HP T730 8GB RAM 32GB Storage Thin Client

[MiniKnight]

These have best offer available $167 + 16.16 shipping but they've accepted a BO. HP T730 THIN CLIENT AMD RX-427BB 2.70GHZ 8GB 32GB R7 GRAPHICS WIN 7E X8F23UP#ABA | eBay

This one looked promising since it's the bigger case like the T620 Plus that has the LP card slot. If you could get a good BO it isn't much more than HP T620 Plus WES7e Thin Client Quad Core 2GHz 16GB-F 4GB-R Fiber K1L95UA#ABA Lot 889296567073 | eBay

It also has 2x the RAM and storage and is a newer model. Dual channel instead of single channel memory and a higher 2133 instead of 1600 mhz. Clock speed base is 2.7 instead of 2 and the max clocks go about 1ghz higher. Bigger caches. Passmark is 2x.

Maybe it isn't the best, but if you want that form factor, moving to a passmark between the D1508 and D-1518 is a huge step up.

Past the CPU, it has a PCIE 3 x16 on the SOC so the official spec of a PCIE x8 expansion slot is most likely Gen3. So 1GbE WAN and 10/25/40GbE LAN is possible.

For the naysayers, here's why I think it's good. It's still compact and with 8GB RAM and 32GB SSD, it may be not just pfSense-able but virtualized HA pfSense-able.

 

[BLinux]

definitely looks interesting. the description is a bit lacking, but i've sent out a few questions to the seller and I'll share what i find out (does it include PSU? keyboard? mouse? missing or broken plastics? vertical stand? etc.)

 

[BLinux]

So, this is what the seller responded with:

Thank you for looking at our listing. These units are New Open Box. These have the power cord, mouse and keyboard. They do not include a stand our monitor. There are no noted cosmetic issues with the units.

If these are new open box, then I think the seller may have misunderstood me and they do likely include the vertical stand. These look very similar to the T620, so I think having the stand to hold it vertically and leave an air gap at the bottom is pretty useful.

 

[nthu9280]

Need self control.

 

[mmo]

Need fire extinguisher for the fire on my wallet.

 

[BLinux]

thank goodness... i got a counter offer for $150+S&H, but they are now sold out!

 

[fossxplorer]

Seller took down the last 3 for unknown reason..not that i was gonna buy! Too much to waste money to play with these.

 

[Patrick]

Does anyone have interest in us doing a little comparison piece?

 

[MiniKnight]

I'd want to read that.

 

[WANg]

I was researching T620s yesterday after seeing the post about it here. The power numbers do look very good, but the CPU seems a bit weak for virtualisation purposes. I guess it could be used for the witness host though.

The biggest problem is the high price/low availability of the Plus model in the UK...

Does anyone have interest in us doing a little comparison piece?

Sure, mine is doing yeoman duty as a low power/low noise ESXi hypervisor. Let me know if you need photos or figures.

 

[Marsh]

@WANg
Please tell us know more about you setup. Pictures would be nice/
How many VM are you running? What are the VMs?
Is it a standalone ESXi host, with or without vCenter?

 

[WANg]

@WANg
Please tell us know more about you setup. Pictures would be nice/
How many VM are you running? What are the VMs?
Is it a standalone ESXi host, with or without vCenter?

Oh, I have a dedicated thread right here with photos of the interior and exterior. Right now it's a standalone ESXi host with 7 VMs running, but depending on whether I can get a Mikrotik CRS317-1G-16S+RM Layer 3 10GbE switch and an additional HP t730, I might cluster them using VCenter or Proxmox (depending on whether I can get VCenter cheaply or not). The big issue here is the inability to get VMotion working, as I don't think IOMMU virtualization is working (not sure if it's drivers, BIOS 0r hardware). I might have to swap out the Sandisk for another M.2 SSD and test drive it with Proxmox (maybe AMD DMAR support works there?) or WinSK16 with Hyper-V. Overall, the performance is surprisingly good (but then, it was meant to upgrade a MicroCenter G7, and we all know how slow that thing can be nowadays) - about the same as a Haswell Intel NUC, which I kinda consider this to be - a dual 10GbE port capable Super-NUC. No issues running those VMs.

