Notice: Page may contain affiliate links for which we may earn a small commission through services like Amazon Affiliates or Skimlinks.
Eh, if you want H265 and on the relative cheap, that’s either one of the HP Ryzen thin clients (540/640/740) or the Wyse 5070. The GPU on the t730 is GCN2 and doesn’t do H265 decoding in hardware.
No flipping idea - the ASM1806 is, what, a PCIe to SATA bridge chip, so it's a multi-SATA drive setup?
Okay, but what does the actual card look like? it's a PCIe 3.0x2 Key M slot, but there's no guarantee that it'll work.
I’m actually looking into doing the same thing. Running multiple HDDs with one of these cards: https://a.aliexpress.com/_mNoTxkC
It has a Marvell chip in it which is both a SATA to PCIe bridge and a SATA controller. The one I linked to actually supports up to 8 drives which is bonkers.
Yeah, but where do you plan to get power for the 8 drives? There's no molex or SATA power in the thin client, and considering that this is a low wattage, passively cooled thin client sitting on a non-standard board, you'll be lucky to tap the power rails for more than a single drive without impacting stability. Those port multiplier boards also require a heatsink (with decent airflow) to stay viable in a small box.
Last edited:
I've been using two of these as HTPCs for a while now and I'm very very happy with them.
Had some eBay gift cards burning a hole in my pocket, and just managed to snag another one of these for $64 (sans PSU and OS). Not sure what I'll do with it, lol, but couldn't pass it up.
Had some eBay gift cards burning a hole in my pocket, and just managed to snag another one of these for $64 (sans PSU and OS). Not sure what I'll do with it, lol, but couldn't pass it up.
Yeah, it's a nice little machine to mess around with. I gave mine away to a buddy of mine, but am contemplating buying another one.
LOL, I had forgotten that I bought another one a few months ago and have no idea where I've stashed it away. Going to have do some hunting tonight, I guess.
Anyway, I noticed that the option port is listed in the guide as "HP FlexIO for the option port" - does that mean the "HP 10GBase-T Flex IO (56Q71AA)" module from the "Perfect Project TinyMiniMicro Pushing a 1L PC as a Server Concept" article would work in the T640? Anyone able to test this or brave enough to give it a try?
No. Different model series, different form factor - the connector on the port is not compatible.
Yeah, I got a little too excited reading that. I've tried many times over the last couple of years, but I've never been able to turn up a model number or part number for the T640's HDMI option port. Nor even any units on eBay that had it already installed. Not that I actually need it for my HTPC use case, since a DP to HDMI cable works just fine (once I found the right kind to use to get 4K HDR passthrough to work).
I did a (very silly) thing...
That's an SK hynix 128GB NVMe SSD, in an M.2 Key A+E to Key M adapter, in the Wifi card position.
And then that's a M.2 NGFF to 7-pin SATA adapter in the SSD slot, connected to a 4 TB SATA SSD that's been stripped of its usual 2.5" plastic casing, with a USB to SATA Power cable routed from a USB port in through the Kensington Security slot (this particular SSD uses 5V only).
The main purpose of this will be as an in-car, self-contained Plex media server and Plex HTPC player to keep the kids occupied on long road trips. The 128GB SSD is for the OS, the 4 TB SSD is for media.
Why didn't I just use a 4 TB NVMe SSD and call it good? That's a good question, which I don't have a good answer for, other than "I wanted to see if I could do it..." (well, that, and I had the SATA SSD on hand already and 4 TB NVMe SSDs are still a bit too pricy for this project).
That's an SK hynix 128GB NVMe SSD, in an M.2 Key A+E to Key M adapter, in the Wifi card position.
And then that's a M.2 NGFF to 7-pin SATA adapter in the SSD slot, connected to a 4 TB SATA SSD that's been stripped of its usual 2.5" plastic casing, with a USB to SATA Power cable routed from a USB port in through the Kensington Security slot (this particular SSD uses 5V only).
The main purpose of this will be as an in-car, self-contained Plex media server and Plex HTPC player to keep the kids occupied on long road trips. The 128GB SSD is for the OS, the 4 TB SSD is for media.
Why didn't I just use a 4 TB NVMe SSD and call it good? That's a good question, which I don't have a good answer for, other than "I wanted to see if I could do it..." (well, that, and I had the SATA SSD on hand already and 4 TB NVMe SSDs are still a bit too pricy for this project).