My HR director at work has been using the same HP Envy 700-527c desktop since the company purchased them ten years ago, and earlier this week the drive started showing symptoms of failure… So, I had him back up his data – just in case – and started the process of replacing his machine.
The Envy 700-527c uses a 4th gen Haswell i5, so pretty much anything would be an upgrade. But, just to show how fast technology has evolved, I found a refurbished Dell Optiplex 7060 over at Microcenter for $230…
Said Optiplex has an 8th gen i7-8700 in it, 32 gigs of ram, 4TB of storage (1TB SSD + 3TB 3.5″ HD) and Win10 Pro. Win10 Pro is probably a hundred bucks of the $230 all by itself…
Anyway, I send my CFO (who has returned from abroad) over to Microcenter to get the Dell, and when he gets back, I collect the HR director’s machine, pull the HD, and install it in place of the 3TB 3.5″ in order to clone it to the SSD.
So far so good – with one exception – the new Dell only supports display port for monitors, and everything at work is older than that. In fact, my HR director is still using an old DVI-based 27″ LCD I sold to the company back in 2010 or so… But I can fix this being as I have a huge collection of old video cards and most of them do DVI.
So, I stick an old Nvidia GT-430 into the Dell because it can’t support additional PCIe power, hook up a test monitor, and power it on…
Nada. The machine powers up, but no display.
I figure this is caused by a UEFI configuration where it’s been told to use the integrated GPU in the CPU and ignore an external GPU, so I scour the building looking for a monitor that will do display port – finding one in our spinoff’s disused office space. (They get all of the cool new stuff while I build complex systems out of popsicle sticks and paper clips – such is life)
Okay, new(er) monitor hooked up and I get into the UEFI – and the GPU selection is set for “automatic”: so that’s not it.
Then I remember that if a UEFI machine is set for “Secure Boot” it will generally refuse to see any cards that aren’t also UEFI-based. The GT-340, being from 2010, has no concept of UEFI and uses older VBIOS mechanism to instantiate itself on boot…
Easy fix. Turn off secure boot, turn on legacy card support, and presto – DVI video. And a half an hour later I have the old drive cloned to the new SSD, the system booting off the cloned image, and all of the Win10 drivers installed for the new chipset and other new hardware.
Even with the 2010 video card in it, the new Coffee Lake-based Dell runs circles around the Haswell-based HP, as one would expect.
Now to replace the other 4-5 Haswell-based HPs still hanging out in the office with much more performative $230 Dells.
Listening to "Valerie" by Steve Winwood