Thank you for sticking with this topic! Your channel has been amazingly helpful to me! After testing out a number of solutions, these tiny systems (even the older ones), have become my favorite hardware to do virtualization with Proxmox in the home. They're quiet, small, and power efficient. Everything you need in a home server. Even running multiple nodes, is more efficient than one larger unit. Something I would love to figure out is a reasonable solution for a fast JBOD so I can also use one of these tiny nodes to handle my file server as well.
It might work to put a $20 HBA card (such as LSI SAS9200-8E the E is for external connection) with external Mini SAS connection where a GPU would normally plug in? Get 4-8 drives that way. Or an m.2 to multiple SATA like Asmedia ASM1166 for about $30. Could re-purpose a cheap/old NAS for the power and case to hold the drives.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Thanks Patrick. Yeah, pretty sure I would feel the upgrade. The charts at the end I think speak for themselves. Keep doing these videos brother!
I ended up buying a 600 mini g9 for my mother, with the usb-c module to leverage the PD from the monitor, use a single cable and get rid of the power brick, and it's a great machine, well beyond my expectations. Quiet, fast, well refined, the typical clean Bios interface from HP. IMHO much better than the Optiplex Micro for about the same price. The only downside is the cap to vPro Essential, but otherwise it would be pretty much identical to the 800 g9. I highly recommend it.
I watch your channel for long time, finally I came to buying my first home PC-like server (till now I had 7 Raspberry Pi 4 doing the job). I decided to go for Beelink SER5 AMD Ryzen 7 5800H, maxed it out with 64GB RAM and 2x 2TB SSD disks. So far I cannot be more happy: Proxmox, tones of VMs and CT and everything is working super quiet and quite low power (25W in the night, when nobody touches it, max when I am compiling something it can go up to 65W). I don't use monitor - it is a headless server so GPU is not used at all. I wish it had 2 more SSD ports, maybe few more USB ports but so far so good. And it is < 400 GBP nowadays so not bad.
On your recommendation I just got one of these. It is awesome. DDR5, i7, whisper quiet even under load, more ports than a sane person will ever need. These are what the Intel NUCs should be. Thanks Patrick, you showed me the way! A.
Glad you like it. We are going to have how to add 2.5GbE and 10GbE in these soon. Mentions of how it works is in the key lessons learned of the upcoming HP Elite Mini 800 G9 video
I am loving my Lenovo m90q gen3. I have set it up as a headless retro gaming system, which I can access anywhere from my country using Parsec and RDP which is awesome since I have to travel a lot for work.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo Unfortunately my ISP uses CGNAT so port forwarding is unfeasible but I just wrote a script to forward my ngrok RDP connection URL to my mail and parsec works even with CGNAT.
Hi Patrick! I hope you're doing great today. I wonder if that memory flap is to prevent air turbulence, while still pulling heat off of the RAM. That way you don't get eddies of hot air bouncing back into the system instead of heading out the back.
Found your channel after I cleverly built a totally unique kubernetes cluster with used lenovo tiny that pretty much everyone else had thought of before. I really wish I had found it before, though, because vPro should have been a must! Finding a console server is a pta.
Awesome! I just wish for faster connectivity, having 10G for a clustered storage is just needed. If you only read a lot drbd/linstor/piraeus does great (full speed) on 1G but writes are just not great :(
this is an interesting one indeed, idle power is really good especially concidering the harware performance, and that it isn't arm(since x64 uses more power than arm typically) and even more impressive is that the ssd, and psu and such are included in that(1).when you mentioned about this video I directly thought, that it probably was one of the new big little chips which it indeed is. seems to behave quite much like a laptop, but more focussed on airflow, compactness, sound, and performance rather than portability, screen etc. pricing seems pretty good as well with the hardware it has.. I wonder what to expect from it in the future once such chips are more refined (so after the first experimental generation(s) and when computer vendors and such start using it more), also especially since efficiency could increase even more, because right now that chip still uses the old 10nm process, while by now they can go up to around 3nm, which might cause insane efficiency gains. with idle, the storage however likely still is one of the main bottlenecks. anyway it seems like a nice server, good to see energy efficient servers are becomming more common again, especially after a period where computer hardware seemed to completely forgot about the existence of the concept of using little energy. (1) I forgot to mention that my old sub 2w server was tested running directly from flash storage to make it efficient, later I added a ssd anyway due to problems with power outages and data loss, and the ssd used more than the entire server used to. if I need more performance on my home eco server it acually might be a very good option since it uses roughly the same amount of idle power(ssd included) which for a home server is the main power state a server tends to be in most of the time. the reason I say "if I need more performance" is because I also have acces to a ampere server which is more than fast enough for the more heavy things right now.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo In this video I feel you hit a perfect balance, short and punchy, and then the standard "hello..." gives us a moment to orient ourselves into the topic. I was really surprised at how much I liked the way you did it in this video.
the company i used to work for said they and a lot of other companies prefer a Lenovo Thinkcentre Mini PC specifically the M70q model than HP's... they sent it out to us during covid lockdowns. I remember always wanting an HP Mini PC because it definitely looks more stylish than Lenovo's but to my surprise i fall in love with M70Q and eventually bought my own.
