Deal: eBay - $100 New Sealed HP T640 Thin Client Ryzen R1505G. NUC giant killer. Fantastic as a 4K HDR HTPC, mini emulation station, or hardware encoding NAS!

[Hifihedgehog]

Deal link:

NEW HP T640 Thin Client Ryzen R1505G 4GB 16GF - NO KB/MOUSE, NO OS INSTALLED | eBay

Here is a spectacular eBay deal I have been wanting to pass along for the HP T640, or what you might say is an insanely low priced small form factor PC disguised as a thin client in the search results. Offers of $100 are automatically accepted by this eBay seller so do not make the mistake of hitting that Buy It Now! button. Save that $10 by sending a best offer of $100! This T640 (with its star-of-the-show, dual-core, four-threaded Ryzen R1505G APU, which is essentially the embedded version of an Athlon 200GE) is listed at $109.99 plus $14 shipping and handling to the continental US with international shipping also available. This 1.34-liter bantam-sized computer is a shoe-in for beginners and old timers alike who are looking for something both small and cheap on the extreme side of the size and pricing spectrum.

No, this isn't a speed demon that is going to be chart topping Cinebench or 3DMark anytime soon but don't let that dissuade you: if you are looking for a mostly capable, ready-to-run mini PC or one with innards small enough to transplant into your latest arcade cabinet, this might just scratch that itch. This Ryzen-based killer deal is a clear step-up from a Raspberry Pi or similar SBC and it isn't slow as molasses like a Apollo Lake or Gemini Lake Pentium-based or (shudder) Cherry Trail Atom-based mini PC. At first glance, it may seem like not much coming with just the power adapter and only the barest of the bare necessities (a 4 GB DDR4 2400 MHz SODIMM and a 16 GB M.2 eMMC flash m.2 module), but here are some very powerful reasons you might consider this listing for your next arcade project:

1. HDR via DisplayPort 1.4 works! HTPC for the cheap, ahoy!
   • Thanks to the processor, the monitor outputs are actually DisplayPort 1.4, not 1.2, even though HP themselves has only "officially" certified them for DisplayPort 1.2. So grab an HDR-enabled DisplayPort 1.4-to-HDMI 2.0 adapter and you are golden. Long story short, I reached out to a ServeTheHome user who had claimed HDR wasn't working but he has since got the right adapter and, by golly, he verified the HDR actually does work like a charm! This bears quite the resemblance to the situation in 2018 with Ryzen 2000 APU's, which worked with HDMI 2.0 despite misleading motherboard certification inferring otherwise.
2. Hardware encoding works with up to three 4K HEVC 10-bit streams at once. Take that, Synology and QNAP!
   • Jellyfin works flawlessly for this purpose. And for the adventurous Linux user, Plex has been shown to do the same via this modified Docker image.
3. Free upgrade to a premium 2x2 Wi-Fi 6 card, the Intel Wi-Fi 6 AX200. Really, for $100?
   • Ordinarily, the T640 would come by default with just a wireless AC card, the Wireless-AC 9260, but ServeTheHome users were surprised to find out that they were treated to an upgrade of this zippier Wi-Fi 6 card.
4. Did I also mention you can emulate GameCube games at full speed, upgrade the RAM via the two DDR4 SODIMM slots up to 64 GB, and upgrade the internal flash storage with a speedy NVMe or SATA-based M.2 SSD?
   1. Yes, double yes, and triple yes: all confirmed in this ServeTheHome forum thread.

Here are the full official specifications from HP themselves for your immediate perusal. Besides the full array of USB 2.0, 3.1 Gen 1 and 3.1 Gen 2 ports (including USB-C!) and DisplayPorts, it even has an old-fashioned serial port that might come in handy for some crazy old-school accessory. I imagine you could get quite creative here with this and do some skillful transplanting. As it stands, the T640 is certainly way cheaper and not to mention more expandable and capable than the dinkier and pricier $333 SBC alternative from DFI. And it is certainly cheaper, smaller and with more USB ports than the ever-popular ASRock DeskMini barebones option, which you would additionally have to buy a processor, RAM, and SSD for, which would easily double if not triple the cost. So there you have it! As for myself, I am already in for two, with one for myself and one more for a family member who is leveling up from a sluggish Atom-based cloud storage system to a souped up Openmediavault NAS using this. Happy deal hunting!

Edited March 1, 2021 by Hifihedgehog

[Chadmando]

You said it runs gamecube games full speed how about wii games?

Edited March 1, 2021 by Chadmando

[Hifihedgehog]

11 hours ago, Chadmando said:

You said it runs gamecube games full speed how about wii games?

Wii? Easily. The Ryzen R1505G is essentially the embedded version of an Athlon 200GE, so all the ground rules for that processor would translate here. The 200GE easily emulates GameCube at 1080p so Wii should likewise be a walk in the park for its R1505G sibling. Wii U, on the other hard, would be a bit more touch-and-go but easier to emulate titles like Super Mario 3D World I believe should work here too.
 

The R1505G would also be a hair off from the Athlon 3000G so this is also a good idea of what you might expect going in:

 

Edited March 1, 2021 by Hifihedgehog

[Chadmando]

Thank you, I may pick on up, looks like a very nice little system.

[Shinkiro]

Looks like the price on these has more than doubled.  Do you know of any anyone/anywhere selling these for me closer to the $100 price point?  Or a comparable price product?