HP EliteDesk Mini 705 G3

[Jeggs101]

Has anyone tried these little boxes yet? Maybe @WANg

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16GB of RAM and a 256GB NVMe SSD + 2.5" internal available.

Says they have Windows 10 Pro as well.

Maybe they're not as expandable at the T series but that's really cheap.

 

[Patrick]

If that said Ryzen on it it would cost 50% more.

HP EliteDesk 705 G4 Mini - AMD Ryzen 5 – 3.60ghz 16gb RAM 256gb SSD Windows 1 for sale online | eBay

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Somewhat amazing.

 

[RTM]

Funny you should bring up this specific device, I just ordered a similar one from this listing:

HP EliteDesk 705 G3 Mini AMD Pro A10-8770E 2.8GHz DDR4 240GB SSD R7 GPU Win10Pro | eBay

HP EliteDesk 705 G3 Desktop Mini -AMD Pro A10-8770E 2.8GHz - 4GB DDR4 - 240GB SSD - R7 GPU - Win10Pro. INTERNAL DRIVE: 240GB SSD. DISPLAY GRAPHICS: RADEON R7. Setup like new by certified technician with genuine windows 10 pro and free office software.

www.ebay.com

That seller accepted a best offer of 150 USD btw

I actually tried to send in some offers for one of the devices from the seller you (OP) linked to, it auto declined up to around $10 below asking price, at which point I decided it was wise to think it over before proceeding, which is good as I hadn't noticed it was a dual core CPU and I wanted a quad core

 

[WANg]

Not a great deal - The G3 Minis are limited to AMD Excavator APUs. Those A6 excavators are weak (so weak you are better off just plonking 100 for a t630).

The 16GB (assuming 2x8GB) DDR4 SODIMM is around 65-90 USD, and a 256GB SSD is probably around 50 on retail. Knock about 8-12% for wholesale/supplier pricing and price accordingly. In my mind, the pricing is not good value.

The boxes can in theory take a Ryzen APU (or at the very least an Athlon 200GE - it’s a socketed for AM4) but I have yet to see anyone do this successfully and report back. If it does work, the value play here is to get a barebones model and put a cheap used AM4 Ryzen APU inside.

If you want a cheap small AMD Ryzen based NUC/HTPC (no PCIe slot), the t640 with the R1505G (equivalent to a Ryzen 3 3200G) has been on eBay best offers for around 150-200. Not much RAM and flash but you can always upgrade - for 300 total you would have a better machine.

 

[RTM]

Oh and BTW the listing you (OP) links to does not come with a NVME SSD, it states:

Still has PCIe NVMe SSD Slot for easy future storage upgrades

 

[WANg]

Funny you should bring up this specific device, I just ordered a similar one from this listing:

HP EliteDesk 705 G3 Mini AMD Pro A10-8770E 2.8GHz DDR4 240GB SSD R7 GPU Win10Pro | eBay

HP EliteDesk 705 G3 Desktop Mini -AMD Pro A10-8770E 2.8GHz - 4GB DDR4 - 240GB SSD - R7 GPU - Win10Pro. INTERNAL DRIVE: 240GB SSD. DISPLAY GRAPHICS: RADEON R7. Setup like new by certified technician with genuine windows 10 pro and free office software.

www.ebay.com

That seller accepted a best offer of 150 USD btw

I actually tried to send in some offers for one of the devices from the seller you (OP) linked to, it auto declined up to around $10 below asking price, at which point I decided it was wise to think it over before proceeding, which is good as I hadn't noticed it was a dual core CPU and I wanted a quad core

Hmm, do you have a spare Ryzen or Athlon 200 series APU knocking around? If so, I would be most interested to see if the G3 Mini chassis can take it. If so this can potentially make for interesting and cheap little NUC/HTPCs.

 

[RTM]

Hmm, do you have a spare Ryzen or Athlon 200 series APU knocking around? If so, I would be most interested to see if the G3 Mini chassis can take it. If so this can potentially make for interesting and cheap little NUC/HTPCs.

Unfortunately I do not, though I agree that it would be interesting, the affordable options do not look all that appealing however (I suspect a dual core ryzen is about equivalent to the quad core A10 cpu). I may have to keep an eye on eBay for a good deal, but don't keep your hopes up.

