- Aug 25, 2001
- 56,327
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Are you a human?
This is one heck of a decent deal on a SFF HP with a Haswell quad-core i5. I picked up a couple, just popped in a 480GB SSD and did a fresh install of Win10, using a newly-downloaded and run MediaCreationTool (with a media date of 01/2020 shown next to the Windows 10 editions when you install it, so it has the newest fixes).
The base unit doesn't have any HDMI, it has two DisplayPort and one VGA output. I was using a DisplayPort cable to my 40" 4K UHD TV, and during the initial Windows 10 installation, everything was way low-res, and basically in 16-color mode, it looked like garbage. For some reason, the OOBE installer didn't like the Haswell iGPU or the DP or something, I'm not sure. It was basically in B&W, strangest thing that I've ever seen.
But once it was finally installed, and I plugged in the ethernet, and it downloaded and automagically installed a recent display driver for the Haswell iGPU, everything was Kosher again, I had a full 24-bit color 4K UHD desktop. Finally, Windows 10 looked normal again.
The unit ships with a motherboard, with four DIMM slots (mine had 2x4GB DDR3 installed, so I can add the 2x8GB kit of DDR3 I have coming in, and have 24GB of RAM, rather than replace it), and it ships with three SATA ports, one unoccupied, and there's a SATA power connector and drive bay under the slim DVD drive. I think that was for one of HP's "Media Bay" removable HDD bay units to be installed, but mine just had an empty bay with a cover on the front panel, so it was VERY convenient to pop a 2.5" SSD into that space, and just attach it to the power, and add my own SATA cable to connect it to the mobo.
I was even able to boot directly off of a Win10 USB installer without messing with the BIOS, and then it auto-configured the new SSD as the boot device too. (I still don't know what the BIOS hotkey is for this PC, if anyone knows, please post it.)
The BIOS on mine was L01 from 2014, which is certainly probably out-dated. I think HP requires either in-warranty or a support contract to download BIOS updates these days, too bad. I don't know if there's an updated BIOS for these units with Spectre/Meltdown fixes, but there probably is one available to their business customers on support contracts. Whether those pose a real issue to home users, or gamers, I cannot say.
I have some low-profile GTX 1650 4GB GDDR5 cards from MSI ($159+ship+tax @ Newegg) on the way, to finish this upgrade. Things should be even better with that installed. The mobo actually has TWO PCI-E x16 slots on it, and an x1, but I don't know if you can fit two GPUs on it, unless they're LP and single-slot. (MSI 2GB GDDR5 GT730 card, I'm looking at you.)
My unit was VERY clean, basically brand-new it felt like, and virtually silent. (I had to put my fingers up against the CPU fan, to see if it were running.)
Edit: IOW, this felt like New-old-stock, rather than refurb. Maybe this was some corporate customer's overstock, that never got actually deployed, or these refurbishers are REALLY GOOD, and cleaned things up nicely, not a spec of dust or dirt, and they used a brand-new HSF on the CPU? It certainly didn't whine or show any severe signs of wear.
The 500GB HDD was a WD Blue, which was a good sign. No bad / pending sectors, showed something like 6,000 POH. Still in great shape.
These would make really fine "Mom boxes", or even a decent first Gaming PC for a child or even a teenager (although, I would suggest having your teen build their own Ryzen-based gaming PC for around $800, if they are old enough to want a "real" gaming PC, to play AAA games with their friends.)
Honestly, though, I'm spoiled by my Ryzen R5 3600 rig, with RX 5700, and 32GB of DDR4-3600 RAM, twin 1TB 660p NVMe SSDs, etc. so this Haswell box felt slow to me a little bit, even with the Team Group GX1 480GB SATA6G SSD. (It only benched 16.6MB/sec 4K QD1 random-read.)
Still, it should be relatively fast for web browsing tasks, and even gaming. (It should play nearly every title on the market still, although 4C/4T is slightly limiting. Once I install the GTX 1650, it should be able to stretch its legs.)
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