For the last few years we have migrated away from building our own PCs and started selling HP premades. Working out at roughly the same price as building the PCs yourself by but coming with quality enterprise grade HP parts and a 3 year warranty you can’t go wrong.
Models
There’s a few different models that are worth mentioning, although they are all basically the same product.
- HP ProDesk 400/600, HP EliteDesk 800. These are the preferred model. Don’t be fooled with ProDesk vs EliteDesk they are almost exactly the same, in a lot of cases the ProDesk is actually better. It all just depends on your options (Amount of RAM, HDD/SSD size, USB ports etc etc).
- HP ProDesk 600 G3 MT (Micro Tower) and HP ProDesk 800 G3 TWR (Tower). Although the form factor is called “Micro Tower” this is larger then the SFF with TWR being the largest. Offering no real advantage over the smaller SFF other then being able to fit more hard drives and PCIe cards if this is needed we generally just use SFF.
- HP EliteDesk 400/600/800 G3 DM (Desktop Mini). Although not exactly the same they are also worth mentioning. These are a very small “NUC”s as Intel calls them. Although they are just as reliable as the others in this lineup, they have fewer I/O ports and generally use slower U or T Intel CPUs. Other limitations like only 1 RAM slot, no room for a full size 3.5” hard drive or DVD drive makes them not worth considering over the full sized options unless space is at an absolute premium.
Options
The HP ProDesk/EliteDesk PCs come with a few options. Usually we go with 8GB of RAM, 250GB SSD, and the best i5 CPU. If given the option we would also choose one with more USB ports. We find this is the sweet spot for most office PCs. 8GB of RAM and a quadcore CPU is plenty for most office tasks. 250GB of storage is more then enough especially with an onsite or cloud storage server. For power users (people that are likely to have Outlook, several large Excel documents open, and 20+ chrome tabs all at once), upgrading to the 16GB of RAM version with an i7 CPU is recommended to avoid slowdowns.
Hardware
We’ve found the HP desktop hardware to be top of the line. The case is easy to get into with the RAM and hard drive very easy to replace. The case looks slick and modern and all the ports and buttons are very solid. As with all prebuilt PCs (and all laptops) we recommend formatting the hard drive and reinstalling Windows before doing anything else to get a fresh install with no HP bloatware.
Final Thoughts
For more information about the HP desktop product line and in particular this model, check out their website here –
http://h20386.www2.hp.com/AustraliaStore/Merch/Product.aspx?id=1MF40PA&opt=&sel=DTP
These can be purchased from here –
https://pcm.com.au/small-form-factor-ultra-slim-pcs/3578253-hp-800-g3-sff-i5-8g-128g-w10p.html?search_query=1ME79PA&results=1