This 1L Mini PC is Unreal - HP Elite Mini 800 G9 Review - Project TinyMiniMicro

This is HP's top-end G9 Elite Mini. We take a look at the Intel Alder Lake powered (12th Gen Core) HP Elite Mini 800 G9 as part of our Project TinyMiniMicro series. This unit we purchased for only $515 and while it has a lot of expansion options and a warranty, it also has some major drawbacks when it comes to the potential for eWaste as they hit the #homelab community.

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eBay or HP.com

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Timestamps
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00:00 Introduction to Our HP Elite Mini 800 G9
01:31 External Hardware Overview
05:15 Internal Hardware Overview
07:22 Performance of the Intel Core i5-12500T
09:28 Power Consumption and Noise
11:09 Key Lessons Learned 10Gbase-T 10GbE Flex IO V2 NIC and 2.5GbE NIC
16:45 Wrap-up

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[connclissmann]

That lockout on the BIOS is a show-stopper. Many thanks for this video.

[JohnDoe]

Key Lesson Leaned: Don't buy anything from HP Inc. No mini PC's, laptops, or printers. Don't spend a dime with them. Don't reward bad behavior. Every vendor using bogus "security" arguments needs to go on the Do Not Buy list.

[chumbawumba]

Dirty little secret about HP ... all you have to do is call HP corp main number and ask for Office of Environment Affairs (or something like that) and complain that without help from HP, this will become e-waste and (this is the thing) ... point out that is completely inconsistent with the most recent "Sustainable Impact Report" (that is the official name of it). HP makes a big deal about such things (they are ESG-obsessed) and if you complain enuf, you will get relief!!! Btw, this works with most major tech firms that produce hard goods - like when you get stuck like here on the BIOS Password.

[rtzzz]

Bought this device, not our first version of the mini and of course it exceeded expectations yet again. We had tried a competitor's (geekom 12G version, which was cheaper and seemed to have all the right stuff, but it was SOOO loud that we quickly returned it. Just not workable at home or at work when machine is crazy loud. Got the HP I5-13500 which was faster than the I7-12500 at about 70% the price. Very, very quiet, nearly imperceptible sound at 2 feet. So fast and so nice to place on the desk out of the way. All the right things, DDR5 + 512GB fast SSD. Went out and bought Samsung 990 Pro 2TB and believe it or not, not as fast as the SSD that comes with this device standard. Just a great setup and will serve our dev teams for good while. Going out and buying a bunch more after this successful test.

[e-vl]

Just few days ago I got the HP Pro 400 G9 mini, with the same CPU (12th gen i5), I maxed-out the RAM to 64 GB and replaced the SSD with 1 TB drive. It's an absolute beast for home ESXi and the single-thread performance is stellar.

[blahblahblahblah]

Nothing like a slap in the face from HP. Absolutely silly policies.

[falsemcnuggethope]

So HP stole your copyrighted work and locked you out of your computer unless you pay a ransom. Nice bunch of criminals those HP guys.

[dineshajoshi]

Thanks for the valuable heads up. The concept of ownership is really messed up here. If I can’t reset my own BIOS password, they shouldn’t be selling these systems to retail consumers. They should just limit sales to enterprises where such restrictions are ok. However, your suggestion makes sense as well. Throwing away encryption keys and rendering existing data unreadable is an elegant solution.

[rl_]

HP stopped allowing you to reset the BIOS password on your own computers as far back as 2019 and probably even before that. I have an old ProBook that has a BIOS password on it and HP said they would have to replace the motherboard at my expense. They also wouldn't tell me how much it was going to cost until I sent it in. The line about it being a security issue is also rather entertaining, I'm sure HP has not hardened their motherboard against someone just direct connecting to the BIOS chip and flashing it.

[CamdogXIII]

Not a fan of governments getting involved unless they have to, but I really feel like some sort of "E-Waste" legislation is required here. Make companies like HP submit "e-waste' prevention documentation for each product, get fined for every action that increases e-waste potential and flat out ban this "you must send in the hardware" behavior.

[datacntrdude]

@Patrick, try pulling the CMOS battery and let it sit for an hour. Pop it back in and it should reset to defaults. This is how I got around SecureBoot shenaniganry on a SFF 800 G4 last week.

[benjamintrathen]

That is insane, some real key lessons learned right there.

[vasiovasio]

Amazing compact machine for programming! Silent and Powerful at the same time, plus plenty of options for an upgrade!

[whocares]

I love this channel because of the power consumption tests

[BoDiddly]

I love the Project TinyMiniMicro videos!

Ever since I saw one of them a couple of years ago, I have been steaming through my quest to downsize my computers. After about a year, I now have three HP EliteDesk's, with more in the planning!

This 800 G9 you have might be great for the Proxmox cluster I want to set up. I have a full size desktop with an i5-12400 with Proxmox (moving my OpenMediaVault zfs zraid2 to bigger drives and turning that OMV into a Proxmox node) that is plenty for what I need it for now, but I want to do some experimenting. Having more Cores has been something I have been wanting to play around with for a long time, and these used EliteDesks fit the budget perfectly!

[shownee]

I picked up a plug and play MINI ACEPC with windows 10 in 4k for 350 dollars off amazon. I have never done a thing to it and it runs fast and I put a printer, Microsoft Xbox Series X Console on it with my big 49 inch screen Samsung. I had it for 6 years and it hardy ever get's turns off. runs great and it will for years to come.

[logicmax]

I had this same problem with an HP Elitedesk 705 G4 that I bought off eBay for my homelab. HP refused any help besides letting me buy a new motherboard. So I had to go a little overboard, I went and purchased a clip on SOIC8 programmer. I was able to find a BIOS version that I could figure out how to remove the secure header and then I flashed it directly to the chip. Took a bit of research but it did feel like a huge accomplishment getting the password free bios on there.

[iBeast_Mde]

Because of this series I have bought a 6th gen i5 HP 600 G3 Mini, might not be the fastest. But it works well as a homeserver.

[esaedvik]

You should include security issues getting these second hand too. There's some bloody nasty malware out there.

[julian.morgan]

I recently installed Linux Mint on an old Elitebook a friend had bought off eBay for far too much money. The previous owner had removed the wifi module, so I found a 'compatible' one (according to HP's service manual) and installed it only to find that the BIOS deactivated the module on start up according to a BIOS level whitelist that HP alter depending on country of sale. IOW the module I got would have worked fine if the laptop had been configured for sale in the USA, but not in the UK !!

It's this kind of pointless anti-consumer control freakery that guarantees I'll never buy anything from HP or similar companies myself, while I'll vote with my wallet to support companies who unilaterally (without class action lawsuits driving their marketing BS) just do the right thing by their customers and the planet.