Tiny/Mini/Micro PC experiences

[paf]

...
And possibly my biggest sacrifice was my 30 year old turntable and associated audio gear, I love good music heard over good gear
Had I grabbed more stuff I would probably not be alive writing about missing it now
...

First, many thanks (from the other side of the world, where I live) for all the info on small machine that you have provided for all of us. As can be seen from your message, things are not important, emotions are important. You like good music because of the emotions.

If you are ok, all your family (including Rex) is ok, and no people were harmed, everything is ok.

I live in Portugal, and one of the "traditional songs" is "Fado", usually associated with sadness, and love misfortune.

Many years ago a journalist asked a famous "Fado" singer (Amália Rodrigues):

-What is the advice that you give to someone with a love misfortune?
-Get another.
-Another love or another misfortune?
-Whatever.. It's the same thing.

 

[mobilenvidia]

First, many thanks (from the other side of the world, where I live) for all the info on small machine that you have provided for all of us. As can be seen from your message, things are not important, emotions are important. You like good music because of the emotions.

If you are ok, all your family (including Rex) is ok, and no people were harmed, everything is ok.

I live in Portugal, and one of the "traditional songs" is "Fado", usually associated with sadness, and love misfortune.

Many years ago a journalist asked a famous "Fado" singer (Amália Rodrigues):

-What is the advice that you give to someone with a love misfortune?
-Get another.
-Another love or another misfortune?
-Whatever.. It's the same thing.

Very good advice given, either way the most important thing is to live, how you live shouldn't matter as long as you are happy

Update, the M900's on auction site went for too much I was prepared to pay.
I'll keep searching
Got a more permanent place to move into in about 10 days where I'll be able get back into this

I may venture into Thin Clients at some point in the future, but the 1lt desktops are where I'll concentrate on for now.

 

[mobilenvidia]

Alrighty here is the M700 once I found it below the TV, Ampilifer, and Satellite receiver and plaster board

And trying to re-enact the picture above but taken today



Got my eye on 2x more M900's and a M700 on auction here in NZ
Hopefully I can grab one of them for good price
The EPROM programmer should be well on its way

 

[Patrick]

First off, @mobilenvidia it is great to see you active with these. How did I miss this fire though!?!? Glad to hear you are relatively OK.

On the plus side, TinyMiniMicro labs are great for mobile labs or when you have limited space compared to having rack mounted nodes.

Still very bummed about the fire. I was in Auckland for ~2 days in January. Next trip, I want to make it to the south island.

 

[mobilenvidia]

First off, @mobilenvidia it is great to see you active with these. How did I miss this fire though!?!? Glad to hear you are relatively OK.

On the plus side, TinyMiniMicro labs are great for mobile labs or when you have limited space compared to having rack mounted nodes.

Still very bummed about the fire. I was in Auckland for ~2 days in January. Next trip, I want to make it to the south island.

Just the stuff that is gone, can replace that, we came awfully close to not being here at all, some 'Cat's' lives were lost that night
You're welcome to stay once were setup again, got plenty of room (not so in our current rental house)
I'll prowl the auctions sites for more bargains to setup my empire of bits

 

[Patrick]

Shout out for @mobilenvidia in the video today

 

[XeonLab]

@mobilenvidia , you seem quite knowledgeable with these small, brilliant boxes. Is there any which you can cram in 3 or 4 drives, M.2 or 2.5"? Seems that there are several which can take two drives, but I'd like to go all in.

Other hardware specs don't matter, x64 CPU and non-soldered RAM will do.

 

[anthr76]

Any of these off hand you think you can shove a 10gb sfp+ nic in?

 

[BlueFox]

I've found SFP adapters specifically for the Dell models, but no SFP+. I cannot imagine demand for 10GbE is high in this sort of form factor.

NM2-GXE-2230-xx-201 Series

M.2 Gigabit Ethernet Fiber Network Interface Card (NIC) provides a fiber optic interface for the Dell OptiPlex™ 7060, 5060, and 3060 Micro PCs

www.transition.com

 

[mobilenvidia]

Shout out for @mobilenvidia in the video today

Cheers Patrick just shot home for lunch, that was quite some introduction.
I'll need to do that post some justice now

@mobilenvidia , you seem quite knowledgeable with these small, brilliant boxes. Is there any which you can cram in 3 or 4 drives, M.2 or 2.5"? Seems that there are several which can take two drives, but I'd like to go all in.

Other hardware specs don't matter, x64 CPU and non-soldered RAM will do.

I seem, thats good its all about appearances
In these models you can get 1x 2.5" SATA drive + 1x M.2 SATA/NVMe drive, I've just plugged in a 4TB USB drive for the Mrs Movies as my NAS is Ash
The Lenovo P330/340 has 2x NVMe slots +SATA

Any of these off hand you think you can shove a 10gb sfp+ nic in?

The P320/330/340 and also I think the M910x/920x come with a PCIe x16 slot (8x electrical)
Do your homework on this, I can mostly comment from Motherboards I've seen
Its a low profile slot with a proprietary backplate, you can pretty well put in what you like as long as you can butcher the backplate to fit
But a quad 1Gbe NIC not impossible, Lenovo do sell them for these
Keep in mind the P3x0 series normally comes with a Quadro card, so a M920x might be a cheaper bet.
10Gb Ethernet or SFP+ might be pushing it, a custom or modified GPU heatpipe might cool it

Am planning to do some more work on this at some point, wouldn't mind getting my hands on one to play with

On the M900 front spent last night updating the ME Firmware from a different Lenovo machine but it updates the M900
The ME FW is locked in the BIOS but the Lenovo updater unlocks it, now have the very latest FW on the M900
So now rebuilding and trying out some different Tiny modded BIOS's but failing with too many issue (they do work), looking to stick with M910q BIOS to mod the M900 into Coffee Lake territory as least amount of issues

 

[zer0sum]

I'm curious on peoples experiences with these boxes as tiny bare metal hypervisors.