 

[WANg]

Funny you should bring up this specific device, I just ordered a similar one from this listing:

HP EliteDesk 705 G3 Mini AMD Pro A10-8770E 2.8GHz DDR4 240GB SSD R7 GPU Win10Pro | eBay

HP EliteDesk 705 G3 Desktop Mini -AMD Pro A10-8770E 2.8GHz - 4GB DDR4 - 240GB SSD - R7 GPU - Win10Pro. INTERNAL DRIVE: 240GB SSD. DISPLAY GRAPHICS: RADEON R7. Setup like new by certified technician with genuine windows 10 pro and free office software.

www.ebay.com

That seller accepted a best offer of 150 USD btw

I actually tried to send in some offers for one of the devices from the seller you (OP) linked to, it auto declined up to around $10 below asking price, at which point I decided it was wise to think it over before proceeding, which is good as I hadn't noticed it was a dual core CPU and I wanted a quad core

This is actually a better deal - the A10 is around the performance of the RX421BD, which is found on Synology TVS series NASes. The pricing is also decent (well, if it can take 2 drives then that’s not bad at all). The thing to watch out for with HTPC usage is that the APU built-in video decoder (UVD6) can only decode 8 bit HEVCs up to 4K, so 10 bit content will not see GPU accelerated playback.

 

[TLN]

Which of those can run ESXi?

 

[WANg]

Which of those can run ESXi?

They all can.

 

[Goossens]

They all can.

Don't most have Realtek NICs?

 

[WANg]

Don't most have Realtek NICs?

...the EliteDesk 705G3 DMs use Broadcom NICs, and even if it uses Realtek NICs, what of it? The question is whether they run ESXi, not which version of ESXi (everything up to 6.7) or whether it works out of the box with a standard ISO (no, make a custom one and include the Realtek VMKLinux driver).

Ask a simplistic question, get a simplistic answer.

 

[Patrick]

So I *may* have purchased three of these just to check them out. They came with Micron 1100 256GB 2.5" drives. Under the drives there was a M.2 WLAN and a M.2 SSD slot.

For $226 getting 16GB of memory, plus a 256GB SSD makes the rest of the system dirt cheap.

I *hopefully* will get time to try them out this weekend. They are limited to 1GbE, and the processors are not exactly fast by modern standards. Still, lots of RAM, a decent amount of storage capability, and apparently they have a Windows 10 Pro license embedded. Worst case they become a smart TV upgrade. If indeed they have Windows 10 Pro that makes them potential RDP clients which is not bad either.

 

[WANg]

So I *may* have purchased three of these just to check them out. They came with Micron 1100 256GB 2.5" drives. Under the drives there was a M.2 WLAN and a M.2 SSD slot.

For $226 getting 16GB of memory, plus a 256GB SSD makes the rest of the system dirt cheap.

I *hopefully* will get time to try them out this weekend. They are limited to 1GbE, and the processors are not exactly fast by modern standards. Still, lots of RAM, a decent amount of storage capability, and apparently they have a Windows 10 Pro license embedded. Worst case they become a smart TV upgrade. If indeed they have Windows 10 Pro that makes them potential RDP clients which is not bad either.

They are AM4 machines somewhat similar to the Lenovo ThinkCentre m715q Tinys - see if it’ll take regular Ryzen 3 or 5 APUs...

 

[RTM]

So... I finally had time to set it up, and honestly I am not too thrilled with it, but for now it seems to work.

I had a bunch of trouble installing OS and booting, seems like the magic solution was to boot USB installer in UEFI mode, let it install boot as a legacy and then boot from that.

A bigger issue was with the NIC, it seems that there are issues with the Linux driver (tg3), that make it crash (ifdown & ifup make it work again) when you transfer significant amount of data (for me updating did it). For now it seems to have been resolved (but more testing is necessary) by adding "iommu=soft" to boot options. For what it is worth, before that I also updated the kernel to 5.5, but by itself that did not resolve the issue.

 

[nickf1227]

Based on that feedback alone, I think the main thing to look for in this realm of devices is Intel LAN. If it has that, you can use it to do nearly anything.

 

[Patrick]

@RTM - I am medium on those as well.

Interesting note though - you CAN install Win 10 Pro then update and install WSL2

 

[byteporter]

I had a bunch of trouble installing OS and booting, seems like the magic solution was to boot USB installer in UEFI mode, let it install boot as a legacy and then boot from that.

It seems to lock down the UEFI Boot Manager in terms of being able to change it to point at whatever startup executable you want. I solved it by just renaming my boot loader (rEFInd) to \EFI\BOOT\BOOTx64.EFI which is the default/fallback boot loader in the UEFI spec and also what these look for by default. Normally I have this as \EFI\refind\refind_x64.efi and write a new entry that points to this, but these seem to undo that and reset to the default every time.