HP doesn't seem to be even allowing configuring around here in Europe. They just sell some units (i3-i7), no data on flex ports that are bundled, no choice, and apparently no dGPU option. Same appears to be the case for the 800 version.
This is possible for G4 and onwards. G4 its 35W systems only, G5 its 35W and 65W. Theres a card specifically for G4 35w, another for G5 35w/65w, and then a third that seems to work for G6-G9 at least, 35w & 65w. I don't think any work with discrete gpus, as that would draw too much power. I can get you the part numbers if you're still interested.
I was just looking into the graphics card options for the 600 G9 and it looks like there are none for the DM but you could get smaller ones for the SFF and larger ones for the TWR :)
You cannot upgrade the CPU or retrofit a graphics card. HP still encodes a featureset into the BIOS so that you cannot upgrade. This applies to "cheap" Elite Mini 400 as well as to expensive ZBook Fury 6.000 € laptops.
The last gen amd model seems to sometimes have issues with blue screening. We have had two (maybe 3 now). HP has replaced a bunch of parts and still has the issue(3 different windows image and 3 drives)
@@ServeTheHomeVideo it is the AMD it appears two are it looks like Ryzen 4650 (they are both redeployed now after HP replaced everything) model 3J459AV
Fun fact I've noticed, the 35 and 65w hardware is rarely that much more robust. It just uses higher fan speeds for 65w. (I also learned the 35W cpu run less than TJmax with the fan unplugged. not advisable for daily use, but a sign of the capability of the cooling solution as it is.) On top of that, if you put a 65W chip in it, it may force a 35W PL1 anyway, just from firmware.
I own 2 units HP Elitedesk 800 G3 DM . Both 35W and 65W variants. They are quite abit different in exterior and interior. The 65W version has perforated top panel, 35W has none. The 65W has an all copper CPU heatsink, 35W use all aluminium heatsink.
To bad that they close the case again, i love the open case design from the HP EliteDesk 800 G6 much more airflow so they stay quiet. We have a lot of HP ProDesk 600 G6 Mini PC close case design and they make a lot of noice..
Honestly, when the mini PCs with Zen 3+ are same or lower price, I don't see a lot of point in having this. The 65W parts I suppose are stronger, so if they are not more expensive, then sure.
Edit: your performance chart did not have the 12400, 12500 or 12600 65w processors on it. I think that is a shame because budget wise it might make sense to upgrade it yourself if the performance comes out similar to a more expensive i7. I think stock the 12600t is a better value if its $230 to the i7, gotta ask yourself if its worth that. If you really need 2 more P cores and 4 more E cores. Or if your task would run better on 2 lower nodes. You got a pretty crazy deal for sure.
Nice video, but what do i use this for? An K8s cluster with at least 3 nodes is way to expensive, then i would rather go for 3+ Raspberries 4bs. Could you share some examples please?
As most comments have noted, these are usually wanted as Proxmox nodes (distributed OS virtualization suite). They also make great on-site remote access nodes for work. If you're just doing Kubernetes on a price gouged RasPi budget, I'd aim for a used 705 g4 with a Ryzen 5 PRO 2400g instead, better IOPS/watt than the machine above, better performance per $$$ than the gouged Pi at an average of $160/node, and as a bonus the integrated graphics are actually good enough for real time video transcode if you ever need it.
@@KiraSlith Ohhh as a Proxmox node, thats kind of a nice idea, i usually have this and pretty powerful roots at an ISP but for Home-Lab that could be usefull your right. Any other ideas?
@@jobasti Should make a blazing fast and cheap SQL database node if you load it out with redundant 6tb NVMe drives for your Database and a SATA SSD to boot from. Not as fast or efficient per-connection as a purpose-built node like a Dell 7910 (Workstation 'T' or Rackmount) with a pair of e5-2696 v4 CPUs (44 cores, 88 threads, with several dozen pCore states, and a 80+ Platinum 1300w PSU, hard to beat that level of instant scalability) but it'll outdo anything else in the 1L size class thanks to it's thread count. It can do all the other usual clustering jobs a Pi can do too, one of these should be as fast as 8 Pi 4s for Beowulf compute clustering (though it won't be as power efficient), but nobody but the most stuck-in mathematicians or physicists need anything like that.