I've been looking for a tiny box to get 32-64G ram and run ESXi / Proxmox / etc and then just add 1 or 2 USB network adapters.
The plan is to use it as my perimeter hypervisor running a range of firewalls, sandboxes, sensors, etc.
I don't need much storage and a single nvme drive is fine

The 10th gen Intel NUC's look pretty good and are about $400 or so, and you need to add memory and an nvme drive.

Would any of these little boxes work out to be cheaper and/or better?

 

[Marsh]

I'm curious on peoples experiences with these boxes as tiny bare metal hypervisors.

It works wonder, you already know that the only down side is that only single network port.
It is limited by physical storage space, CPU usually is the lower TDP "T" modle.

Before the pandemic, you could buy a complete HP mini with CPU and memory cheaper than the price of the CPU alone.

Few months ago, usually, HP G2 mini with I5 and 4 or 8 gb ram cost between $80-$120.
My lowest price HP 800 g2 mini with I5-6500T , 4gb ram was $40 from Ebay.

Now, there is no more sub $100 HP mini due to its popularity.

 

[moistbandit]

Earlier they had a sale on the M93P with an i5-4570T, 8GB RAM and a 500GB HDD for around $140 here in Sweden.
I bought one for my parents and completed it with a 120GB SSD and they love it.

Now they are on a "sale" again for roughly $190 with the same specs.

The same store also got the not so tiny HP ProDesk 600 G1 with the 4570, 8GB RAM and 500GB HDD for ~$150 now.

So hopefully they will have some nice deals around BF.

 

[Marsh]

The same store also got the not so tiny HP ProDesk 600 G1 with the 4570, 8GB RAM and 500GB HDD for ~$150 now.

I am in the US.
In 2018, the same HP G1 mini without hard drive ( hard drive is no use for me ) , if you buy 5 or more , it cost $45 each.
I ended up with 40 or more HP G1 mini.

At the time ,there was no sales tax , plus lots of Ebay 10% coupon.

 

[Markess]

I am in the US.
In 2018, the same HP G1 mini without hard drive ( hard drive is no use for me ) , if you buy 5 or more , it cost $45 each.
I ended up with 40 or more HP G1 mini.

Prices sure have gone up. Last year an ebay seller was dumping a lot of barebone (no disk or CPU) Lenovo units from the same (Haswell) generation for $19.99 shipped in the U.S. I almost bought a few just because they were so cheap and I had CPUs and RAM in the parts bin. But, I wasn't imaginative enough to come up with a use for them at the time.

 

[mobilenvidia]

Yes, @Patrick is partly to blame for prices going up with his Video's popularising these little Gems
Once I get this i3-9100T and can get it to work (if) I'll do a comparison of some units from 6th to 9th Gen

Could do with a 2nd unit to play with, as 1st unit is now also pressed into HTPC service for Mrs and her movie watching

The patient are rewarded with good pricing as bargains do pop up

 

[Marsh]

I'll do a comparison of some units from 6th to 9th Gen

I like to see the comparison.

Due to pricing , sub $110 HP G2 mini i5-6500t vs $300 an up for HP G4 mini units,

I am staying with HP G2 mini I5-6500t for now.

 

[anthr76]

Nice! This is

Cheers Patrick just shot home for lunch, that was quite some introduction.
I'll need to do that post some justice now


I seem, thats good its all about appearances
In these models you can get 1x 2.5" SATA drive + 1x M.2 SATA/NVMe drive, I've just plugged in a 4TB USB drive for the Mrs Movies as my NAS is Ash
The Lenovo P330/340 has 2x NVMe slots +SATA


The P320/330/340 and also I think the M910x/920x come with a PCIe x16 slot (8x electrical)
Do your homework on this, I can mostly comment from Motherboards I've seen
Its a low profile slot with a proprietary backplate, you can pretty well put in what you like as long as you can butcher the backplate to fit
But a quad 1Gbe NIC not impossible, Lenovo do sell them for these
Keep in mind the P3x0 series normally comes with a Quadro card, so a M920x might be a cheaper bet.
10Gb Ethernet or SFP+ might be pushing it, a custom or modified GPU heatpipe might cool it

Am planning to do some more work on this at some point, wouldn't mind getting my hands on one to play with

On the M900 front spent last night updating the ME Firmware from a different Lenovo machine but it updates the M900
The ME FW is locked in the BIOS but the Lenovo updater unlocks it, now have the very latest FW on the M900
So now rebuilding and trying out some different Tiny modded BIOS's but failing with too many issue (they do work), looking to stick with M910q BIOS to mod the M900 into Coffee Lake territory as least amount of issues

This is good intel! So far it seemed the m920x was my best bet but it's seems hard to visualize how I can butcher that backplate off. It doesn't seem at all removable. This gives me something to run with. Thank you!

 

[mobilenvidia]

Here is a sneak peek at what Lenovo Tiny PC's support which CPUs
The Modded BIOS column will be interesting currently NOT tested on Coffee Lake CPU's
I hope to confirm the modded BIOS column this weekend should the i3-9100T turn up before then
The BIOS has been modded and ready to give 'er a go

 

[Patrick]

I think there is also a shift to notebooks in the industry this year given the move to remote work.