EXPIRED (US) - Oh look, hell just froze over - HP t740 thin clients are back below 400 USD (375 to 400, Wifi/BT or not)

[WANg]

The only RX550 low profile and single slot wide card I found is the "Yeston RX550-4G D5 LP" which only has 512 shaders of Lexa GPU, the same amount as the amd E9173, but 2GB more memory.

Ooooh. that's a full width card...and is roughly the same specs-wise as the AMD E9175, currently listed for the very unreasonable price of 400 dollars on evilBay. At that price and for the dimensions/power draw you can gun for the Inno3D GTX1050 slim (or 1650 single-slot) and get much more performance out of it.

It's really too bad that the tech for a half-width, half-height 1 slot card stopped with the GT1030 and went no place further. You figure some shady Chinese vendor would've flipped a bunch of Geforce GTX1050 Mobile GPUs into boards and made a killing for it on the SFF upgrader market by now.

 

[newabc]

Ooooh. that's a full width card...and is roughly the same specs-wise as the AMD E9175, currently listed for the very unreasonable price of 400 dollars on evilBay. At that price and for the dimensions/power draw you can gun for the Inno3D GTX1050 slim (or 1650 single-slot) and get much more performance out of it.

It's really too bad that the tech for a half-width, half-height 1 slot card stopped with the GT1030 and went no place further. You figure some shady Chinese vendor would've flipped a bunch of Geforce GTX1050 Mobile GPUs into boards and made a killing for it on the SFF upgrader market by now.

Yes, that's why I hasn't ordered this Yeston card to add a little hashing power to the 5070 extended: I hasn't figure out how to install it in the case without modifying the card's heat exchanging design.

I think the things of mobile GPUs will depend on how many of them will be pumped into the Chinese market. Beginning from Qotom and MiniSys, so many laptop CPUs are used in the fanless mini-boxes with multiple serial ports, and later with multiple intel NIC ports. I will not be surprised, if anyone wants a good sounding number like "3070" but he cannot get desktop version of 3070 with a fair MSRP, then the market space of changing mobile models for mini desktops will appear.

 

[newabc]

HP t740, 8g ram, $300, shipping is $18. 6 available:

HP t740 Thin Client AMD Ryzen V1756B 3.25GHz 8GB 64GB W10 IoT Enterprise | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for HP t740 Thin Client AMD Ryzen V1756B 3.25GHz 8GB 64GB W10 IoT Enterprise at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

Update: The sale was ended.

 

[Samir]

HP t740, 8g ram, $300, shipping is $18. 6 available:

HP t740 Thin Client AMD Ryzen V1756B 3.25GHz 8GB 64GB W10 IoT Enterprise | eBay

Find many great new & used options and get the best deals for HP t740 Thin Client AMD Ryzen V1756B 3.25GHz 8GB 64GB W10 IoT Enterprise at the best online prices at eBay! Free shipping for many products!

www.ebay.com

Pretty solid for wIOT and a keyboard and mouse (if the description is accurate).

 

[thetoad]

I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that means it doesn't come with ps2 ports, just usb for keyboard and mouse. can correct me if i'm wrong.

 

[Samir]

I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that means it doesn't come with ps2 ports, just usb for keyboard and mouse. can correct me if i'm wrong.

Because they mention the usb keyboard and mouse in the same description with the included system system specs (flash, mem, etc), I read that as it would have these included too.

 

[thetoad]

you are deffinitely right, i see now what you were referncing, I must have missed it earlier

"AC Adapter, Keyboard and Mouse are included

 

[WANg]

I might be wrong, but I'm pretty sure that means it doesn't come with ps2 ports, just usb for keyboard and mouse. can correct me if i'm wrong.

All 4 series HP thin clients do not have PS/2 ports built-in. And yes, I have the exactly same model (7NN06AT#ABA) from the same vendor, it does come with a USB keyboard+mouse set. Note: This is not the Wifi/BT model. So if you are planning to use one as a retrogaming machine for Dolphin (which needs Bluetooth to synch with the Wiimote/nunchuck), you might want to take a wait-and-see for the Bluetooth model.

