Typo in my first sentence about the Gen 8. it should be "Gen 8 cpu's in a USFF appear to deliver lower idle power usage and lower high end power usage than Gen 6/7."
You're correct that some of these machines have desktop CPUs, what I discovered was they also have different classes of desktop CPUs.
The m920q/m920s appear to have differnet power usages an possibly different cpus, or at least they're configured different.
Additionally, if you look up the Gen 6/7/8 power usage for the cpu itself, you can see the idle and total is different as well.
The trick is Lenovo is far from the best priced USFF in this category for the same thing.
When I bought Lenovo, I wanted to try out Proxmox, had no interest in fighting with installation or drivers, an just picked something that had flawless installation... that has since improved with other manufacturers.
The tool from OP here is really cool - I'd probably add some from the spreadsheet I had built out but I haven't had to buy many more of these once I figured it out. Load them up with ram, a few ssds, a UPS and they're pretty solid.
You're correct that some of these machines have desktop CPUs, what I discovered was they also have different classes of desktop CPUs.
The m920q/m920s appear to have differnet power usages an possibly different cpus, or at least they're configured different.
If I compare the two:
- m920q (USFF) can go as high as 135w: https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkCentre/ThinkCe...
- m920s SFF can go as high as 260w: https://psref.lenovo.com/syspool/Sys/PDF/ThinkCentre/ThinkCe...
Additionally, if you look up the Gen 6/7/8 power usage for the cpu itself, you can see the idle and total is different as well.
The trick is Lenovo is far from the best priced USFF in this category for the same thing.
When I bought Lenovo, I wanted to try out Proxmox, had no interest in fighting with installation or drivers, an just picked something that had flawless installation... that has since improved with other manufacturers.
The tool from OP here is really cool - I'd probably add some from the spreadsheet I had built out but I haven't had to buy many more of these once I figured it out. Load them up with ram, a few ssds, a UPS and they're pretty solid.