 

[realtomatoes]

Oh, I have a dedicated thread right here with photos of the interior and exterior. Right now it's a standalone ESXi host with 7 VMs running, but depending on whether I can get a Mikrotik CRS317-1G-16S+RM Layer 3 10GbE switch and an additional HP t730, I might cluster them using VCenter or Proxmox (depending on whether I can get VCenter cheaply or not). The big issue here is the inability to get VMotion working, as I don't think IOMMU virtualization is working (not sure if it's drivers, BIOS 0r hardware). I might have to swap out the Sandisk for another M.2 SSD and test drive it with Proxmox (maybe AMD DMAR support works there?) or WinSK16 with Hyper-V. Overall, the performance is surprisingly good (but then, it was meant to upgrade a MicroCenter G7, and we all know how slow that thing can be nowadays) - about the same as a Haswell Intel NUC, which I kinda consider this to be - a dual 10GbE port capable Super-NUC. No issues running those VMs.

VMUG Advantage gives you vCenter and more for $200 a year.

 

[chinesestunna]

2018... when Thin Clients are running 8GB RAM

 

[WANg]

2018... when Thin Clients are running 8GB RAM

More like 2013 - that's when I loaded a bunch of HP gt7725 "fats" with 6-8GB of RAM and deployed it out to end users in my line of work. Yes, you really need that much RAM for thin clients even back then. If you use HP ThinPro it uses a RAM based copy-on-write filesystem to support temp files in addition to the RAM you'll need to support protocols like ThinLinc, NoMachine NX or HP RGS.

The fact that you can buy a thin client these days that can support 6 2560x1600 screens over DisplayPort tells you just how much screen real estate is needed for stuff like visualizing trade strategies (finance), eyeing alerts on clusters of nodes on Nagios (IT) or medical/engineering work. 8GB for the big thin clients in shops with a ton of virtualized desktops on managed hypervisors is totally reasonable nowadays.

 

[chinesestunna]

More like 2013 - that's when I loaded a bunch of HP gt7725 "fats" with 6-8GB of RAM and deployed it out to end users in my line of work. Yes, you really need that much RAM for thin clients even back then. If you use HP ThinPro it uses a RAM based copy-on-write filesystem to support temp files in addition to the RAM you'll need to support protocols like ThinLinc, NoMachine NX or HP RGS.

The fact that you can buy a thin client these days that can support 6 2560x1600 screens over DisplayPort tells you just how much screen real estate is needed for stuff like visualizing trade strategies (finance), eyeing alerts on clusters of nodes on Nagios (IT) or medical/engineering work. 8GB for the big thin clients in shops with a ton of virtualized desktops on managed hypervisors is totally reasonable nowadays.

Great info, thanks!

 

[nthu9280]

I know this slightly bigger but EliteDesk G2 SFF seems to be going <$200. For example this one has less than two hours to go with min bid. Even some the BO listings are ~$250.

HP EliteDesk 800 G2 4GB RAM, i5-6500, 3.20GHz, 250GB HDD, Windows 10! | eBay

 

[WANg]

I know this slightly bigger but EliteDesk G2 SFF seems to be going <$200. For example this one has less than two hours to go with min bid. Even some the BO listings are ~$250.

HP EliteDesk 800 G2 4GB RAM, i5-6500, 3.20GHz, 250GB HDD, Windows 10! | eBay

Well, it's not "slightly" bigger - the EliteDesk SFFs runs about the same size as its Dell or Lenovo equivalent (Optiplex 7040/Lenovo ThinkCentre M900) - which is the industry standard of ~13 Liters in cubic dimensions. The thin client is only roughly 3.5 Liters. That being said, I can't knock the 800G2 SFF too much - unlike its competitors it does have 4 RAM slots (so 64GB RAM is totally possible) and 4 PCIe slots (even though one is PCIe 3.0 x16, one is x4 and the other 2 are x1s, so they could've just added an extra M.2 Key-E slot or 2 and make the machine smaller). If I have to spend good money on it, I'll go with that one. Used thin clients have almost no residual value on the secondary market, and as soon as HP announces the t740 (and more units go off-lease) the market will be flooded with t730s, dragging prices down even further, and you won't find a sub-SFF machine with half-decent CPU horsepower and dual 10GbE functionality for the price-point (believe me, I looked into all the NUCs and Mini/Micro SFF models before I settled on the t730). If you can get one under $175 it's a good deal.

Oh, I think someone on the STH forums are selling EliteDesk 800 G2 Minis for about $200 a pop. The G2 Minis are less than 2 liters in size, so they are like "corporate NUCs". Probably a good thing to explore if you want one to experiment with.

 

[Patrick]

Mine just arrived. Vertical stand and a place for a LP PCIe card slot.

Also came with the keyboard and mouse in the thin client packaging.

 

[WANg]

Mine just arrived. Vertical stand and a place for a LP PCIe card slot.

Also came with the keyboard and mouse in the thin client packaging.

Hm..did it arrive with the 90w barrel power supply?