HP Elitedesk SFF G4

fenderman

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Based on personal experience, as well as several youtube videos, a good speed test is Windows Boot, and I don't see enough difference to pay a premium unless you are going for just "tidiness of internals", plus check your motherboard because NVME has a downside of sometimes disabling a bunch of onboard SATA ports on your computer.

YMMV but imho SATA SSD is still plenty good for all purposes. Here are my personal results:
  • wife i5-6600k PC boots from SSD (M.2 850 EVO SATA) - boot time 31 seconds
  • mine i5-8600k PC boots from a 960 EVO (M.2 NVME) - boot time 30.x seconds (more than 30, less than 31)
  • sons i7-920 PC boots from a Crucial SSD using onboard SATA - boot time 35 seconds (same PC booted the same OS in 14 minutes off 5400 RPM platter drive, circa 2009)

But from what I can tell you, only silly benchmarks can measure a difference at least when it comes to booting, loading games, saving files and so forth. If there is a place where NVME crushes SSD I haven't yet encountered it. Most are marketed based heavily on disk benchmarks that in no way seem to mimic real world usage.
Im my case the nvme was cheaper. As I noted there does not seem to be a speed benefit.
 

J Sigmo

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I chose NVMEs for two of these PCs based mostly on preserving positions for other drives in these small form factor PCs. I sometimes end up with a buttload of drives in machines on which I do photo editing. If they're faster in some way, then that'll be a bonus.

I need to see a "Photoshop benchmark" ;)
 

fenderman

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@fenderman

I don't want to wear out my welcome, but "you da man!". Now that I've apparently bought the last of this seller's batch of these particular machines, another friend still needs a replacement for his home PC. He doesn't do anything that requires a particularly powerful PC, but it never hurts to get something that will serve you well for some time into the future.

He asked about a particular Dell refurb that he can get from Amazon, but it was around $450, and is only an i7 4500 or some such. It does have 16 Gig of RAM, and a 450GB SSD, but I figured you might have a recommendation for something similar for less money, or something more powerful for about the same price. He most likely will not be using this for Blue Iris, but just surfing the net, doing his taxes, etc., for the most part. I hate to see him spend more than he needs to, and I like the idea of the better-built enterprise/business PCs, so if you've got something good scoped out, I'd love to have your recommendation.

Thanks again, I know this takes time to research and post for us!

I'm itching to get the three of these HP Elitedesk SFF G4s now that I ordered them.

Thanks again for your valuable time.
The "refurbished" systems on amazon are almost always a rip off. If that is in fact a 4th gen i7 it would be a 4770 or 4790, either way, too old for that kind of money. There are plenty of newer systems for the same or less.
That i7 is overkill for a home system. Better off buying one of these an popping an ssd in HP Prodesk 600 G2 SFF, i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad Core, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD *136 | eBay
Even though it says no os, you can see the w10 sticker on it, it will activate.
 
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J Sigmo

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The "refurbished" systems on amazon are almost always a rip off. If that is in fact a 4th gen i7 it would be a 4770 or 4790, either way, too old for that kind of money. There are plenty of newer systems for the same or less.
That i7 is overkill for a home system. Better off buying one of these an popping an ssd in HP Prodesk 600 G2 SFF, i5-6500 3.2GHz Quad Core, 8GB RAM, 500GB HDD *136 | eBay
Even though it says no os, you can see the w10 sticker on it, it will activate.
I'm getting a different listing when I follow that link. I know he's going to want Win 10, and the one that pops up is win7.

Again, sorry to monopolize so much of your time! Thank you, we appreciate it.
 
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fenderman

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I'm getting a different listing when I follow that link. I know he's going to want Win 10, and the one that pops up is win7.

Again, sorry to monopolize so much of your time! Thank you, we appreciate it.
Item 312584643069. No problem.
 

J Sigmo

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Item 312584643069. No problem.
It's really odd, but when I search for that link above, or the item number on my phone, it comes up with a similar, but different computer, with Win 7 loaded. However, trying it now on a desktop PC, the same search on EBAY finds the listing you're talking about! Very strange.

In any case, this looks like a great possibility for my friend. Thanks again!
 

fenderman

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It's really odd, but when I search for that link above, or the item number on my phone, it comes up with a similar, but different computer, with Win 7 loaded. However, trying it now on a desktop PC, the same search on EBAY finds the listing you're talking about! Very strange.

In any case, this looks like a great possibility for my friend. Thanks again!
NEW HP ProDesk 600 G4 Microtower PC Intel® Core™ i5-8500
 

fenderman

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@fenderman

Thanks again for your time.

I have a couple of the NVMe drives you were going to use coming, except I got the 1TB versions because a couple of these machines may be used for Photoshop, which is a real pig, and one for a development and human machine interface PC for an industrial control system. They might benefit from a larger boot drive.

We'll likely also add some regular HDDs for mass storage that doesn't need to be really fast.

When the PCs arrive, I may see if something like an "inch" 2-56 fits the screw hole. Who knows, we might get lucky!
Just got these in and they fit. Looking back at my spare screw box, it looks like I was looking at m2.5 or m3 screws. So these could be m2x3mm but I have no way of knowing for certain.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07D6G9XXL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1
 
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J Sigmo

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Thanks for the update!

