Lenovo M75q-1 Tiny

[Drealar]

Hi all,

 

Been browsing LTT forum for years now but never sign up.

Gained some good info and opinions, so I think it's time to give back a little.

 

I've been a fan of SFF and then iGPU for some time now.

• Atom + Nvidia Ion nettops (anyone remembers this?)
• AMD Llano, Zacate, etc (and this?)
• AMD A10 series
• The short lived Core i7-5775
• Intel NUCs with their Iris Plus graphics

So last February I finally bought a Lenovo ThinkCentre M75q-1 Tiny; an ultra SFF(uSFF) Ryzen Desktop.

Below are the specs.

 

Ryzen 5 Pro 3400GE (a tad slower than 3400G but still with Vega 11).

SK Hynix 16GB(2x 8GB) 2666MHz

WD 512GB M.2 NVME SSD

Intel Wireless-AC 9260 2x2 AC, Bluetooth Version 5.0

Optional VGA Port (in case I need to hook up to my old monitor)

Dust Shield

65W power adapter

Windows 10 Home

Dimension /weight: 179mm x 36.5mm x 182.9mm (~1.1L) / 1.3kg

3 Years N.B.D on-site warranty with Prioritized Parts & Labor.

Total after tax with free shipping = RM2014 (roughly 460USD)

 

I was shocked and had to verify with the sales representative.

He said that the price is correct as the model is going through promotional period (I checked Lenovo China & Japan; both have roughly the same price after currency conversion).

I guess price varies a lot depending on region & time.

For me in Malaysia, I bought it during Chinese New Year season sale + additional 10% discount coupon.

Currently in Lenovo US site, the same configuration is listed as 990 USD.

 

Below are some picture (please ignore the 20 years old flooring, I can't find any other room with good lighting )

 

Top

 

Relative size to 2x Dualshock 3 controllers

 

Front

 

Back

 

Bottom with front side opened.

 

Bottom cover removed, giving access to one m.2 slot & two SODIMM slots.

 

Top cover removed revealing APU cooler fan and empty 2.5” drive bracket.

 

Cooler fan and 2.5” drive bracket removed; now we can see the heatsink.

 

BIOS. As expected from a corporate desktop, there are barely any controls over CPU, RAM and fan settings.

 

Performance

 

I'm not Anthony or Alex, so I'll just list some benchmark result that I managed to run.

 

Boot up to:

• Windows welcome screen 11.3s
• Firefox opened 16s (including type in password & manually click Firefox icon)

 

FFXIV Stormblood benchmark score.

1280 × 720 Windowed High (Laptop): 3354

1280 × 720 Windowed High (Desktop): 2776

 

Cinebench R15.

OpenGL: 48.7fps

CPU: 750 cb

 

Cinebench R20.

CPU: 1722 pts

CPU (Single Core): 392 pts

MP Ratio: 4.39x

 

Starcraft 2

Mission: For Aiur 

Game time: Very start of mission

 

1080p High

Left flank engagement 34fps

Right flank engagement 32fps

Middle main protoss army view 25fps

 

1080p Medium

Left flank engagement 47fps

Right flank engagement 44fps

Middle main protoss army view 30fps

 

Temperature & Fan

 

Idle or web browsing (no streaming) : 42 degrees C

Youtube 1080p Full screen : 45 degrees C

Starcraft 2 1080 High Main Protoss Army : 70 degrees C

Cinebench R20 Multicore : 77 degrees C

 

While idle, browsing and streaming Youtube, I barely hear anything.

Fan speed is a constant 1125RPM.

I was sitting almost 1m away with the ceiling fan turned on.

The GPU handles all streaming load so the CPU can be kept at around idle state.

 

During Starcraft2 gaming session, it sounded like a typical gaming laptop’s fan with fan speed at around 2600~2800rpm.

 

During Cinebench R20 Multicore, the CPU went to 4GHz before settling down at 3.5GHz~3.6GHz

Fan speed went up to 3750RPM before it went down to ~3300RPM.

In my wife’s words “it sounded like a jet fighter about to take off and then cruising”.

 

If I put on the dust shield, the fan will spin up faster.

Ambient temperature is 28degrees celsius.

 

Lack of Power with 65W AC Adapter?

 

I stumbled upon a Japanese blog (majority of M75q-1 Tiny review search results are from Japanese websites) which says that if used with a 135W AC adapter, the FFXIV benchmark result almost doubled.

https://risaiku.net/archives/6048/

 

M75q-1 (65W) 3246 (somewhat comfortable)

M75q-1 (135W) 6240 (very comfortable) (92% ↑)

 

I don’t quite understand why.

When I run the benchmark again, GPU utilization is already 100% and CPU only utilized average 50% on all threads.

Does anyone have any thoughts on this?

 

Final Words

 

Intel has been dominating the ultra SFF with their NUCs, though those are basically using mobile grade CPU + Iris Plus.

It is good to see AMD entering the uSFF market with desktop grade APUs at a much cheaper price(definitely varies by region, season & discounts).

I am feel excited and optimistic about the future of uSFF PC with iGPU.

We have already see the capability of Zen 2 Mobile APUs, so maybe Zen 2 or later Desktop APUs could have the performance somewhere between GT1030 and GTX1050?

 

Thank you for reading.

[SavageNeo]

5 minutes ago, Drealar said:

We have already see the capability of Zen 2 Mobile APUs, so maybe Zen 2 or later Desktop APUs could have the performance somewhere between GT1030 and GTX1050?

that is true

[Alchemist.Lakshya]

Hi

I want to know how to Crack the inbuilt OS in this Tiny m75q From ChromeOS to Windows, I have dismantled the SSD in it and Made it bootable in Windows(Windows OS is installed using Other PC) but when I enter the SSD in the tiny m75q it says that OS is missing.

 

Help Please!!!

[luckywong]

Yes the thread is quite old but I found the information is really useful when I test out my unit. Follow the suggestion of getting larger power adapter, I can confirm that with a 65w adapter, the FFX14 (1280x720p) score at 3450 but change to 135w adapter the same setting get me 6800!  Nearly double.

Test in 1920x1080p have the same result as 1500 <--> 3000. Apparently it's not idea running FHD (with all SFX on) on this tiny machine.