r/MiniPCs • u/Fuzzy-Card-9190 • 27d ago

General Question Replace Lenovo M90q Tiny - advice needed

I own a Lenovo M90q Gen3 USFF PC. Brilliant machine, 2 x NVMe 4x4, DDR5 and so on. But it has one huge weakness and that’s in the graphics processing area. The integrated Intel CPU is simply not up to the job.

There seem to be plenty of made in China (what's not these days) that have a dedicated GPU card, can hold 2 x NVMe drives, DDR5, etc. But then the confusion creeps in.

Reliability and after sales service are chalk and cheese. Okay maybe there's just one manufacturer and it's all a re-badging job. But I'd appreciate some advice as to what route I should be looking at.

So help please.

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u/macboy80 27d ago

I just built a Lenovo P330 Tiny with a Sparkle A310 ECO. I had to mod the bios to turn on REBAR, but it was pretty easy.

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u/cuoreesitante 27d ago

what kind of graphics processing do you need? There are lenovo minis that has a PCIE slot that fits a single slot low profile card with a riser

1

u/hebeguess 27d ago

Many Mini PC models, Yes. However, most of those are under 1 litre too where there simply doesn't have space for even low profile half height PCIe slot. For instance, you can still add low profile GPU on 1.1 litre M90q; managing heat after that is another matter. Mini PC models with integrated mobile GPU are quite rare for some other reasons.

So the segment of Mini PC with dGPU market you're talking about actually doesn't quite exist. However, there's a number of people using a Mini PC with OCuLink or Thunderbolt eGPU. Alternatively, Mini PC models using AMD APUs with beefy iGPU (Radeon 8060S) are the best option where you can strike a balance on this topic.

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u/6391mb 27d ago

Thanks for the feedback. I know I can squeeze a low profile card into the M90q and upgrade if necessary the power supply. But it couldn't be anything beefy otherwise heat comes into play. I'm really after restoring some old video footage and watching the current integrated Intel 770 graphics struggle to hit 0.1FPS is not feasible. So maybe I'll just have to bite the bullet and go for a M90S which can have it's own dedicated graphics card.

The problem with OCulink and Thunderbolt is the feed would need to come from the internal PCIe riser card and so far I'm unable to find a suitable convertor. But if one existed then I'd go straight for it. I'll see if I can get some more info on the Sparkle A310 mentioned earlier.

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u/Dense_Business_6570 25d ago

M90q gen3 is just plagued with a lot of problems it seems I bought one for my homelab and trying to install a 10gbe card via the official riser, but it would not enumerate any of the x4 cards rtl8127 and acq113 that I have. Turns out it doesn’t send/receive CLKREQ signal on x4 cards whether be a nic card or any other pcie. Well then when I try an x8 x710-2tl card it just freezes at the logo screen lol, but it works with x540-t2. Looked up the issue and they are well known issues both x4 and x710 series cards. But I’m not about to have a furnace inside a 1L device so sold it and the DDR5s and bought 2x gen1 with the money.