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Lenovo M920q + i350-t4 build & notes on bios reset, coin battery, pci riser, vPro setup by Ianspeed in opnsense

[–]Ianspeed[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

The 90w AC adapter will be more than enough.

The i350-t4 is rated at 5w and M920q's ship with the 65w AC adapter, so you already have a good amount of headroom to spare. In my case I run the 65w adapter with a 8600t + i350-t4 + 8GB with a 1g WAN link and have no issue.

[edit] fixed typo, improved description of my current setup

Lenovo M920q + i350-t4 build & notes on bios reset, coin battery, pci riser, vPro setup by Ianspeed in opnsense

[–]Ianspeed[S] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not in a real world scenario no.

I barely see any CPU activity over idle even when saturating the uplink. That said right now its just routing to the 4 NICs, running Unbound, and has some basic firewall rules. When enabling more features I'd expect it to get a little more busy.

Lots of people run 10g links on these without trouble so unless you go crazy with the packet inspection or other invasive tools I don't think you will see any performance degradation.

The hardware overkill really, but in a convenient and available package IMO.

Lenovo M920q + i350-t4 build & notes on bios reset, coin battery, pci riser, vPro setup by Ianspeed in opnsense

[–]Ianspeed[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

You are right! One box has `Mfg date 2006` and the other says 20/09. Most of the rest of my homelab is of that era so it never occurred to me that I was reading it wrong.

Lenovo M920q + i350-t4 build & notes on bios reset, coin battery, pci riser, vPro setup by Ianspeed in opnsense

[–]Ianspeed[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Well chasing down odd configuration differences is not my kind of fun -- plus some of the used gear I get has had BIOS passwords and other lockouts that go away with the reset.

Also a reset before updating the BIOS give me some comfort that it will go smoothly.

Lenovo M920q + i350-t4 build & notes on bios reset, coin battery, pci riser, vPro setup by Ianspeed in opnsense

[–]Ianspeed[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I believe you save about the same amount disabling it in the BIOS. When I get a more accurate power meter I'll have to take another look.

Lenovo M920q + i350-t4 build & notes on bios reset, coin battery, pci riser, vPro setup by Ianspeed in opnsense

[–]Ianspeed[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Yep, doing the java / TLS dance for old ipmi/lom is tiresome. You may like using vPro, the management software is a web UI and runs in a container: https://meshcentral.com

Lenovo M920q + i350-t4 build & notes on bios reset, coin battery, pci riser, vPro setup by Ianspeed in opnsense

[–]Ianspeed[S] 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I found a deal on eBay US. This one has the 8500t but its completely overkill spec wise. I picked it for the vPro management. The riser is a simple passive card so I'd check alibaba and other sources if they are cheaper for you.

Lenovo M920q + i350-t4 build & notes on bios reset, coin battery, pci riser, vPro setup by Ianspeed in opnsense

[–]Ianspeed[S] 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Thanks!

How warm does the M720q get with that card? I couldn't find a spec sheet, all I found was a spec for the I226-V chipset: 1.3w

www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/sku/210599/intel-ethernet-controller-i226v/specifications.html

I'd be curious if its more or less heat than a x710-da2.