Lenovo ThinkCentre M720q Tiny Software
As we have seen in several review units from Lenovo, the supplied software is greatly improved and reduced software clutter. We now only find a single piece of software that handles all Lenovo related features, and that is Lenovo Vantage.
Lenovo Vantage is the center point for M720q Tiny’s health, support, and system updates. From this page one can click on the Health and Support button to run a System Hardware Scan, check the user manual, find tips and tricks or check out warranty and services.
After clicking on the Run a Hardware scan we get the following report.
The Hardware Scan found no errors or issues on our Lenovo ThinkCentre M720q Tiny.
Lenovo ThinkCentre M720q Tiny Specifications
The key specifications listed below reflects the review sample we received. The Lenovo ThinkCentre M720q Tiny is not only powerful, but it is also small in size at 7.0” x 1.4” x 7.2” which is not much larger than a DVD player and only weighs in at 2.91 pounds.
The Lenovo ThinkCentre M720q Tiny is equipped with an Intel Core i5-8400T processor in our review unit. The Intel CPU has a base frequency of 1.7GHz and turbo boost can go as high as 3.3GHz which is significant for a system in such a small package. For graphics, the M720q Tiny uses integrated UHD Graphics 630 which supports DisplayPort 1.4 and HDMI outputs.
Our M720q Tiny came equipped with an Intel Core i5-8400T with 6 cores and CPU can Turbo up to 3.3GHz. If you compare this to previous generation Core i5 parts, one gets 50% more cores which greatly increases computing capacity.
Next, we are going to look at the performance of the Lenovo ThinkCentre M720q Tiny.
What’s the size and weight of the power brick?
It’d be interesting to see if there’d be performance improvements here over Intel NUCs in this use case. Chick-fil-A has a slick deployment setup with Kubernetes K8s.
https://medium.com/@cfatechblog/bare-metal-k8s-clustering-at-chick-fil-a-scale-7b0607bd3541
My experience with these super small form factors is heat. Often, the CPUs have a hard time getting cooled by the small squirrel fans. However, it’s often not the CPU that dies of the heat, but the components on the board next to them which experience the same heat-soak and often aren’t rated for such high prolonged temps. The fans don’t circulate air within the case, and having the memory and NVMe on the complete other side might cause additional issues as those are often high temp components (Maybe some thermal pads to the metal chassis to act as a heatsink would help there).
I would love to see more details about the PCI Express card slot and wether the required rise
card is included and if all kind of 10Gbps nics work with it..
TERRIBLE TERRIBLE TERRIBLE! I would NOT buy today! FAN makes HUGE NOISE!
This is clearly a LENOVO sponsored REVIEW! The FAN on these tiny lenovo machines SPIN UP like crazy as soon as there is any “real” activity. LOUDER than a VACUUM CLEANER!!!
AVOID at all costs!
Also, the FAN design differences across all generations (WHY LENOVO??? TO SELL stupid hardware? You add a little bit of plastic here and there just to avoid the FANS being compatible across generations? Com’on!!!)
My experience of noise is in line with the review, it is very quiet even when under load. Marco, your unit must be defective.
I have bought an M720Q, sourced the riser and backplate from China, and installed a generic 4 port Intel NIC from eBay. You can read about the build and see the photos on the Small Form Factor website forums. It is operating as an OPNSense router (run on top of Proxmox) and handles a 500Mbit connection with all features turned on just fine on 2 cores out of the six available. I also have a M75-1q Tiny which is running about 30 containers, and a M93 Tiny which I’ve received but not yet set up.
They’re superb little boxes.
Marco, I have a M720Q for 4 weeks now.
Great performance, no sound at all.
I am working in a very silent place, but even then : no noise.
would the fan/heatsink blower in these (with the lenovo poorly cheaply done YAY lets just use 1 heat pipe when they could of quite easily added a second) be able to be changed out of a low profile fan/heatsink say the AK ks7 or like, and would it make a worth while diff to the cooling
more just asking before i try it myself and put the cost in im to cheap to do that
the mounting should be the same and they should just about be room, would have to do some splicing to the power as normal coolers are bigger plugs than the blowers but wouldnt matter simple 4 pin blower to 4 pin cooler
Hi.
Why the idle power draw is so high ? 27w for a T-CPU ? I’m currently in auction for buying a 9400t based model m720q but I thought I could run it at <10w idle…
Could someone tell me if it's worth it and did you manage to reduce idle power draw?
Thanks