HP EliteDesk Mini 8 G1i - I want an eGPU!
Hey all, I'm looking for a bit of advice.
I bought an HP EliteDesk Mini 8 G1i a few months ago for £1,300 after a bit of a battle with HP. Long story, but they cancelled my initial order, then relisted at more than double the price, I complained lots for a couple of months and eventually they gave in and honoured the original purchase price.
At the time I was totally sure I would not want to game or have much to do with AI and just wanted a small footprint, decently specced machine for my daily computing tasks, bit of music production etc.
Of course now I want to play a few games, experiment with local AI, and this thing doesn't have the guts for it...
I don't need (and can't afford) the best of the best, but would like enough grunt to play some AAA games smoothly and have them look good enough on my monitor.
My monitor is nothing fancy:
- HP Series 7 Pro 27" USB-C Monitor – 727pu
- 1440p, 120Hz
- IPS Panel
The specs of the mini PC are:
- HP EliteDesk Mini 8 G1i
- Intel® Core™ Ultra 9 285
- 64 GB DDR5-5600 MT/s (2 x 32 GB)
- 1 TB SSD storage
- Windows 11 Pro
I know very little about all this, but have done a bit of reading and think my options are as follows:
- eGPU connected via Thunderbolt 4. Maybe the Aorus 5060ti AI Box.
- Desktop card and enclosure connected with OcuLink via a spare M.2 2280 slot.
- Sell it and buy a proper PC.
What would you do in my situation?