 

[awc]

Hello All! Hope everyone is having a good day, wherever you live! Just won an eBay auction for a Lenovo Thinkcentre M920x with Core i5-8500, 8GB RAM, NVMe 256GB, Win11 Pro License & 135W power brick for $235. Originally was just planning on using it to run my DIY home surveillance camera system using Blue Iris Software, but the more research I did, these 1L units can pack quite a bit. I was thinking of finding good deals locally for a Core i9-9900T and Quadro T1000 which I believe would be the maximum upgrade with still being to have a fully encased 1L system. I know the RTX A2000 is out there with even a single-slot mod, but I'm just a light gamer, mainly doing F1 & MotoGP franchises.

One thing I've tried to confirm but still don't believe is why Lenovo support says that you can only pair a discrete GPU (ie. T1000) with a T-Series CPU (ie. i9-9900T). So my current i5-8500 won't work with the T1000, or so they say. Has anyone tried this out to see if it works OR am I just late on the scene & it's a known fact?

Thanks in advance!

Is there a definitive answer on GPUs with 35w vs 65w CPUs? Did you ever try your GPU with the 8500?

Also, I have This dell RX 6500 right now, and I'm not sure how it compares to a t1000 in games. It seemed to match the t1000 in the benchmarks I ran. Could you run firestrike or a similar benchmark and let me know what you get?

 

[awc]

Ich habe ein P350 Tiny(64Gb RAM Kingston cl20 Intel 11900t und einer Nvidia T1000 8GB mit Lenovo Headpipe) als Netzteil verwende ich das 170W habe aber noch das 230W. Ich habe bis jetzt keine Freese oder Bluescreens. Spiele ebenfalls CS 2 aber auch Shadows of the Tomb Raider lief in Full HD ohne Probleme!

The issue I had was very strange. I could run synthetic benchmarks and torture test my CPU/GPU at the same time without a crash, but when I started playing Stray I had the black screen within a few seconds

 

[Constantin_UK]

Hello,
I hope everyone is doing well.
I am new to the home lab world but have always been passionate about PCs, especially hardware and building them. Recently, I started watching home lab videos on YouTube, and I would like to start by building a pfSense machine based on M920q. My plan is to run pfSense on top of Proxmox as I would like to add other services to that machine in the future.
I have managed to source an I5-9500 M920q and a Dell INTEL I350-T4 Low Profile PCI-E 4-port nic of eBay, but I am struggling to find the PCI riser and the baffle.
With the PCI riser, I am at a loss to find the right x16 riser as there are so many options. I am reluctant to pull the trigger as I found horror stories of PCI risers bricking the tiny PC.
Could someone please guide/point me to a verified source in the UK where I can buy the PCI riser and baffle?
I really appreciate any help you can provide.

Constantin

 

[jackfrost]

The issue I had was very strange. I could run synthetic benchmarks and torture test my CPU/GPU at the same time without a crash, but when I started playing Stray I had the black screen within a few seconds

It's the power available to the pcie slot... these are apparently only rated to 50w so if you undervolt you should be fine.

In my experience, 71w seems to work fine (using Tesla P4s at stock doesn't lead to a crash), but trying to overclock them without undervolting will lead to crashes under load.

I know that to run an RTX A2000 in one of these, n3rdware says:

You'll have to undervolt your card because the PCIe connector officially only supports 50 watts of power. Limiting the frequency to 1500Mhz and the voltage to 0.700mV seems to do the trick. Read more about undervolting here. You may also need to enter the BIOS to put the slot in Gen3 mode en disable ASPM on recent models.

