this post was submitted on 07 Jan 2026
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Self hosting hardware - what are your experiences with Lenovo ThinkCentre as homelab server? (lemmy.world)
submitted 5 months ago by Eldaroth@lemmy.world to c/selfhosted@lemmy.world
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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. โ‚ฌ380, 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 ๐Ÿ˜„

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[โ€“] ptz@dubvee.org 7 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

I'm now running 9 of the Dell equivalents to those, and they're doing well. Average 15-20 watts at normal load and usually no more than 30-35 watts running full tilt. 5 of them are unprovisioned but I got a good deal on them for $25/each so I couldn't pass them up :shrug:.

Attempting to cable-manage the power bricks for more than 1 of these is the worst part of using them. The only life pro tip I can offer is to ditch the power bricks and buy a 65W USB-C power delivery adapter that's in the "wall wart" style and also one of the USB-C to Lenovo power adapter cords. Those make cable management so much better.

Wall Wart

Adapter Cable (these are for my Dells but they make them for most brands/styles)

[โ€“] damnthefilibuster@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Where the heck did you get them 25 bucks a piece?

[โ€“] ptz@dubvee.org 3 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Government surplus auction. Had to get power supplies and SSDs for them separately but still less expensive than what most used ones go for elsewhere.

[โ€“] Eldaroth@lemmy.world 2 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Nice, great deal you got there! Would love to stumble upon a similar offering, would instantly build a Kubernetes cluster with them. Probably only to find out that it is too much of a hassle to run my homelab stuff in Kubernetes instead of Podman ๐Ÿ˜‚

[โ€“] ptz@dubvee.org 2 points 5 months ago

Yeah, I did Docker swarm on an older cluster of thin clients I had ~10 years ago but even that was overkill. I've avoided Kubernetes for the same reason.

[โ€“] Appoxo@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 5 months ago

Regarding deals:
If you are in Germany: Zoll-Auktionen does sell goverment surplus/decommissioned gear and also from seizes by customs.

Sometimes there are decent offerings there