HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Mini

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crosscourt
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HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Mini

Post by crosscourt »

Should be in on Wednesday but was intrigued by its design. One switch at the back allows the cover to be removed. It can use M.2 SATA or NVME as well as 2.5 ssds. The drive caddy is a quite to open style that uses cushioned screws on the drive that allow it to slip in or out easily. The floor of the caddy can be taken off with two screws to reach the M.2 slot and wifi card. Cpu fan opens up easily to allow access to 2 ram slots supporting up to 32gb. This system even though made in 2018 is using the i5-6500T 2.5ghz which boosts to 3.1ghz. It uses 35w versus the 6500 that is a 65w cpu. With such small case I wanted less power usage and less heat. The 7th generation cpus really didnt offer a big boost in performance and the price of the systems using the 6th generation cpus are lower. Mine has 8gb of ram which Ill increase to 16gb and add a 256gb NVMe ssd assuming there are no issues.

Comes with Win10 which I will update but prefer to run Zorin 16.
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tlmiller
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Re: HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Mini

Post by tlmiller »

I always liked the T chips. Fun little things that can be put in a really small case and not melt themselves.
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Re: HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Mini

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After reading about the issues with the 65w cpus in this system, the T cpu seemed like a nobrainer.
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Re: HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Mini

Post by crosscourt »

Generous number of ports with this system 4 USB 3.0, 2 USB 2.0, 2 USB-C, 2 displayports, ethernet port,2 earphone jacks, and a VGA port. The central port in the back of the system has the ability to be a number of types of ports including, DVI,HDMI, and VGA to name a few. My monitor has an HDMI and a VGA cable so the VGA port was what I needed. I have adaptors for the displayport so I can also go VGA or HDMI.
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crosscourt
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Re: HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Mini

Post by crosscourt »

G3 came in today and overall a great system. Win10 was already installed, bios updated but the process is not as clean as Dell. In general the HP bios is horrible compared to Dell. Very limited options and the overall design leaves a lot to be desired. Outside of that its running very well. I cloned the hard drive over to a ssd. Unfortunately it doesnt support NVMe ssds from what I can see but it does still have a M.2 slot. Just sent away for more ram as I want to run 16gb but other than that no other upgrades. Case is easy to open and pulling out the ssd is really easy but they use a proprietary connector even though its a standard SATA design. Dell uses common cables so if anything goes wrong with the HP connector you have to go find one to replace it.
Very quiet system and even smaller than my Dell 7010 usff. Ill post back once Ive used it more.
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Re: HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Mini

Post by tlmiller »

6th gen CPU you said? Yeah, not surprising they didn't have NVMe support yet, it was still quite uncommon with 6th generation outside of high end laptops. Of course, if you ever DID want to add one, given it's a desktop (even if a small one), if you have an open PCIe x4 slot, you could put one in there, just need to have a SATA SSD to boot from.
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Re: HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Mini

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The G3 supports 7th gen cpus as well but see no need to go that route. My Dell latitude 7470/7270 are 6th gen and support NVMe so surprised the G3 doesnt. I havent looked at the slot yet (no pcie x4 slot)but what I saw in the bios wasnt encouraging. The bios is a mess and right now its in legacy mode but to get UEFI I have to use an admin password. Dell doesnt do that and there are other oddities in the HP bios. Overall I like the system a lot.
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Re: HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Mini

Post by tlmiller »

An admin password required for uefi? That is weird. I haven't used HP desktop in over 6 years now, so I'm horribly out of date with anything their doing on that side.
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Re: HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Mini

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Good news as it does support NVMe M.2. Ive got a 256gb in there now and its running fine. Ordered a sn550 blue NVMe WD 500gb though to add in.
Looks like this system will see a decent speed increase.
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Re: HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Mini

Post by crosscourt »

Heres an oddie, NVMe drive gets 1767mbs on read but only 435mbs on write. Not sure whats going on there.
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