 

[anoother]

That card is what we call “a unicorn” - a half-height, half-length 1 slot discrete GPU PCIe card that is capable of video encoding (GCN4/UVD 6.2 in the Polaris family) - the nVidia GT1030 is anywhere between 5-20% faster but NVENC doesn’t exist on those cards, and there’s no such thing as a 1 slot, half-length, half-height GTX1050/1650.
It’s an obscure card and are only found bundled on 4 "big" thin client machines (the HP t730/740, the Igel UD7-LX10 and the Wyse 5070 extended thin client) - if purchased separately from an AMD embedded partner (like Avnet) they want a prince’s ransom on it (I remember seeing quotes around 350+ USD). Even sourced from places like Aliexpress it’s still at least 200 for what is essentially an SFF RX540/550 card. On those 3 thin clients it’s commonly used to drive an extra 2 4K screens via mDP, and on the t740 it becomes a 6 screen remote display beast good for running booths on trade floors.

So yes, retain it as a rare card or flip it for instant money. You won't get RTX money for it but those in the know will still be willing to pay non-Avnet pricing to get their hands on one.

Are those the same specs as a Radeon Pro WX 2100 (2GB) or 3100 (4GB)? The 3100 is currently available for ~£50 on eBay.

 

[WANg]

Are those the same specs as a Radeon Pro WX 2100 (2GB) or 3100 (4GB)? The 3100 is currently available for ~£50 on eBay.

Roughly yes - these are all Lexa (GCN4) based cards - the 3100 has, what, more VRAM on a wider bus?
The 3100 might not work - the t740 can potentially push up to 70w on that slot, but that's a bit on the knife's edge.
The WX2100....maybe. It depends on whether you have the half-width, half-height bracket version of the card. For 100 USD it's not expensive to chance it, although I am not sure if the t740 will play ball. I'll look into ordering one in a few weeks to test that theory out.

 

[jmsq]

I'm actually suprised the WX3100 has a higher TDP (65w) than the WX4100 (50w); looks like they clocked Lexa a bit too high on the 3100. I may test my WX4100 in the T740 to see if that's a viable config, since that would probably be the fastest all-AMD graphics setup you could do in this config until AMD releases something lower-wattage on RDNA.

 

[Fireworm]

I ended up buying one of these.

Confirmed:
Win 10 iot is installed.
WiFi + Bluetooth included.
Bios is accessible, and slot is enabled.
(This was not the case on the t730, which needed a custom bios flashed).

Cables were still a wrapped w/ ties, looks brand new. Box had a huge gouge, maybe the got them as damaged...

 

[jmsq]

I'm actually suprised the WX3100 has a higher TDP (65w) than the WX4100 (50w); looks like they clocked Lexa a bit too high on the 3100. I may test my WX4100 in the T740 to see if that's a viable config, since that would probably be the fastest all-AMD graphics setup you could do in this config until AMD releases something lower-wattage on RDNA.

So I tested the T740/WX4100 combo (16g RAM, 512g nvme) running Arch/mesa drivers and Unigine Heaven 4.0 as the test workload. The hitching I saw in the framerate seems to suggest the system may be power-throttling. I am curious if the T740 will work with one of HP's larger power bricks though, so I have the 150w model on order to do another round of testing. The Lenovo tiny systems that are GPU-equipped ship with 135w power bricks instead of the 65/90w ones, so that gives me some hope here, granted the T740 only has one power brick SKU so it may just refuse to draw the extra power.

 

[Samir]

So I tested the T740/WX4100 combo (16g RAM, 512g nvme) running Arch/mesa drivers and Unigine Heaven 4.0 as the test workload. The hitching I saw in the framerate seems to suggest the system may be power-throttling. I am curious if the T740 will work with one of HP's larger power bricks though, so I have the 150w model on order to do another round of testing. The Lenovo tiny systems that are GPU-equipped ship with 135w power bricks instead of the 65/90w ones, so that gives me some hope here, granted the T740 only has one power brick SKU so it may just refuse to draw the extra power.

How hot did the power supply get? I know when I'm running my lower power HP charger on my 8760w with the extended battery, it gets very, very hot. And the 240w charger stays a lot cooler, probably because it's not getting stressed as hard.

 

[jmsq]

How hot did the power supply get? I know when I'm running my lower power HP charger on my 8760w with the extended battery, it gets very, very hot. And the 240w charger stays a lot cooler, probably because it's not getting stressed as hard.

