[Official] HP ProDesk 400 G4 SFF Owner's Thread

I am booting Ubuntu from mine. I am sure you would just got to the bios menu and set where you want to boot from. I haven’t thought about what hdd I want to install but I plan on doing that next. Hope this helps

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Can confirm, I just set mine up last night. I’m booting from the NVMe adapter that JDM_WAAAT inked up top with an NVMe from an old Surface. Installed Ubuntu Server using UEFI and added in a WD Red from before I discovered shucking. All working great!

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My offer of $90 was accepted too.

$89.01 also accepted.

$115 also accepted. If you want to pay more.

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Anyone know how many cameras Blue Iris can run with this? Looking to run 6-8 cameras ranging from 4mp-8mp.

Can you drop an 8xxx or 9xxx in this thing like you can with the HP 290? For $104 (including cost of PCIe NVMe adapter) this looks like a better option than the HP 290 (currently at $140).

Anyone have any idle power draw numbers? From what I read in the HP 290 thread, the 290 only draws about 10 watts at idle.

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No, this machine is 6th/7th gen only. The CPU included in this is 7th gen, which will have similar performance and quality to 8th/9th gen. You won’t need to upgrade the CPU in this to achieve 20 transcodes.

Power draw is similar, expect under 14w idle just like the HP 290.

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For those interested on power draw. My 290 setup has a:

  • i5-8500T
  • 1TB NVMe
  • 2 sticks of 8GB DDR4
  • HDMI Dummy Plug

I have disconnected:

  • Wifi card
  • DVD writer
  • 512GB HDD

Kill-a-Watt at idle for the HP 290 is just over 4 watts. Incredible.

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Are you sure that’s not 4.1 Kwh?

Yes, Watt is correct. The setting was set to Watt 3rd button from the left.

@PredatorVI were you able to figure out what you needed? I saw you deleted your post

@Kong
Will you take some time in another post and detail how you got down to 4w? Everything from OS versions, to exact hardware?

A lot of us are sitting here at 10W-12W.

@JDM_WAAAT … you posted a link above w/ this deal for an add-in NVMe card. If the system supports PCIe NVMe TLC SSD drives, is the add-in card just to enable a 2nd m.2 drive or is there some limitation to the built-in m.2 slot?

If I can just use the integrated m.2 slot will any m.2 drive work? (Sorry still learning about the m.2 format)

Thanks!

I reposted below. I’m still trying to understand/figure it out.

M.2 is just a physical form factor, it’s not exclusive to NVMe drives. The slots can be keyed in different ways to only accept certain types of cards, like USB, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth modules, audio cards, as well as both SATA and NVMe SSDs. For a more detailed explanation, check out this Wikipedia article. The M.2 slot on this motherboard is keyed to only use a combo Wi-Fi/Bluetooth module, so there’s no way to use it for any type of drive. To use an m.2 NVMe drive with this system, you would need the adapter JDM linked in the original post, or another similar adapter. HP sold an official PCI-E to m.2 slot adapter called the Turbo Card, which is why they list NVMe storage in the spec sheet, but it’s still just an adapter.

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@Mthrboard I think that makes sense. The other question I had was whether I could boot off of a drive connected via the adapter card. I thought I saw a thread somewhere that some BIOS won’t allow booting from a drive connected via the PCIe slot, but I can’t find it right off.

The eBay listing ended; I reached out to the seller hwo told me they would be putting it back up. Hopefully still OBO and accepts $90 or less!

It looks like there is an embedded Windows 10 Pro key in these as well. We will see how that works. Was hoping to use this as a BlueIris rig/

I believe the windows key will follow the motherboard so you should be fine with just installing windows onto whatever ssd/nvme drive you choose. You’ll need to be sure to install the same version as what comes with the computer. I’m not sure if these are Pro or Home or whatever they are calling it these days. If moving to Linux you would want to go ahead and think about patching firmware and bios before hand.

Also you can use windows without a key but you’ll have a watermark at the bottom of the screen and some reduced features.