2025-11-22

A fellow gopher netizen, Ian, responded via email to my last post
about buying cheap compute for homelabs and learning linux/BSD.

I'm defining cheap compute as less than $50 USD which might not
have been super obvious in my last post. In the sub-50 dollar range,
modern options like Celeron N-series computers and even SBCs like
Rasberry Pi's become hard to acquire at that price point.

Anyways, Ian suggested some HP thin clients like the HP T620 and
HP T630. I never even knew about these HP thin clients but looking
at the specs, they look like really good options for cheap compute.
A glance at the spec-sheet shows that many of the models have
quad-core AMD processors and M.2 sockets for storage. They are also
passively cooled which gives them a nice advantage over a cheap
old intel Mac-Mini as I suggested in my last post.

Of course most importantly, these thin clients are CHEAP!

Just based on casual perusal of north america eBay, I see these
things routinely selling for $20 to $40USD depending on config.
Although it is true that a lot of the cheaper listings don't include
the M.2 storage, these prices are still extremely cheap especially
if you have M.2 drives sitting around.

Alas, I'm a technology luddite and I actually only own 1 computer
with an M.2 slot and that's for work...so I have a ton of 2.5in
SSD drives and no M.2 drives :-P

But there are still quite some cheap deals to be had on T620s and
T630s even if you had to throw in a few bucks for an M.2 drive.
Like everything else on eBay, if you wait patiently, some good
deals are likely to come up.

Ian has convinced me and I'm currently stalking eBay for some HP
thin client deals. If I get one, I'll report back here to gopher
about getting linux/BSD up and running on them.

peace out!