I have a thin client addiction. You all have seen my 3x Dell Wyse 5060 Hyperconverged Cluster project. And you know that I bought a Dell Wyse 3040. But, I actually bought 3x 3040s, and someone sent me a Wyse 7010, and an HP T620 (yet to be reviewed). And now I bought another. An HP T530.

I’d consider this to be an excellent choice for anyone wanting to run Home Assistant, since it has enough power for, an upgradeable M.2 storage slot, and can handle a Coral TPU for Frigate using the M.2 WiFi slot (but not in the storage slot). It’s also a bit more modern than the Dell units, using DDR4 (only single channel though) and sporting a USB-C port and more USB 3.0 ports. That said, it’s a lower end processor and GPU than the 5060, if that’s a concern for you.

If you’d like to see my saved eBay search for T530’s, find it here (Affiliate link)

Video

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M.2 Compatibility

This unit has two M.2 slots - one E key (WiFi) and one M key (Storage). The M slot can fit up to 2280 size SSDs.

I found that the Storage slot electrically works for SATA only, not PCIe. Be aware of this when buying SSDs for this thin client.

I tested an Intel WiFi + Bluetooth card in the Wifi slot, and found that at least one PCIe lane and USB are working on that slot. I can’t confirm if the other PCIe bus, SDIO, etc. work on this slot.

Hardware Info

All of this was taken via an Xubuntu 20.04 Live ISO, so your kernel may be configured slightly differently

lscpu

Architecture:                    x86_64
CPU op-mode(s):                  32-bit, 64-bit
Byte Order:                      Little Endian
Address sizes:                   48 bits physical, 48 bits virtual
CPU(s):                          2
On-line CPU(s) list:             0,1
Thread(s) per core:              1
Core(s) per socket:              2
Socket(s):                       1
NUMA node(s):                    1
Vendor ID:                       AuthenticAMD
CPU family:                      21
Model:                           112
Model name:                      AMD Embedded G-Series GX-215JJ Radeon R2E
Stepping:                        0
Frequency boost:                 enabled
CPU MHz:                         1107.674
CPU max MHz:                     1500.0000
CPU min MHz:                     1100.0000
BogoMIPS:                        2994.56
Virtualization:                  AMD-V
L1d cache:                       64 KiB
L1i cache:                       128 KiB
L2 cache:                        2 MiB
NUMA node0 CPU(s):               0,1
Vulnerability Itlb multihit:     Not affected
Vulnerability L1tf:              Not affected
Vulnerability Mds:               Not affected
Vulnerability Meltdown:          Not affected
Vulnerability Spec store bypass: Mitigation; Speculative Store Bypass disabled via prctl and seccomp
Vulnerability Spectre v1:        Mitigation; usercopy/swapgs barriers and __user pointer sanitization
Vulnerability Spectre v2:        Mitigation; Full AMD retpoline, STIBP disabled, RSB filling
Vulnerability Srbds:             Not affected
Vulnerability Tsx async abort:   Not affected
Flags:                           fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36
                                 clflush mmx fxsr sse sse2 ht syscall nx mmxext fxsr_opt pdpe1gb rdtscp 
                                 lm constant_tsc rep_good acc_power nopl nonstop_tsc cpuid extd_apicid 
                                 aperfmperf pni pclmulqdq monitor ssse3 fma cx16 sse4_1 sse4_2 movbe popcnt 
                                 aes xsave avx f16c lahf_lm cmp_legacy svm extapic cr8_legacy abm sse4a 
                                 misalignsse 3dnowprefetch osvw ibs xop skinit wdt lwp fma4 tce nodeid_msr 
                                 tbm perfctr_core perfctr_nb bpext ptsc mwaitx cpb hw_pstate ssbd vmmcall 
                                 fsgsbase bmi1 avx2 smep bmi2 xsaveopt arat npt lbrv svm_lock nrip_save 
                                 tsc_scale vmcb_clean flushbyasid decodeassists pausefilter pfthreshold 
                                 avic v_vmsave_vmload vgif overflow_recov

CPU does support aes-ni and AMD-V, but not SMT (hyper-threading). So, 2 cores, 2 threads.

lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h (Models 60h-6fh) Processor Root Complex
00:00.2 IOMMU: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h (Models 60h-6fh) I/O Memory Management Unit
00:01.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Stoney [Radeon R2/R3/R4/R5 Graphics] (rev 83)
00:01.1 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] Device 15b3
00:02.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h (Models 60h-6fh) Host Bridge
00:02.2 PCI bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h (Models 60h-6fh) Processor Root Port
00:03.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h (Models 60h-6fh) Host Bridge
00:08.0 Encryption controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Carrizo Platform Security Processor
00:09.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Carrizo Audio Dummy Host Bridge
00:09.2 Audio device: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Family 15h (Models 60h-6fh) Audio Controller
00:10.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH USB XHCI Controller (rev 20)
00:11.0 SATA controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SATA Controller [AHCI mode] (rev 4b)
00:12.0 USB controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH USB EHCI Controller (rev 49)
00:14.0 SMBus: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH SMBus Controller (rev 4b)
00:14.3 ISA bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] FCH LPC Bridge (rev 11)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Stoney HT Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Stoney Address Maps
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Stoney DRAM Configuration
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Stoney Miscellaneous Configuration
00:18.4 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Stoney PM Configuration
00:18.5 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD] Stoney NB Performance Monitor
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8111/8168/8411 PCI Express Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 15)

Realtek NIC, as expected for a device of this price range

vainfo

vainfo: VA-API version: 1.7 (libva 2.6.0)
vainfo: Driver version: Mesa Gallium driver 21.2.6 for AMD STONEY (DRM 3.41.0, 5.13.0-30-generic, LLVM 12.0.0)
vainfo: Supported profile and entrypoints
      VAProfileMPEG2Simple            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileMPEG2Main              :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Simple              :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Main                :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileVC1Advanced            :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline:	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264ConstrainedBaseline:	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264Main               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264Main               :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileH264High               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileH264High               :	VAEntrypointEncSlice
      VAProfileHEVCMain               :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileHEVCMain10             :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileJPEGBaseline           :	VAEntrypointVLD
      VAProfileNone                   :	VAEntrypointVideoProc

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