 

[Parallax]

Hello,
I hope everyone is doing well.
I am new to the home lab world but have always been passionate about PCs, especially hardware and building them. Recently, I started watching home lab videos on YouTube, and I would like to start by building a pfSense machine based on M920q. My plan is to run pfSense on top of Proxmox as I would like to add other services to that machine in the future.
I have managed to source an I5-9500 M920q and a Dell INTEL I350-T4 Low Profile PCI-E 4-port nic of eBay, but I am struggling to find the PCI riser and the baffle.
With the PCI riser, I am at a loss to find the right x16 riser as there are so many options. I am reluctant to pull the trigger as I found horror stories of PCI risers bricking the tiny PC.
Could someone please guide/point me to a verified source in the UK where I can buy the PCI riser and baffle?
I really appreciate any help you can provide.

There aren't so many riser options - the first post tells you for the M920q the x16 one is part number 01AJ940, so you can just search on that.

The most common source will be eBay, otherwise on AliExpress you'll often be able to get the appropriate baffle as part of the bundle. Note the right baffle has just one long opening rather than the four separate ones you might be expecting.

Four years ago I did what you're about to do but with the (very similar) M720q, you can read about that and see photos here : Log - Lenovo M720Q Tiny router/firewall build with aftermarket 4 port NIC

 

[awc]

Can someone explain what you all do with these 100gb ethernet/network cards? I'm interested in these Thinkstations for a tiny gaming PC, and I don't have any experience with network/server stuff, so I don't know why they are interesting to the home server crowd. What are you doing at home that requires speeds above 1gb/s? I don't think my ISP offers anything above that. Sorry about the ignorance, I just don't understand why so many people use these with a network card when there is already a ethernet port.

On another note, I was thinking about setting up a Plex server on my M720q, mostly to dip my toes into that sort of project. I did the second m.2 mod and was thinking about adding two more NVME drives through the PCIE slot, or do I need a graphics card for a Plex server?

 

[BIM]

got a m90q gen3 i5 12500 last week for a small coin - new. running macOS and win11 with 230w power brick on differentsda.

The issue am facing is very strange as am getting under no circumstances more than 3000 multiscore in geekbench5.
Optimized Bios defaults are loaded. Bios latest.

Everything looks set up correctly, but Geekbench says otherwise. The box is slower than my m920x with i7 8700.. not funny

I searched for an older bios on the Chinese Lenovo pages without luck - there is only one official. Seems am lost - not in Japan.

Maybe someone has an old biosfile from 2023 and/or any good hint?


Any help is much appreciated!

 

[Parallax]

Can someone explain what you all do with these 100gb ethernet/network cards? I'm interested in these Thinkstations for a tiny gaming PC, and I don't have any experience with network/server stuff, so I don't know why they are interesting to the home server crowd. What are you doing at home that requires speeds above 1gb/s? I don't think my ISP offers anything above that. Sorry about the ignorance, I just don't understand why so many people use these with a network card when there is already a ethernet port.

Not many doing 100GbE that I've seen. 10GbE I use because I want the performance for moving VMs, performing backups, analytics on databases or logs, that kind of thing.

In Facebook they calculated a few years ago each incoming byte of traffic from the Internet generated on average 1,000 bytes of traffic inside their datacentres, so while we're not generally at that level of traffic multiplication in the homelab it's true that east-west traffic (ie between servers) is orders of magnitude greater than north-south (ie between the internet and the servers or endpoints). Hence the speed of your internet connection is not very relevant to the speed of your LAN, I use the 1GbE port for management traffic only.

Edit to say : if you're not homelabbing with Tinys, then I agree the onboard ethernet is probably enough for you.

On another note, I was thinking about setting up a Plex server on my M720q, mostly to dip my toes into that sort of project. I did the second m.2 mod and was thinking about adding two more NVME drives through the PCIE slot, or do I need a graphics card for a Plex server?

Not if the CPU you're using has built in graphics, which most do.

 

[Spucke]

The issue I had was very strange. I could run synthetic benchmarks and torture test my CPU/GPU at the same time without a crash, but when I started playing Stray I had the black screen within a few seconds

Hallo, haben Sie auch mal den Grafiktreiber aktualisiert?