Down to 5 in less than 40 minutes. These are moving fast! Thanks for the share JDM.
Picked one up and a pair of RAM sticks here. Had an HP290 that got returned and they refunded me instead of replacing, so this will take over as my Plex server and the other 290 gets moved to pfSense. Now to figure out how to use pfSense…
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I wouldn’t really recommend a single-port box as a router; it can be done, but isn’t ideal.
However, apparently some configurations of the M720q Tiny include a riser for the PCIe slot, allowing a half-height card in place of the 2.5" drive. (There’s still an m.2 NVMe slot on the underside.) Some configs have a USB-C daughter card that would also need to be removed to make space for the PCIe card. It’s pretty cool to me that they were able to cram so many options into such a small chassis.
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It looks like you might be able to upgrade these to be useable as pfsense boxes. According to the Lenovo support site (desktops and all in ones :: thinkcentre m series desktops :: m720q :: 10t7 - Lenovo Support US) there are a couple of 4 port ethernet PCIe cards that can be added to it. You will also need a PCIe riser card to make the ethernet card work.
Compatible Parts:
-
ThinkSystem Intel I350-T4 PCIe 1Gb 4-port RJ45 Ethernet Adapter 00YK613
(on page 21 for me) -
Intel Ethernet I350-T4 03T8760 (on page 36 for me)
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Tiny5 Pcie4 Riser card 01AJ928 (also on page 21 for me, missed it when I first looked through the list)
After a quick search on ebay for those part numbers it looks like there are some available. As @Mthrboard stated below the riser will probably be the hardest part to get at this point since there are only a few available, they are about as expensive as the ethernet adapter itself, and right now they are all coming from Europe so they have pretty high shipping tacked on.
(03T8760, 00YK613, 01AJ929) | eBay (updated to include the PCIe riser)
Yes, it is technically possible to add a NIC to these systems, but you will need a riser card as well as the NIC. And as an added bonus, the port on the motherboard isn’t a standard PCI-E port, so you have to use Lenovo’s proprietary adapter, part number 01AJ902. DHole mentioned it in his build log post here: Lenovo M720Q - This thing is RAD! The riser is hard to find and very expensive.
Thank you for the information. I had just found the PCIe riser card on the parts list and was coming back to update my post.
There are two parts that supposedly work to add standard pci, and im sure there are other non branded ones, trick will be to find one lol. 01AJ928 and 01AJ902,
unless its something totally wonky, its a Mobile PCI Express Module, aka MXM and you would see them in laptops with replaceable gpus e.g. This Quadro Card for a Dell
picked up 2 M720q and 2 sticks from alanman…any NVMe recommendations just for plex/docker use? also what flavor of linux is best? TIA
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not sure about best, but if you go with ubuntu you will always be able to find an example of how to do stuff. Thats why I stick to ubuntu.
darn, was looking to pick one of these up but it looks like they’re OOS. I only started following this forum a few months ago – is it common for boxes like this or the HP 290 to come up used at around the price point / value?
In case anyone else runs into the issue, I had to edit Grub to add “nomodeset” when booting. Once that was done then it booted with no issues into Ubuntu. Guess somehow mine was having problems with the displays or something. Otherwise it seems to be running fine now!
odd, I didn’t have any issue with 20.04!
Yeah, 20.04 here and had to change it. Worked fine in the HP290, but the M720Q just needed a quick change for some reason. All good now!
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Shout out to @JDM_WAAAT for sharing the deal!
And a special Thank You to @ALANMAN for the ram. He was even generous enough to throw in a couple ServerBuilds stickers. This place is straight up awesomesauce!
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Agreed. Between the two of them my wallet has been left very unhappy lately, but I’m definitely enjoying the plunge! Plus I now have stickers to slap on my cabinet!
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Same here. I could only boot with safe graphics mode. Otherwise it would freeze every time it tried to load into the gui. Adding nomodeset fixed it.
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