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Lenovo Thinkcentre/ThinkStation Tiny (Project TinyMiniMicro) Reference Thread

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rafale77

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Sep 28, 2020
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@Helzy, The card is actually about 2mm too long.. Squeezing it a little actually fits but the cover at the end won't fit quite right because the antenna bracket would be bent at an angle where at the furthest end, it would stick out by 4mm. That's why I took it out. 2cm would definitely be a non starter. There is a lot of inconsistencies in how different manufacturers specify the dimensions of a GPU. I found out that some include the tab of the PCI Bracket, some don't. Some take into account the PCIE connectors and power connectors, some others don't etc... So it is sometimes better to measure on the picture using aspect ratios to something of fixed length.
 
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Helzy

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Thought the same thing looking at your original photo. Had me scratching my head based upon the few PCIe cards I've seen in the Tiny's (Not many by the by) and the advertised length of the 4100 of 168mm. Besides, it's a top down shot and I've only ever done oblique calculations and definitely didn't cross my mind, but that was why I asked for pics lol.

Would be nice to have a repository of known good working PCIe cards, fitment and 3D printed bracket availability in a spreadsheet. Also nice to know what the cards draw and what the thermals look like. This thread is awesome with a lot of great info and links to other threads with successes i.e., SFP adapters etc., however, I suspect the Tiny ecosystem is bigger than we think.
 
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Parallax

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Would be nice to have a repository of known good working PCIe cards, fitment and 3D printed bracket availability in a spreadsheet. Also nice to know what the cards draw and what the thermals look like. This thread is awesome with a lot of great info and links to other threads with successes i.e., SFP adapters etc., however, I suspect the Tiny ecosystem is bigger than we think.
Yeah it would be great to have a list of cards that fit. I measured the space in the machine to set what I put in the original post as a safe maximum length (ie 150mm) but it looks like you can actually fit larger ones if you're prepared to make your Tiny suffer a bit.

I'm already behind on updates for this post though so I can't really volunteer to maintain this additional information! I have tried to keep vague track of suitable 10GbE cards though in the relevant section.
 

Parallax

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I saw this today :


Basically, as per the title; so with ESXi 7.0 3f and later the community network driver Fling should no longer be needed on the Mx0q series, P340 and P350.
 
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Helzy

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Quoting myself which is weird but...

Curious, I bought a pair of WD NVME drives on sale this weekend and swapped the pair in to a new P350 Tiny. I see the drives in the system summary, however, it appears we've only got AHCI and Intel RST w/Optane. No RAID drop down...? I thought this was a base feature of the Thinkstation P series that on the Tiny's we could at least do RAID 0/1 with the nvme drives. Hidden sub-menu or switch to text perhaps, let me play...
The Intel RST RAID creation tool is still available in the P350 Tiny BIOS. Only when the m.2 slots are populated with Intel branded NVMe drives. For most use cases folks probably don't use the BIOS RAID utility, it's always been my practice to populate both slots on the Thinkstation Tiny's and create a RAID 1 array to install the OS onto. Just over the years have had too many failures with drives and having the mirror option on an OS drive has never failed me so far. Intel deprecated the ability to use drives other than Intel ones, I bought a pair of Intel 670P drives to confirm. Jerks...
 
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Helzy

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Tiny Cards with heat pipe cooling include P600 and P1000 from nvidia and AMD rx 460. Anyone know if the form factor with the heat pipe is the same? They look like it, however, not certain. Curious as I wouldn't mind swapping the P600 in one of my P320 Tiny's with the RX 460. If anyone knows much appreciated!
 

rafale77

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Tiny Cards with heat pipe cooling include P600 and P1000 from nvidia and AMD rx 460. Anyone know if the form factor with the heat pipe is the same? They look like it, however, not certain. Curious as I wouldn't mind swapping the P600 in one of my P320 Tiny's with the RX 460. If anyone knows much appreciated!
Yes they often are. The tricky part is on the heatsink... You need a heatsink which leaves out room for the heat pipe and tiny radiator.
There are however many versions of the RX460 with different form factors. If you post which one you are looking at, I can probably tell you if it will fit.
 

rafale77

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Sizewise, it won't be a problem, the issue is going to be whether or not you have the right CPU HSF to accomodate the heatpipe attached heatsink... unless you intended to change the cooling solution? The P320 has no venting grill from the top so I suppose you want to reuse the heatpipe. Do you know what CPU HSF you have? I suppose you currently have a heatpipe going into from the P600? The AMD and nVidia cooler screw patterns are different so I am pretty sure you won't be able to drop in the nvidia cooler on the RX460.
 

Helzy

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The p600 has the same heat pipe setup as the Rx 460, I wasn't certain if all the heat pipe dgpu's from the tiny units had the same form factor. The one I am looking at includes the tiny bracket too. Probably 150 cad if I can get it so not like I'm going to break the bank.
 

rafale77

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Yeah it will fit, then. Same generation, Same HSF design. Fairly certain, you won't have any problem. Just curious, why do you want to switch GPU? The performance gain seems to be marginal.
 

Helzy

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Because I'm a goofy Tiny addict...lol annnd, this is a p320 with an i7-7700t, I just like squeezing extra bits or performance and it's a Frankenstein anyway, I picked up an HP G3 mini for $100 with this cpu to upgrade the i5 it came with. Yes I'm a goofy Tiny addict. Don't judge... Or do lol
 
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rafale77

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lol, If I were you, I would go bold and get an nVidia T1000 and try to swap the heatpipe HSF on it... Now we are talking performance improvement. ;)
 

GenDufour

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Jul 9, 2022
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On the topic of the chronically-out-of-stock 16x riser (5C50W00877):

By the looks of it (to me) it's basically a PCB that does a 90° bend and adapts the proprietary slot to a 16x PCIe slot.
Given money and time, could one create their own? Or would this cause the magic smoke to appear?
 
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Helzy

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Couldn't find that one, cheapest on there.this morning is $385 + 25 shipping in CAD