So the power supply got decently warm but not burning. I just tested with the 150w adapter but that doesn't appear to have solved this particular issue. It's possible it's just being power limited at the board/slot level. More tests with different applications/OSes may be required to say for certain, but I can say it doesn't appear to be a thermal issue as neither the APU or the discrete GPU goes over 70c during the test.

 

[fossxplorer]

How did you custom flash that t730?
I have one with totally locked with password, severely limited due to that.
Was that the problem with yours t730 too?

I ended up buying one of these.

Confirmed:
Win 10 iot is installed.
WiFi + Bluetooth included.
Bios is accessible, and slot is enabled.
(This was not the case on the t730, which needed a custom bios flashed).

Cables were still a wrapped w/ ties, looks brand new. Box had a huge gouge, maybe the got them as damaged...

 

[Fireworm]

How did you custom flash that t730?
I have one with totally locked with password, severely limited due to that.
Was that the problem with yours t730 too?

Yes.

I bought a ch341a usb flasher ($15?), popped out the bios chip, then flashed the latest bios from hp.

 

[jmsq]

So the power supply got decently warm but not burning. I just tested with the 150w adapter but that doesn't appear to have solved this particular issue. It's possible it's just being power limited at the board/slot level. More tests with different applications/OSes may be required to say for certain, but I can say it doesn't appear to be a thermal issue as neither the APU or the discrete GPU goes over 70c during the test.

So I'm no longer convinced it's a power issue, but I'm not sure exactly what's going on with the WX4100. I just put in a Quadro P1000 (47w TDP vs. the Radeon 50w TDP) and it runs flawlessly. So either the Quadro is just barely staying under the slot power ceiling, or there is some other issue with the WX4100 under linux (maybe a driver conflict with integrated GPU?) Also worth noting that the WX4100 is a PCIe x8 card electrically while the Quadro has the full x16 pins populated; maybe that helps with power delivery.

 

[Markess]

So I'm no longer convinced it's a power issue, but I'm not sure exactly what's going on with the WX4100. I just put in a Quadro P1000 (47w TDP vs. the Radeon 50w TDP) and it runs flawlessly. So either the Quadro is just barely staying under the slot power ceiling, or there is some other issue with the WX4100 under linux (maybe a driver conflict with integrated GPU?) Also worth noting that the WX4100 is a PCIe x8 card electrically while the Quadro has the full x16 pins populated; maybe that helps with power delivery.

May be dumb questions and things you already checked: Is Arch loading libva-mesa-driver with the AMD card? I think the system will run Mesa without it (its listed as optional for Mesa), but the framerate will probably be awful, so may be something to check? Are you using AMDGPU or AMDGPU PRO? I've found that AMDGPU PRO actually made my system perform a lot worse. My system differs from yours quite a bit though, so YMMV.

Did you load the proprietary NVIDIA driver package? Current generation NVIDIA driver configures itself quite nicely, but AMD's driver, even the proprietary "PRO" one, sometimes requires some tweaking in my limited experience with Arch.

Did you try any other benchmarks with the AMD? I know the Lexa architecture tanks pretty hard in some of the GFXBench tests for example, maybe Uingine Heaven is hard on it too?

 

[newabc]

May be dumb questions and things you already checked: Is Arch loading libva-mesa-driver with the AMD card? I think the system will run Mesa without it (its listed as optional for Mesa), but the framerate will probably be awful, so may be something to check? Are you using AMDGPU or AMDGPU PRO? I've found that AMDGPU PRO actually made my system perform a lot worse. My system differs from yours quite a bit though, so YMMV.

Did you load the proprietary NVIDIA driver package? Current generation NVIDIA driver configures itself quite nicely, but AMD's driver, even the proprietary "PRO" one, sometimes requires some tweaking in my limited experience with Arch.

Did you try any other benchmarks with the AMD? I know the Lexa architecture tanks pretty hard in some of the GFXBench tests for example, maybe Uingine Heaven is hard on it too?

As what I have tried with the AMDGPU PRO driver on AMD E9173, it is quite restricted on the Linux versions and others. Personally, I will prefer the Mesa driver over AMDGPU PRO if I am able to use Mesa only.

I tried NVIDIA CUDA on a gaming laptop with an AMD cpu and a NVIDIA GPU on Ubuntu. This is the basic idea I follows on this laptop: install Mesa driver from PPA first, then install the CUDA driver. Then the AMD cpu's graphic interface can be used as display and the NVIDIA GPU with CUDA.