Self hosting hardware - what are your experiences with Lenovo ThinkCentre as homelab server?

Submitted ⁨⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Eldaroth@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

Hey guys, I was wondering if any of you have experience running their services on a Lenovo ThinkCentre, specifically a Lenovo ThinkCentre M70Q Gen1? From what I read they can be quite efficient when it comes to idle power draw.

I have the chance to buy a refurbished one for approx. €380, coming with a i5-10400T, 16 GB RAM and a 256 GB NVMe SSD. Do you guys think the price sounds fair?

I am mainly looking to expand my Proxmox single host setup comprising of an Intel N150 mini PC with a second node as backup. Maybe down the line if I can get my hands on another affordable mini PC I might dabble in setting up a Kubernetes cluster. But that’s a project for another day 😄

source

Comments

Sort:hotnew top

punkibas@lemmy.zip ⁨9⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
That sounds pretty expensive, I got 3 M90q Gen 3 with the 12500T in 2023 for 350€ each, but I guess the current situation with the AI craze has brought their prices up quite a bit, better look at the minisforum

source
BarbecueCowboy@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I know this may not be a useful point, but just wanted to note that paying the equivalent of €380 here in the US would be an absolutely crazy price for a used edition of one of those. I’d expect those to go for the equivalent of 65-70 euros at the low end, around 100 fully loaded with the most useful parts. Even with international shipping, I’d think you could do drastically better.

From personal experience though, I run 4 of the Lenovo Tinys in my lab currently. I can highly recommend the M700/M900 line, M920 if you can get it, but the M70Q is fine.

source
lechongous@programming.dev ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
I have a lot of services running on m90q with i5-6500t and 32GB ram. I got it for ~170$. CPU is definitely a bottleneck, especially with jellyfin transcoding but it only occurs when watching something immediately after importing. i5-10400t is a lot better than mine so I am sure you wont have any problems with normal usage. M70q is selling for around 350$ in my area.

source
just_another_person@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Seems kind of pricey for that specific unit, but it should work well for just hosting simple services.

source
- Bluegrass_Addict@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  second this… I get quoted that in CAD… op should be closer to like 200£
  
  source
- kumi@feddit.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Up to 300 or so could be reasonable if the RAM and SSD are decent.
  
  source
  - Eldaroth@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yeah I agree, then it would have been an instant buy for me.
    
    source
infinitevalence@discuss.online ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I have 2 of them with older 6 core CPUs and 32gb each. I also added a 10g SFP card in the PCIe slot so they would have a bit more umph.

Image

For 380 each I would not bother, and I would look at the Minisforum MS-01 as it has built in dual 10g SFPs and dual 2.5g RJ45’s plus a PCIe slot.

minisforumpc.eu/products/ms-01?_pos=1&_psq=MS&_ss…

at ~80 euro’s more you get more CPU, faster ram if you can find it, more storage, and more networking.

source
- Eldaroth@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Nice setup! Is that a Minisforum below the optiplex?
  
  Haha I read your comment the wrong way around the first time thinking you got a Minisforum MS-01 for like €460. That would have been a great deal 😄
  
  Because searching for what a new MS-01 with i5 and 32gb RAM and 1TB SSD cost is more towards €700. Haven’t found a lot of offerings for a used one in my region and buying new currently I think I would have to pay too much.
  
  source
  - infinitevalence@discuss.online ⁨10⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yes thats the MS-A1 which is a great little box but not as flexible as the MS-01. It lacks the PCIe slot, and only has 2x 2.5g Ethernet ports.
    
    You probably wont find the MS-01 used since its not like the Lenovo’s with their mass market deployment as office PCs.
    
    As for price, www.aliexpress.us/item/3256810143174659.html? I was looking at the barebones since the prices on DDR5 and NVME’s are nuts right now. I have spare NVME drives so all I would need is RAM and I can find it cheaper than the resellers who mark it up when they install it for you.
    
    source
Decronym@lemmy.decronym.xyz ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters

LXC Linux Containers

PCIe Peripheral Component Interconnect Express

SSD Solid State Drive mass storage

[Thread #987 for this comm, first seen 8th Jan 2026, 07:05] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]

source
Rutrapio@piaille.fr ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
@Eldaroth I'm right now deploying one at home. A m720q with yunohost on it.
If it works well, it'll become my main homelab, instead of my Synology.
source
- Eldaroth@lemmy.world ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Nice, good on you! Migrating your services/containers to a dedicated server instead of running them on a overwhelmingly underpowered Synology NAS is going to be a game changer.
  
  I also have a Synology NAS, but nowadays only really use it for NFS/Samba storage and a S3 service (Garage) running on it to provide network storage to all my other services running on my mini pc.
  
  source
  - Rutrapio@piaille.fr ⁨19⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    @Eldaroth That's definitly the plan :)
    A new world of performance !
    source
y0kai@anarchist.nexus ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
That’s newer hardware than what i’ve got, and I know ram is expensive now, but I paid ~$100 USD for my thinkcenter M800 and it has been great.

Mine did not come with SSD though, and instead had a 3TB HHD.

source
- Bluegrass_Addict@lemmy.ca ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  the ram on ops model would be ddr4, not 5. pricing is not that bad on ddr4 if I’m not mistaken
  
  source
  - y0kai@anarchist.nexus ⁨22⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    That’s true and I hadn’t considered that. I’d still say they’re paying far too much.
    
    source
  - Dultas@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    DDR4 isn’t great on price either. At least not for RDIMM. Though I realize these probably use SODIMM.
    
    source
  - Eldaroth@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Yeah looking at prices in stores in my region for ddr4 its still like a 60%+ price increase since like the beginning of November last year. Actually wanted to build my own server, but with the price increase on most of the core pc components, I guess just bad timing #fuckai
    
    source
  - cmnybo@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    The price of DDR4 has tripled over the last year. It’s still not as bad as DDR5 though.
    
    source
capuccino@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
I use a Lenovo ThinkCentre M910q to host both Minecraft (Java edition) and Vintage Story server. I think that you ThinkCentre have a better CPU (mine is an i5 like, 6 gen), so, easily you could host many things without issue.

source
- Eldaroth@lemmy.world ⁨20⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  Ah nice, another vintage story aficionado 👌 Have my server running on my mini pc in a LXC since a couple of weeks, sadly haven’t found a lot of time exploring v1.21 since becoming a dad last year 😄
  
  But yeah was looking for a bit beefier server hardware to maybe run some more game servers like Valheim or Satisfactory besides my other selfhosting services.
  
  source
standarduser@lemmy.dbzer0.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Oh boy I can finally talk about this! I had one of them and I can say proudly that baby will keep on chugging. That was my test bench and prod server all in one for media and learning containers. Solid workhorses and stable as hell. Def recommend if you can go to a salvage place to get the used older ram, if you can get so lucky.

source

Fewer Letters	More Letters
LXC	Linux Containers
PCIe	Peripheral Component Interconnect Express
SSD	Solid State Drive mass storage