Been reading through this thread and there is a lot to take in! I will have a P330 tiny shortly and am looking to somehow add 2.5Gb Nic to it. Anyone have the part numbers or links to parts please?
Time to join the thread. After my past woes with chinese mini PCs, and with a clean possibility of getting a proper FTTH connection in the future, I've decided to build myself a dedicated Proxmox/OPNsense box with one of those.
Found off ebay a very basic M720q with a g5400t, then added some ram, a pcie riser and a dual 2.5g nic based on the i226-v b4 chip.
Plenty of those on Ebay and Aliexpress, price is usually in the 40-45$ range. They look nice, have actual i226-v chips on them, the only downside is that they run off a pcie bridge - asm1182e - which limits the whole card to a single lane of pcie gen2. With the two nics connected with an ethernet cable, and each one assigned to a different network bridge in proxmox, running a bidirectional iperf between two containers I get max 1.43gbit/s throughput.
Here are some iperf results for anyone interested:
The performance results (with virtIO, through two debian LXC containers) are not bad, and shouldn't provide too big restrictions on any 2.5/1gb GPON fiber. Currently I do have OPNsense running with VirtIO networking for ease of backup / migration, in the future I might just pcie passthrough the whole card to it as the mini pc will be essentially dedicated to internet connection, routing and such with no other major vms running.
Power and Thermals.
The box, at idle with just the hypervisor running (governor conservative and acpi-cpufreq driver) and the main nic, draws off the plug about 3.5-4W. With the card installed, the power draw raises significantly to about 8-9W at idle with the two nics up at 2.5gb speed. With no additional active airflow and the case closed the card's heatsink reach easily 60-65°C. As both the pcie bridge and the two nics are connected to it with 4mm thermal pads, I expect their temperature to have been at least 10-15°C above. It's a bit too hot for me to run them 24/7.
As the card is fairly small, there is enough space for a second fan. Instead of adding any, I've decided to cut away a small piece of the main fan's air guide to allow some airflow out to the side. Temporarily, I've added a couple pieces of masking tape to divert the air torwards the NIC. Results so far have been very good, the heatsink temp doesn't go over 40-45°C. I've set the fan control in the bios to something akin to "better cooling" instead of "better acoustic performance". The mini PC lives inside a closed 9U network rack with a single fan pushing air out of the top and ~27°C inside air temp.
I'm not sure if it would fit over your card but I'm currently running a Mellanox MCX314A-BCCT 40Gb with this shroud over it. It dropped my card's temps from about 81C to down to about 53C. I'm not sure if it would be better than your current setup but I think it's something worth looking into.
Newbie to this forum. Been watching this thread ever since I got my hands on a m720q to build a OPNSense box. Looking for a 4-port 2.5 gbe intel nic for the m720q. So far i've found the Qnap 4 port 2.5 nic. But looking for other options as well. Came across a bunch of these IOCrest 4 port nics that supposedly have i225 chips.
Looks like they are specifically being advertised to work in the lenovo m-series minis. I haven't been able to find much info or reviews on these nics anywhere else. Anyone here have any specific experience with these nics in their routers?
I had this for a few months. No issues whatsoever with mine. Fan is a little noisy, mostly the higher pitch of it. Can use a generic 2 pin fan cable with a resistor in the middle to lower the fan speed by like 30%. Also found on ali.
I had this for a few months. No issues whatsoever with mine. Fan is a little noisy, mostly the higher pitch of it. Can use a generic 2 pin fan cable with a resistor in the middle to lower the fan speed by like 30%. Also found on ali.
Thanks. I ordered it the other day. Glad to hear it worked for you in the m720q. So hopefully I'll have same experience. Yeah, I might try your solution to lower the fan noise.
I had this for a few months. No issues whatsoever with mine. Fan is a little noisy, mostly the higher pitch of it. Can use a generic 2 pin fan cable with a resistor in the middle to lower the fan speed by like 30%. Also found on ali.
Been reading through this thread and there is a lot to take in! I will have a P330 tiny shortly and am looking to somehow add 2.5Gb Nic to it. Anyone have the part numbers or links to parts please?
yeah it ran a bit warm but i dont think it was hot hot. I had it like that for months and it was fine. I never tried maxing out all the links at the same time though. plus all those intel 225 cards run like that
Print it in a strong material (I used petg and it's absolutely fine), clip off the right part of the model once printed, stick it through the pins and weld in place. It should print in less than 20 mins and use ~3g of filament.
Bought a used m75q-1 and the exhaust smells sweet, more so when it's under load/high fan rpm. Anyone else have similar experiences? Have a feeling it's a sign the fan bearing or motor is failing.
Additionally, does anyone know if the fans from an m720q are compatible? It's lower amperage. (0.8 vs stock 1.60)
Hey guys, just bought a m90q gen 1 on ebay but I noticed it doesnt have a screw on the back to hold the case together. Does anyone know if theres a thumbscrew I can buy somewhere?
Also need a screw to hold down the coral where the wifi card is supposed to be. Ive tried many different screws for this slot but non of them fit.
Hey guys, just bought a m90q gen 1 on ebay but I noticed it doesnt have a screw on the back to hold the case together. Does anyone know if theres a thumbscrew I can buy somewhere?
Also need a screw to hold down the coral where the wifi card is supposed to be. Ive tried many different screws for this slot but non of them fit.
I lost my screw on a m720q. But I was able to use a spare thumbscrew from a PC case. Amazon sells those thumbscrews in packs. I've also seem them at Microcenter.
I want more drives in my Lenovo tiny!! Few M2 ssd to lenovo tiny questions .....
From the first post ...
" You can install most x1/x2/x4/x8/x16 PCIe cards as long as they are half height and shorter than 150mm (M720q and M920q) or 167mm (M90q and later)"
I know there is a potential mod that involves soldering for the M920, I'm not interested in doing that (for this post at least )
1) Has anyone found a pcie to M2x2 card that does bifurcation on the card, that will work in a M920, that is, small enough length?
4) Has anyone actually tested the newest M90q gen 3 riser card, will that intel 1200 series motherboard do bifurcation so we can use a generic card, or, still need a card that does bifurcation?
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This one I'm sure I can get cheaper elsewhere since it could be any old pad, just need to know the dimensions/thickness
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