I got the three PCs that I ordered today, several days early. The packing was nothing short of superb! And they gave us 12 of the proper bumper screw things for mounting "normal" drives, so that was thoughtful. The PCs are in amazingly clean and perfect condition. All but one have a Windows 10 sticker on them, but I'm betting the one without the sticker will still validate just fine when we load up the OS.

Excellent seller, IMO.

I tried a 2-56 screw, and it was too large. But I've got an assortment of metric screws, and it includes #2s of various lengths, so I just tried one, and it does fit! So that's great. I already got a couple of the NVMe drives, so I think I'll be loading the OS and playing with them this evening.

Thanks again for all of your help. I think these are going to be pretty zippy little computers for what we've got in mind.
 

fenderman

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Thanks for the update!

I got the three PCs that I ordered today, several days early. The packing was nothing short of superb! And they gave us 12 of the proper bumper screw things for mounting "normal" drives, so that was thoughtful. The PCs are in amazingly clean and perfect condition. All but one have a Windows 10 sticker on them, but I'm betting the one without the sticker will still validate just fine when we load up the OS.

Excellent seller, IMO.

I tried a 2-56 screw, and it was too large. But I've got an assortment of metric screws, and it includes #2s of various lengths, so I just tried one, and it does fit! So that's great. I already got a couple of the NVMe drives, so I think I'll be loading the OS and playing with them this evening.

Thanks again for all of your help. I think these are going to be pretty zippy little computers for what we've got in mind.
It will be a rocket.
 

fenderman

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Power Consumption at idle with just nvme drive is 6-7w. Insane. 75w under 100 percent load cpu and gpu.
 
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J Sigmo

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I have some DP to HDMI and other adapters arriving today. Should be able to get the OSs installed and do some playing soon.

That low power consumption at idle is amazing!

I noticed something similar with a couple of other PCs I got recently. They really are amazingly low-power compared to my older PCs.

The three DP video outputs caught me off guard. Now I'm imagining how three massive 4K monitors would look on my desk! ;)
 
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I checked the User and Technical specs for that, and although it doesn't specify the maximum resolution when using all the ports, I doubt it will support 3 x 4k if it just has the Intel built-in graphics. You are probably looking at something more like 1x4k or 3x(1280x1024) or something. Built in graphics is more limited on total resolution on multiple displays.
 

J Sigmo

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I checked the User and Technical specs for that, and although it doesn't specify the maximum resolution when using all the ports, I doubt it will support 3 x 4k if it just has the Intel built-in graphics. You are probably looking at something more like 1x4k or 3x(1280x1024) or something. Built in graphics is more limited on total resolution on multiple displays.
All we were actually needing is one 4K display. But if it will run one 4K, and one 1080P, that would be handy.

The Man Machine Interface will be on one large 4K display. It doesn't need to be fast. No motion, just boring graphs, buttons, alarms and the like.

But if we can also be running a small display on the desktop as well, that could be handy.

When I looked at the photos, I thought one of the three video outs would be HDMI. But it turns out they all have the DP option for that position as well. That makes me think the users that originally bought them needed three DP connections or they could have had some other interface in that position.

No way to know what resolution their three monitors would have been. But we will use one of the extra outputs if that turns out to be possible.
 

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I'm having trouble mounting the 2.5 SSD with the screws I bought off of eBay that @fenderman recommended. They fit in the slots for the 3.5 drive but not for the 2.5. they are fine thread for the 2.5 and screw into the SSD. I found a kit from HP with all the hard drive screws for a insane amount of money and it's backordered. Every other screw set I find looks like coarse thread for the 3.5 hard drive. Not sure how to go about mounting this now. Does anybody have any suggestions?
 
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fenderman

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I'm having trouble mounting the 2.5 SSD with the screws I bought off of eBay that @fenderman recommended. They fit in the slots for the 3.5 drive but not for the 2.5. they are fine thread for the 2.5 and screw into the SSD. I found a kit from HP with all the hard drive screws for a insane amount of money and it's backordered. Every other screw set I find looks like coarse thread for the 3.5 hard drive. Not sure how to go about mounting this now. Does anybody have any suggestions?
post an image of the screws they sent you. I have purchased hundreds of these via ebay in the past with no issues.
 

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Those might be the ones. I'm gonna have to look into the part numbers a bit more. Thanks for your help again.
 

J Sigmo

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This may not be as elegant as using the actual 2.5" bay, but yesterday we were setting up one of the SFF PCs for a guy at work, and I had some of these that I'd bought to use in a different PC, and it worked great. I hate wasting a larger drive bay for a smaller drive, but he didn't plan on ever needing that bay for something else.

https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B016498CK0?psc=1&ref=ppx_pop_mob_b_asin_title

These work well, and come with three different sets of screws. You can mount two 2.5" drives into one 3.5" bay with this. I then used the larger isolation screws to mount this rack into the 3.5" bay.

So maybe not a perfect solution, but it is clean, cheap, and worked great.
 
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