Posted on 10/05/2025 5:51:28 AM PDT by Paul R.
Possibly this is a BIOS setting problem?
AHA!
I had to go into the BIOS Power Management Settings, but, that did the trick.
This machine is so quick, I had to try the “boot and hit F2 repeatedly” command 3 times before it “caught” and went into BIOS / UEFI menu.
Sorry, I missed the action today. I had a doctor’s appointment in the morning and everything snow balled from there. My new Mini-PC from Amazon came and I immediately pulled it apart and imaged the NVME. Then I installed Windows 11 Pro and ran a bunch of benchmarks. After that I installed Microsoft Flight Simulator 2024 to see how well it would handle that... I am delighted to say that of course it is not quite as smooth as my gaming laptop, but it is pretty darn good. I could probably squeeze a little more performance out of it by changing some of the iGPU settings in the UEFI.
After that I started trying to verify that the NPU (neural processor) was working properly. It is recognized in device manager and I updated the driver. HWinfo (free system monitoring software) is indicate that it is doing something when I run loads that should be using it. I just have not been able to quantify this yet. The benchmarks I have tried are not working well for me. This is one of my primary interests, so I am probably going to have to install some of the software that I hope to use and try to get it working correctly to verify how well this all works.
Good! I honestly had not thought about the Bios...Good find! I learned from it. Thanks!
Oh, no problem! I often am webless for days, will likely be tomorrow (planning to on a day-trip with my family) and in the past, sometimes so tied up with work that I was FR-less for months!
What machine did you get, if I might ask? Most of the deals I’m seeing on Amazon are for machines out of my budget range.
I myself am still hunting for a cheapy-as-possible Win 11 (pref Win 11 Pro) machine for wifey. Really, the most it has to run well is LibreOffice.
Of note, I stumbled across info. indicating some Dell machines, including at least some production runs of my "old" Win 10 Pro Dell 3420, may be updatable to TPM 2.0 from TPM 1.2, and then Win 11 Pro can be installed without major issues. IF I can make the time, I may take a crack at that.
(I wouldn't need to buy a new machine for wifey.)
https://www.dell.com/support/kbdoc/en-us/000132757/tpm-option-is-missing-in-the-system-bios-setup-latitude-precision-or-xps
Oh good! that would be cool! But I would still like to see you take a crack at Linux. Seriously, you will wish you had done it years ago. Especially for a simple daily driver email surfing machine.
And I will share it again... Mint Cinnamon is just like Win 7 to use. Off and running easily right away... :)
I purchased the https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0F9F6PKZ5 in the early morning right after Prime Days started for $373. The “normal price” for this is $407. It is identical to the Bosgame M4 with the same AMD Ryzen 7 7840HS. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0F5PGXYLF which is $417. If I hadn’t got the sale price of $373 I would have chosen the identical Bosgame unit because they are the 2nd largest mini-PC distributor and have very good customer support.
These are expensive compared to the cheaper units with earlier generation Ryzen processors. I have two of them which I spent approximately $120 for a piece. I would recommend them as well because they are very capable machines for the money. The Ryzen 7 7840HS is in a different league altogether and is more powerful than many Ryzen processors in the 8th generation.
In the mini-PC form factor it has some advantages over the Intel Core i7-13700HX in my gaming Laptop although it is limited in the maximum wattage that it can consume. The iGPU is far more capable than the one in the intel processor. This machine actually will run MSFS 2024 with acceptable performance at medium settings without a powerful GPU. This is quite amazing to me but might be overkill for your wife. I may attach an Nvidia RTX 3060 12
GB to it through its oculink port and then it will be about as capable as my gaming laptop for flight simulators and more capable for advanced AI apps and serving.
Ah, very cool. My daughter would love that machine you bought!*
And, oh, yeah, one of your $120 machines with 16 GB of RAM would probably be overkill for my wife, if they can run Win 11 Pro. Wanna sell one? (Even 8 GB would likely suffice, except that she, like a lot of us, does tend to leave a lot of windows and tabs open.) Right now I’m looking at Optiplex 3060 and 3070, i3 and i5 machines, with Gen 8 or higher processors, as I’m just not that familiar with the Ryzens, but, if you can recommend a Ryzen processor model or two, I’m listening. Right now, I seem to be in the ~$130 range, w/ free shipping, on eBay. Another option might be something similar to a Dell 3440 with a NVMe drive for me. I’d pick up USB3.2 capability with a 3440, and my wife would get this 3430 I’m working on, but great deals on 3440’s are scarce. I thought I found one, but, the listing was in error on multiple points: Just one was that the machine is actually a 3430. Listings with multiple errors — No go there, Paul R.... !
*I’m the most “ungamer” of the family (I’m just too busy for it), but, my daughter is a gamer, so I do take note of your comments in that direction. ;-)
This is the first one that I bought for $120 on sale. I bought a matching stick of 8GB DDR4 for it for $12. It is currently $132. It comes with just 8GB of RAM and a 256GB NVME. But it has a great case design and it runs very cool with no modifications. Getting to the RAM and the NVME requires the removal of only 4 screws. The bottom fits a little snug so you might need a guitar pick the first time you pull it apart. The 3500u and 3550u Ryzens are far more capable than the Intel n90, n100, and even n150 APUs. There is a minor and solvable iGPU driver issue if you reinstall clean on a new NVME and do not backup the driver that comes with them.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0DTP216XS
For some reason the price of DDR4 RAM has taken a huge leap in the last few months. It is literally two or three times as much as it was last Spring. So, I would hold off on that purchase until the price drops back down. The only challenge is that if you can’t find a stick that is a pretty close match they might not run in dual channel mode which reduces your I/O speeds a little. So sometimes times you are better off buying a matched set.
