The capable HP t630 thin client will run ASL 3

Read Time: 7 minute(s)

At the suggestion of a subscriber (thank you, Doug!) I’m trying a tiny PC that is new to me: the HP t630 thin client (Quick Specs in PDF available from HP). I like small computers, and while this one is not as small as some, it is still a relatively compact unit that allows upgrading RAM memory and storage.

I wondered: will this machine be capable of running AllStarLink 3? If you don’t want to read through to the end, here’s the spoiler: yes, it runs ASL 3 just fine. The HP t630 platform is very affordable on eBay, with machines configured similar to the one I used to test ASL 3 costing $40 and up. However, power adapters can be pricey, so look for a t630 that includes the power adapter. You can get a lot of capability for not much money, more than enough to run ASL 3. If you get a t630 with the stand, it takes up little room on the desk or shelf.

History and configuration

This machine appeared on the scene in 2016, boasting a quad-core AMD processor and a stated maximum memory capacity of 32 Gb (although the ParkyTowers site reports success running it with 64 Gb of RAM on board). There are two M.2 sockets on the motherboard with room for a 2280 and a 2242 drive, but note these are SATA interfaces, not NVME. (However, DietPi says they are NVME. I’ve not been able to confirm that with official HP documentation, so I’ll have to check that when my unit arrives. M.2 is a form factor, not an interface. Complicating this is you can have an M.2 socket with a SATA interface, or an M.2 with an NVME [PCIE bus] interface.)

On the front panel are four USB sockets (two USB 2.0 and two USB 3.0). On the rear are two more USB 2.0 sockets and there is a USB 3.0 socket on the motherboard. If you are feeling adventurous, you can also replace a rear panel port with a second Ethernet port, making this device potentially useful as an edge device running router software or a firewall/filter of some kind. (If you’re interested in the second Ethernet port modification, check out the YouTube guide at https://youtu.be/B0XfhMmRIKg?si=XgnjivvVJL6tatLF.)

All this capacity comes at the expense of size. The t630 is more than twice the size of a Dell Wyse 3040 thin client machine, and of course, it’s heavier. I obtained my t630 for $60, including the AC adapter. It has 16 GB of RAM installed and a 128 GB SSD. If space is not a concern but budget is, the t630 is a viable candidate for lightweight computing tasks, an AllStar node, or network edge device. You can save some shelf space by using the stand for the t630.

The t630 also accepts a VESA mount should you wish to place it behind a monitor, under a desk, or on a wall. This computer has a lot of ventilation, with slots open on the top, bottom, and ends. Since the ParkyTowers site has such good photos of the insides, I didn’t bother capturing my own. In the ParkyTowers photos, I see two memory banks and a couple of M.2 SSD slots.

The DietPi website has a handy comparison table already made that compares the HP t630 with the Dell Wyse 3040. Find it at https://dietpi.com/blog/?p=2918#hardware_comparison_table

My point of view? I love the reliability I’ve had with Dell Wyse 3040 thin client machines. They just keep on plugging. However, they don’t offer much in the way of expansion capacity. The ability to add RAM and storage is where the t630 shines. Both have quad-core CPUs with enough clock speed to run an AllStar node. If that’s all you want to do, the t630 is overkill (and oversized). If you wish to have a platform that will very capably serve as an AllStar node, the t630 is a solid choice. Be aware, though, that the t630 power consumption at idle is three times greater (10 watts) than the 3040 platform (3.3 watts).

Operating system installation

You can easily use DietPi, a Debian-based Linux flavor, on the t630, says the DietPi website. Hoewver, I didn’t start there. Instead, I went ahead with a full Debian 13 “Trixie” installation. And I didn’t start with the 16 Gb machine. Instead, I did this on a more limited t630 with 8 Gb RAM and 120 Gb of storage.

The device was configured for PXE (“pixie”) boot. It took me several tries to find the right key (it was F10) to press at boot-up to get into the t630 BIOS. Then I had to wade through the BIOS to find where to disable PXE boot and move the USB drive to first position in the boot order. There were some boot-up screens and dialogues disabled at boot which I enabled, because at boot up I want to see what is happening.

I burned a fresh image of Debian 13 to a 32 Gb thumb drive (because that’s what I had on hand), stuck it in the front panel of the t630, connected an Ethernet cable (because there is no wifi on board) and pushed the button. It was gratifying to see the Debian installer screen appear.

Most actions in the installer went quickly. The final steps, after selecting the desktop environment, moved fairly slowly, but that isn’t particularly unusual. I remember thinking: I was hopeful this would work, and now I’m pretty sure it will! Spoiler: it did. I installed KDE Plasma for the desktop environment and also selected the web server and SSH options.

After all was installed, I ran sudo apt update and sudo apt upgrade. This bumped the t630 to the latest version of Debian: Debian 13.2.

Then I installed and started xrdp so I could remote into the t630:

sudo apt update
sudo apt install xrdp
sudo systemctl enable xrdp
sudo systemctl start xrdp

With those changes made, I logged out of the t630 machine but left it running. Then I used Windows 11 Remote Desktop (RDP) to connect remotely to the t630. The screenshots above came from that remote session.

Performance

The t630 rates better than the Dell 3040 mini PC for CPU performance, and about the same on average as the Raspberry Pi 4B platform. I used 7Zip to make comparisons, using the 7z b command to test multi-threaded configurations.

For comparison, I also ran 7z on a Dell 3040 mini PC (ASL 2 node 588418) and a Raspberry Pi 4B (ASL 3 node 588412):

(For more benchmark runs of single board computers, visit: 7-Zip Benchmark Results | SBC Compare | sbc.compare.)

The 3040 runs ASL just fine, even though the MIPS figures are relatively low. Compared to the 3040, the RPi 4B results show greater MIPS for both compressing and decompressing, indicating a more capable CPU. Compared to the RPi 4B, the t630 test reveals even better MIPS for compressing but not as good for decompressing. Thus, I’d expect overall performance of the t630 to be roughly on par with the Raspberry Pi 4B device.

Running btop shows that ASL 3 is demanding little of the system:

How does it feel? Running KDE Plama for the desktop environment puts greater demand on the system, but it certainly feels much more responsive than a 3040 with a desktop GUI. I’d say it feels about the same as a Raspberry Pi 4B with a desktop environment installed. The movement of the mouse pointer was very smooth, and dragging windows around the screen was also quite smooth.

AllStarLink 3

Connecting via RDP worked fine for installing AllStarLink 3 but after installation, I could no longer RDP to the machine. The KDE Plasma desktop environment worked fine when logging into the machine directly, but not remotely.

I confirmed that I could still SSH into the machine:

I pointed my browser at the IP address of the machine and found the ASL 3 dashboard waiting for me.

Clicking on the Web Admin Portal opened the Cockpit dashboard:

Based on this experiment, I conclude that AllStarLink 3 will run on the HP t630, probably about as well as it runs on the Raspberry Pi 4B.