Good question. We will soon find out.
What an afternoon!
A few weeks ago I configured CamelCamelCamel to keep an eye out on a Crucial 32GB kit (16GBx2 DDR3/DDRL 1600 MT/s PC3L-12800) that I am eagerly wanting to try in the Lenovo M93p Tiny units.
Well as you can imagine, I saw this notification this afternoon that the price dropped to $243.74 CAD and was sold by Amazon Warehouse.
I placed my order and now await shipment and delivery.
Once it arrives, you best believe that I will install it and test the M93p and see if these tiny Lenovo units can be very possible and suitable NUC alternatives.
Stay tuned!
July 6th 2020 Update!
I received my Purolator notification that the package was going to be delivered today. Thankfully I’m working from home so I’ll be able to receive it.
As soon as the memory arrived, I powered off ESXI01 M93p Tiny and opened it up. Here you see the memory that I currently have installed. 2x8GB sticks.
Here are a few photos of the memory and it installed.
With so much eagerness and excitement, I powered on the M93p Tiny and unfortunately was disappointed by the 3 short and 1 long beep code.
Well that wasn’t what I was expecting. I had hopes. I tried to move the memory around and even go as far as using 1 stick of 16gb installed.
The computer will still present me the 3 short and one long beep.
Reviewing Lenovos beep codes, this is what I f ound:
BEEP SYMPTOM BEEP MEANING
3 short beeps followed by 1 long beep. Memory not detected.
Now the memory that I purchased, was a return item on Amazon that was flagged for the low price. The item was apparently inspected and repackaged.
I tried to use one of the memory sticks and install it in one of my Lenovo laptops (T440s) and it refused to boot.
Its completely possible that although the hardware should work, Lenovo doesn’t have the speeds allowed/coded in the POST.
If the memory is the issue, I’d like to test again with different memory but knowing there may be a blacklist programmed and a whitelist for what is allowed may be the issue here.
If there was big enough interest, it may be possible that somebody could reprogram/hack the bios to allow. Coreboot? but they seem to only work on Lenovo laptops.
At this price, it’s hard to keep testing. I’ll see what I can do but I don’t see a positive outcome here. To gain more memory, I’ll most likely just pickup a 4th Lenovo M93p Tiny and spec it out the same as my other 3.
Maybe down the road I’ll look at selling these units off and buying Lenovo M700’s. which apparently can run 32gb of memory.
The goal for me is a low power consuming cluster and fairly affordable.
At this time, capable Intel NUCs are not affordable for clustering, after you add on required memory, processor, etc.
Maybe I’m wrong but that’s just based on pricing and builds I’ve seen, such as the Intel Canyon NUCs.