Key Lesson Learned for TMM
In this series, we wanted to also focus on some key lessons learned. Since we have already tested well over three dozen different models, we are taking away key pieces of advice from each that we wanted to share.
The key lesson learned here is just how lean this is. In the video, we detailed part of the ongoing saga trying to get the 805 G8 Mini. HP is currently taking funds for orders using ship dates it knows it cannot hit. We have ordered several units to test this pattern, and HP is effectively knowingly misrepresenting expected ship dates on its ordering page. We had to purchase this unit for a hefty sum because the HP AMD Ryzen units are so hard to come by. Still, this 805 G6 Mini is the best AMD Ryzen unit that is technically considered a previous-generation system since it has the most expandability and is free to upgrade CPUs.
The Lenovo ThinkCentre M75q Gen2 Tiny is a nice unit, but we later tested and found it uses AMD PSB to vendor-lock Ryzen CPUs to Lenovo-only status. Lenovo also only has a single M.2 SSD slot, making HP both not vendor locked, and more expandable.
Dell does not have a competitive unit in this generation. Dell’s OptiPlex 7090 Micro is not as flexible as HP or Lenovo. Dell also does not have an AMD Ryzen version, so it is hard to see Dell’s offering as a real competitor in the 1L AMD Ryzen corporate desktop PC space.
Perhaps the key lesson learned here is that we are just in a sad state of affairs here where the great new chips are hard to come by.
Final Words
But for the price tag, this would be our #1 choice in this generation. The expandability is great. HP could be more serviceable with a better 2.5″/ M.2 design, but the little system is doing a lot here. Kudos to HP for offering a top-end positioned AMD product that Lenovo and Dell do not match.
Still, the pricing and availability make this a less enthusiastic recommendation than it could be. We hope that HP cleans up its order support to align with how good its products are. In this segment, most systems are sold via large corporate volume sales, but the SMB order process via the web page is hard to recommend.
Still, for previous generation systems, this is probably our top choice of 1L Project TinyMiniMicro PCs.
Umm, the clip is still shows as “unlisted”…
Does this unit support ECC memory?
You have omitted the actual value of max power consumption from this sentence:
The maximum we saw was around (??) which was quite surprising.
That PCIe white connector is that some OCuLink port for the PCIe connectivity and is that PCIe x4 or PCIe x8 connectivity(?)/whatever the PCIe provided for the Discrete GPU option there? And can that GPU later be swapped out by the End User?
It’s unfortunate HP chose to make only laptop-class 35W Ryzens available in this chassis, when the EliteDesk 800 G6 is available with proper desktop-class 95W CPUs like the i9-10900K in mine. It’s also unfortunate that 10G Ethernet is not available as an option on the EliteDesk Mini line, or even Thunderbolt to use an external NIC like the QNAP I have on my Z2 Mini G4.
They’ve got the NVIDIA 1660 TI version in the G8 shown for a second in the video for this. Also there are 65W TDP CPU options for these
i’d like to see what the DGPUs look like
I impatiently await the day where 10Gbps NICs are an option on 1L form factor computers.
When I can build a silent, power sipping Spark cluster in the same space as a stack of napkins, I’ll be quite thrilled.
One thing I’ll note is if you call HP with your configuration, you can ask for a bit of an extra discount (about 10%)! I got a similarly specced ProDesk 405 Mini G8 a year ago for only about $670 taxed and shipped as a result.
is the discrete GPU(Geforce1660ti) orderable separately?
Does this unit support ECC memory?