Lenovo Workstations Owners Club

[KLiKzg]

So, a little (sad) update...my Lenovo C30 died. Just woke up few days earlier to a quiet room. Started it up, only to smell some smoke from the back of the casing.

So now, I am without that machine...but already found a substitute, arriving in next few weeks, so keep tracking of this topic.

 

[lexluthermiester]

So now, I am without that machine...but already found a substitute, arriving in next few weeks, so keep tracking of this topic.

So any update?

 

[KLiKzg]

So any update?

Yes. So here it goes:

1. Got some nice computer ordered from Australia, only to find out it was shipped to wrong address inside Australia. So eBAY needed to give me back my money from seller - that costed me some 2~3 weeks time.
2. Then I was searching for another replacement, but could not find any. As I wanted to make an upgrade from C30 to something better & not going with slim design of C30. But the prices were ridiculous (to say the least) for that replacement which I was looking for!
3. Tried even looking outside eBAY, but could not find anything interesting in web stores. I mean, I did find another affordable in Bosnia & Herzegovina (neighboring country), only to find out that shipping is not acceptable or reasonable. & with a small kid, I can't afford to make a 1 day trip to go pick it up!
4. Almost gave up, only to find out 2 days ago, that one eBAY store inside EU (in Austria) halved the price on system that is an upgrade from C30 & in which I can put most of my C30 parts in - including my mSATA SSD card (with my OS inside).

So, I am not going to say more. Only that I needed to promise my wife to get rid of one Dell T5500 in order to accommodate C30 replacement. So right now, I am preparing one of my T5500 to be sent to my best man, for his kids to play - it only has 1060 on it, but it is good enough.

So, keep tracking of this topic & soon I will post more!

 

[lexluthermiester]

Yes. So here it goes:

1. Got some nice computer ordered from Australia, only to find out it was shipped to wrong address inside Australia. So eBAY needed to give me back my money from seller - that costed me some 2~3 weeks time.
2. Then I was searching for another replacement, but could not find any. As I wanted to make an upgrade from C30 to something better & not going with slim design of C30. But the prices were ridiculous (to say the least) for that replacement which I was looking for!
3. Tried even looking outside eBAY, but could not find anything interesting in web stores. I mean, I did find another affordable in Bosnia & Herzegovina (neighboring country), only to find out that shipping is not acceptable or reasonable. & with a small kid, I can't afford to make a 1 day trip to go pick it up!
4. Almost gave up, only to find out 2 days ago, that one eBAY store inside EU (in Austria) halved the price on system that is an upgrade from C30 & in which I can put most of my C30 parts in - including my mSATA SSD card (with my OS inside).

So, I am not going to say more. Only that I needed to promise my wife to get rid of one Dell T5500 in order to accommodate C30 replacement. So right now, I am preparing one of my T5500 to be sent to my best man, for his kids to play - it only has 1060 on it, but it is good enough.

So, keep tracking of this topic & soon I will post more!

That's a heap of suckage. I hope things go better for you soon!

 

[KLiKzg]

That's a heap of suckage. I hope things go better for you soon!

So, finally the item arrived...but I had to pick it up myself, as the delivery company messed up.

My wife was ready for a divorce for zillionth time, after I came home with 140x100x60cm big cardboard box & told here it is a computer.
But all was well, as it is only replacement for older one. Tested & everything is OK, works well.

See pictures of my Lenovo D30 machine:


& one compared to older one Lenovo C30:




The configuration that it got is:
2 x Xeon CPU E5 2640 6c/12tper CPU
128 GB RAM DDR 3 ECC
500 GB SSD (actually 2x256GB in RAID)
nVidia K4000
Windows 11 pro

So only yesterday upgrade was to turn it on, do all Updates, make some configs in Windows & replace nVidia Quadro K4000 with nVidia Quadro RTX 4000.

 

[lexluthermiester]

As promised, here is the work I did on the Lenovo ThinkCentre I've had for a few years. I've talked about this little system previously in the Nostalgia thread.

It a very lean & clean looking system and fit perfectly into my mini entertainment center where it's home will be.

While doing research for something else, I discovered that this system can take a specific SATA RAID card supported by the BIOS. But for whatever reason, the drive doesn't show up in the post screen.

Weird. Still the extra drive shows up in Windows so it's all good.

Couldn't find a low-profile bracket for it, so I took the bracket off and used some static-free plastic foam block cut to fit secured with medical grade labels acting as tape.

