HP EliteDesk 705 G5 Desktop Mini
A solid choice for businesses seeking a pint-sized PC on a similarly small budget, but speed disappoints
PRICE £487 (£584 inc VAT) from store.hp.com/uk
If you want to reduce your PC’s power and physical footprint, and the PrimeMini 5 ( see p56) is too punch on price, HP hopes to lure you with its EliteDesk 705 G5. This is the fifth generation of HP’s compact PC and it comes equipped with your choice of Intel or AMD processors. The Intel version is called the EliteDesk 800, while the AMD is the 705.
I suspect this year will see the appearance of an EliteDesk 805 with AMD’s 4000 series of Ryzen chips, which we covered as part of our review of the StonePC Lite Ryzen PCs ( see issue 316, p56). These are twice as fast at certain tasks, but the 3000 series on offer with the EliteDesk 705 are more than fast enough for office duties. For instance, the Ryzen 5 Pro 3400GE in our test machine scored 101 in our benchmarks and 2,869 in the Geekbench 5 multicore test.
While the EliteDesk is designed for businesses, there’s potential for gaming thanks to the 11 Vega graphics cores. These returned a playable 41pfs average at 1080p in the undemanding Dirt: Showdown, and mustered 37fps in F1 2020 at 720p (High settings). 677 in 3DMark’s Time Spy test is also a creditable result for a businessfocused PC, and it outscored the PrimeMini 5 in all of our graphics tests by anything from 50% to 100%.
There’s a downside: unlike the PrimeMini 5, HP’s machine relies on fans to keep the CPU temperature down. That meant it was entirely stable under sustained heavy load, but the fluctuation in noise could be a distraction in a small and quiet office. It isn’t a big enough problem to put most people off buying this computer, but if you want peace and quiet then look elsewhere.
Both computers use between 15W and 20W at idle, but the EliteDesk is greedier at peak – 59W versus 38W. Still, you’d need to consistently push it in demanding tasks to notice any difference to your electricity bill.
The EliteDesk has the advantage on size; if measurements of 177 x 175 x 34mm (WDH) don’t conjure up an image, imagine a CD Walkman of old. Just fatter, squarer and with a 256GB NVMe SSD inside rather than a CD. It’s a fast SSD too, returning 2,482MB/sec read and 1,478MB/sec writes in AS SSD’s sequential transfer tests.
HP supplies a USB-C 3.1 port on the front, alongside two USB-A 3 ports and separate jacks for headphones and a mic. The rear is even better equipped, with a further four USB-A 3.1 ports, an RJ-45 network socket and two DisplayPort outputs. There’s also a Kensington lock slot and a connector for the obligatory external power supply; this is compact but an eyesore.
Without cable management, this could lead to a rat’s nest at the rear, and it doesn’t help that the supplied (basic) HP keyboard and mouse also use wires. The good news is that Wi-Fi 6 and Bluetooth 5 are supported, so you easily could lose three wires.
“While the EliteDesk is designed for business use, there’s potential for some gaming thanks to the 11 Vega graphics cores”
In fact, I’d be tempted to add
HP’s Wireless Business Slim
Keyboard and Mouse at the time of purchase, as that only adds £35 (exc VAT) to the price. If you buy from the HP store, this model costs £487 exc VAT, which includes a five-year on-site warranty. I t’s also very tempting to upgrade this to next business day for £22 exc VAT.
You may find this starts you on a slippery upgrade path, however. For instance, will you be cursing the size of the 256GB SSD a year or two down the line? If so, the 512GB version might just make a worthy choice now rather than later: it costs £549 exc VAT and doubles the RAM to 16GB too. The good news is that there’s a spare 2.5in SATA bay and it’s incredibly easy to access: undo a thumbscrew, slide the casing forward and the innards are laid bare. Flip up the fan module and you’ll find one spare SODIMM socket (in the 8GB version).
Your other decision is whether to choose the 800 G5 Mini instead, with a Core i5-9500 model – with 8GB of RAM and a 256GB SSD – costing
£568 exc VAT. The performance of previous systems in our benchmarks suggest this would score around 120, and you may be more familiar with vPro management tools than the
AMD equivalent.
The EliteDesk 705 G5’s lack of pace and sporadic fan noise rob it of a recommendation, but it’s impossible to argue with the value on offer when you factor in that five-year on-site warranty.
SPECIFICATIONS
Four-core 3.3GHz AMD Ryzen 5 Pro 3400GE 8GB 2,666MHz DDR4 RAM Radeon Vega 11 graphics 256GB NVMe M.2 SSD HP custom motherboard 2 x DisplayPort 1.2 Gigabit Ethernet USB-C 3.1 6 x USB-A 3.1 Wi-Fi 6 Bluetooth 5 65W external PSU corded HP keyboard and mouse Windows 10 Pro 177 x 175 x 34mm (WDH) 5yr on-site warranty