If you are looking at Pi, price out the Pi and go shopping for 6th-10th gen hardware. I think the sweet spot is 7th-9th gen, like Lenovo m710p m720p m920p, m910p. 7th gen and below is 4 core, 8th gen is up to 6 core, and 9th up to 8 core with i7/i9. For the price of a Pi with a case and ssd solution you will get more compute, 8 PCIe lanes, more Ram, native NVMe and SATA.
If I wanted to use these as a Proxmox cluster, what are the pros and cons for getting the 2.5gbe addon without vpro? What does vPro give me that would help with Proxmox? Is it the hardware passthrough abilities?
@@ServeTheHomeVideo right, so that’s pretty much it? No reason to worry about missing vPro if I could use the 2.5gbe? Like you said in the video, wish they would just add 2.5gbe by default on these.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo You can load MeshCommander right onto the AMT BIOS and you can just point a web browser at it and get basically a full lights out management. It works better than some commercial options in my experience. It is a little tricky to setup and you need a $5 HDMI/DisplayPort monitor emulator but if you are running this as a Proxmox box not needing a monitor is a *huge* plus IMHO and certainly worth the extra money.
@@wallyrogers2371 vPro would help with remote booting, so that is definitely a pro, especially if one wants to automatically turn off and on a pc depending on electricity costs during certain parts of the day, power loss, updates, etc.
I don't know if I would trust that 2.5gb I225v Nic addon for any kind of server application reliability. I have experience with AMD systems with the I225v's built in and they have been nothing but trouble with performance drops, disconnections and other weird issues. The systems needed full restarts near daily to fix network issues. In the end we just threw in a couple of old intel gigabit PCIe nics and the systems have worked flawlessly ever since. As far as I am concerned I wouldn't want the I225v in my desktop let alone any production or lab machine.
We have a few Proxmox Cluster pieces on the main site (easier for people to copy/paste.) It is largely the same process as here ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-qknaskiab_Q.html
I have my eyes on one of these older HP Elitedesk/Prodesk i5 6500T $135 i5 7500T $165 i5 8500T $205 i7 6700T $220 All of them have 16GB DDR4 and 256G SSDs (7500T has 512 GB) Is the i7 with its 8 threads faster than the 8th gen i5? And which do you think is best value among these 4? There's also a Ryzen 2400GE SKU with 8GB of RAM for $222, is it better than the 6700T and 8500T?
I would personally go for the Core i5-8500T. You can run Windows 11 out of the box. Also, the 6 physical cores were a big jump since that is when Intel really started competing with AMD.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo I've seen your written reviews with the benchmark charts after commenting and they made things clear. I really appreciate your work; thanks for the advice!
The next Project TinyMiniMicro video will be the Lenovo M80q Gen3 I believe. That has the i5-12500T. There is a bigger performance gap than there used to be in 35W i5 v. i7 because of the E-cores.
@@ServeTheHomeVideo oh absolutely i7-12700T is better given the fact that it has twice the core count and has P & E cores. But they're also more expensive. Refurbs / Used may have good deals on i7-12700T in some time but for the time being they are fairly expensive compared to the i5-12500T.
I wish more corpos bought Acer Veritron instead of the equivalents from Dell, HP or Lenovo. Why? Because they come with full size PCI-E x16 port. It's nearly impossible to find them on 2nd hand market.:(
I tried to install Windows Server 2022 on this mini PC. Unfortunately it's impossible, because intel does not provide any compatible Windows Server RST driver for the storage chipset. Usually you can use the RST Enterprise Driver for Windows Server but there is no driver for 12th gen CPU. Maybe someone have any solution?
Why is there no 13 gen Intel CPU in the list? And why is there only "T" versions. I would find it fair for Buyers to se the diffrents to a "normal" Desktop CPU.
Intel still has not launched the 13th Gen Core for commercial PCs and with vPro. You are right to expect that is coming though. If you go to the Elite Mini 800 G9, that has the 65W TDP CPUs as well as the 35W T parts.
Hey Patrick, after your review, I went and grabbed one of these. It is brilliant! Whisper quiet i7. The grpahics module you mentioned, where might I get one? Thanks, Ade
@@patrick.771 Hi, yes pretty much. The noise level does go up if it is working hard, but I sit in a silent office and maybe I can a hear faint "shhhhhh" noise if I listen. The cars on the highway (200 yards away) are louder. The machine is on my desk and 1 yard from me. Cheers, A
The lack of multi Gig E (at least 2.5, but 10 would be better) for the LOM is really disappointing for a modern business system of this caliber. Even the 800 G9 model doesn't apper to offer it.
Looking for a fast, inexpensive, low idle power proxmox home server. Considering "HP Pro Mini 400 G9" model with 12500T CPU which seems similar but cheaper... Anyone here able to confirm the AlderLike idle power problem in Linux has been fixed with new kernels and these G9 HP Minis can reach the same sub-5W idle in Linux as tested here in Windows?