Here is an explanation from Grok.
https://grok.com/share/c2hhcmQtMg%3D%3D_b191d1fd-61a0-42e4-ab74-3fcb55869e06
You might consider spending a little more, currently $178 for a name brand computer with the slightly faster Ryzen 3550u, 16GB of RAM, and a 512GB NVME.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0F9X2BWBK
This one has a thinner case. If you notice that it is running warm you can ventilate it much better if you use a hole saw to cut a hole directly above the fan on the top of the case. There is only about 1/4” between the fan and the case. I have identical unit to this one in a generic brand. It also has an extra LAN port for more serving possibilities.
There are others which are slightly cheaper from generic brands with few reviews although sometimes the reviews are actually for several variations. There were some other tempting choices during Prime Days.
Small used business desktops are an excellent choice as well. I have two HP mini desktops that are about the size of a DVD player, One came from eBay and one from Amazon. They are excellent little computers. Both of mine are now running Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 2021 LTSC which actually is an improvement over Windows 10 Pro and will receive security updates until 2032.
Those are pretty cool (as in “Joe Cool”) - hahaha!
How are the vendors’ websites when it comes to support? Prolly not quite up there with Dell and HP?
I have indeed been looking at used business desktops (refurbs). It occurs to me that I might plug “Windows 10 IoT Enterprise 2021 LTSC” and lower end Win 11 compatible processors (one at a time) into the search and see what comes up. That’ll probably work better on eBay: For me, searches seem to work a lot better (more “focused”) on eBay than on Amazon.
I already have questions out to several sellers too, and one of those may come back with answers that fit what I’m looking for. (Two already did not.) I’ve also found that pertinent questions can really weed out good sellers vs. bad. ;-)
Huh, I wonder if the overheating issues with these are easily fixed:
The bids just jumped up hugely, but, still...
No, I’m not afraid to chop holes, add heat sinking, etc. In fact, I may be doing that on wifey’s old laptop, someday. It’s a Win 10 Pro machine too, but, it’s low on the priority list, as she has a nice Chrome machine she uses a lot.
When that style of computer starts overheating, they are usually just clogged with dust bunnies. But occasionally there will be other issues that are causing problems.
Bosgame is supposedly pretty good at providing assistance. I just had a bad experience with a Beelink computer that was badly misrepresented in the ad. So, despite their popularity I am now skeptical of all of their products. Most people don’t start off by benchmarking their machines, so they are just not aware that they have a dog and leave good reviews if they can successfully use a web browser, email and retrieve their email. So, they leave good reviews for machines that do not deserve them.
Right - I don’t know what’s going on with wifey’s laptop as there was no dust in it at all, but fan error messages would pop up in the boot-up. I pulled the cover and that stopped. (No more error messages.) Have been so busy with all this other stuff that I’ve not had a chance to follow up.
Anyway, I snagged a Dell Optiplex 3070 MICRO, i5-9500T 2.2 GHz, 256GB SSD, 8GB RAM, Win 11 Pro, on eBay tonight. $112 plus shipping and tax — will come out to $126.48 all told, so, not too bad. Seller had very little feedback, so, kinda taking a chance, but, he was good about answering questions, which is usually a good sign. This machine is likely faster than my 11 Pro desktop we’ve been discussing(!), unless wifey has a zillion windows open... Hopefully RAM prices will come back down, and hopefully this machine doesn’t have any weird issues...
I suppose dogs are ok if they are not sick and all you have to do is walk the dog - hahaha!
I think that you did very well... I have often had better luck on eBay over the years that with Amazon with phones, computers, drone components and DSLR lenses, etc... I use Amazon to figure out what the going price is and then see if I can do better on eBay.
I researched those Dell OptiPlex Micro Plus 7010’s a bit — even Brave search turns up a fair amount of info. on the overheating problem. It appears the thermal design just stinks, and fixes are well known, so, the prices fire back up in actual sales.
Thanks. Ditto on the pricing experience.
It occurs to me that if I want to upgrade this little machine for wifey, I may be able to find a laptop with a damaged display very cheap, and plunder it for parts, then resell the motherboard & probably the processor....
Whew! Had a long 2 days “out” (away from home).
It has dawned on me that some of the even cheaper refurb machines with Win 11 Pro may well have the TPM 1.2 to 2.0 patch applied, and might then pass muster with Microsoft even though the processors are not on the “official” Microsoft list. But, I’m not so sure it’d be worth taking a chance, given the “possible” headaches.
“For parts” servers with DDR4 RAM in them might also be a cheap source of RAM, if they’ll at least boot to BIOS? I see some of those with 8 sticks in them. Not that I need THAT much RAM.
Wifey’s new machine still appears to be on track to arrive Wednesday. :-)
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