This system previously had a Radeon R7-250X low-profile. It was the best low-profile GPU that had WinXP support. As I now use a different system for XP duties, this one will now have Win7 and that demanded a better GPU installed for this little beast. I had considered a Quadro K1200, but after looking at performance numbers concluded that it would be bottlenecked by the Core2Quad. So I settled on the K620. It's still being bottlenecked by the C2Q, but not very much. It's a good pairing and the K620 still does MUCH better than the R7-250X. The power savings are a factor to. The K620 is a 40W part whereas the 250X was a 70W part. The PSU in this system is only 280W so that 30W savings is important, especially considering that I'm adding in a PCI SATA card with an HDD.

With that SATA PCI card installed I can now add an addition drive, which as you can see above, is a 1TB drive I had sitting unused. The drive under it is a 960GB Crucial SSD setup as the OS drive.

And of course since this system will have no internet access, Windows 7 is the OS of choice. Yes, Yes. Of course, OpenShell is used to keep the Start Menu agreeable. I also still use RocketDock, and as you can see, Winamp.

All in all, a fun rebuild that will serve it's purpose well. I really like that I have a C2Q in the house and still serving useful duties!

 

[KLiKzg]

It is time for some update...so here it goes:

• Wanted to update the procs, but as the system is type 4223 - so only E5-26XX V1 can go on it! (decided to update the motherboard later on...)
  For now, ordering of CPU is under way to change from hexa-core to octa-core!
• Removed the previous coolers. Notice that is 2-heatpipes version & 2&1/2-heatpipes versions:
  
  
• Also, noticed that the (some amateur) put 2 types of pastes on the CPUs...
  
  
• So repaste was in order, as only that can be done:
  
  
• Checked out the 128GB RAM also, to see does it needs upgrade:
  
  
• Put the coolers back, but using the some old parts from Lenovo C30 system. Notice that it is now 2&1/2-heatpipes on CPU1 & 3-heatpipes on CPU2.
  & yes, I put isolation tape on the coolers in order to make more airflow through them!
  
  
• Put also Tesla P4 alongside Quadro RTX 4000, for this system.
  Why? Well, my BOINC application does great on it!
  
  Running those on extra blower, as that seems to be best for noise & throughput of air (cooling).
• All those coolers need some extra power. Which is provided by Arctic Cooler fan hub, which I prefer!
  

When I finish with testing, old disks go in...so good by with Windows 11 & welcome to my old Windows 10 from C30!

Sorry for the lack of light, as it is done by night, when a kid goes to sleep.

 

[KLiKzg]

Finally had some time to upgrade from 6c/12t to 8c/16t & total of 32t for a D30 workstation. Here is the Xeon E5-2680 that went in!

 

[lexluthermiester]

Finally had some time to upgrade from 6c/12t to 8c/16t & total of 32t for a D30 workstation. Here is the Xeon E5-2680 that went in!

View attachment 352638

Nice!

 

[KLiKzg]

After watching this thread, tested a new way of cooling my GPUs (which work 25/7 on BOINC E@h): https://www.techpowerup.com/forums/...mps-with-10-c-is-cheap-and-easy-to-do.325196/

What is here is a photo take while testing fan for "side cooling" in D30 for RTX 4000 & Tesla P4:


Testing went out great:

A warn suggestion for anyone using GPUs for crunching data. Or should I say colder suggestion?

 

[Monorisu301]

Does anyone know if modding the Lenovo Thinkstation P500 bios to support broadwell (xeon v4 cpus) is possible? The chipset surely does since the HP Z440/640/840 use the same c612 chipset and yet it supports them.
Please help

 

[lexluthermiester]

Does anyone know if modding the Lenovo Thinkstation P500 bios to support broadwell (xeon v4 cpus) is possible? The chipset surely does since the HP Z440/640/840 use the same c612 chipset and yet it supports them.
Please help

Anything is possible. Beyond my level of expertise.. It would likely involve removing certain microcode, for example dual-core models to make room for the Xeons..

 

[Magic Cube]

Does anyone know if modding the Lenovo Thinkstation P500 bios to support broadwell (xeon v4 cpus) is possible? The chipset surely does since the HP Z440/640/840 use the same c612 chipset and yet it supports them.
Please help

There is a possibility that your Lenovo won't support V4 Broadwell CPU's. There seems to be P510 which has support for Broadwell V4:s. Adding microcodes to Lenovo's bios, I don't know about(I have never modified Lenovo bios).

My Fujitsu R940 is similar case. I have motherboard revision D3358-A1, which won't work with Broadwell V4. Even with microcodes added, It just won't boot with V4's. But there is D3358-A2 which has support for V4.

Edit. Now I had time to look bios from Lenovo's website.

It is Amibios, so modifications for different things can be done(adding NVME and Rebar modules). Adding CPU microcode to inside bios file is easy. Getting modified bios flashed to the chip, it starts to get little complicated without bios flasher/Raspberry Pi. I still don't know, if adding microcodes would help to getting Broadwell's to work.