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5090, 285k, 64GB refurb prebuilt at some (?) MCs, 3.5k

S

StoleMyOwnCar

2[H]4U
Joined
Sep 30, 2013
Messages
3,472
Curious as to what you all think of this:
https://www.microcenter.com/product...090_32GB_GDDR7;_Kingston_FURY_64GB_DDR5-5600_

I reserved one. Might pick it up. There is probably 1 left at my location. I am not sure what other locations have one, or something similar to it. Part by part, it's an OEM 5090 (which is worth about ~3k++ alone these days), a 285k (~500+ USD, probably a crappy mobo though), 4x16GB Kingston Fury DDR5 RAM (probably ~800+ total), a 2TB NVME, a case, an AIO, and no idea what the PSU is. Also comes with Windows 11. So, basically if you part out and sell everything, the 5090 might be at or below MSRP when all is said and done. Alternatively if you keep it together it's still a pretty good price. Maybe just replace the PSU as they likely picked shit. On the other hand, it's a refurb on top of being an OEM. So dubious warranty.
 
Unfortunate. I didn't have time to check every location. Maybe another one has a better deal on some other prebuilt or something then.

Well, if you're in GA, I guess it's a deal lol.
 
1778715636510.png
 
Actually I way overvalued the ram sticks. You can probably get them on Ebay for ~450-600 for 4x16 like this PC has. Makes this considerably more mild, though still probably not that bad in today's age. Well, I'll see if I want to pick mine up and try it out. Maybe one other person will as well. Looks like the 2 year warranty is 300 USD? So 3800 before tax if you get it? Eh. I guess you would get the GPU for somewhere around 2300-2500 depending on how you do it. Well whatever, I'll peace out.
 
I happened to be sort of in the situation where that Microcenter was on the way home going back from work today. I did pick it up. Tbh, I expected this to be a complete shitshow, based on Steve's review here, along with it being a refurb:

View: https://youtu.be/cS27ol07bSo

But no, not really. It just has issues that you really have to be aware of when going in (which is why Steve's video is very useful to watch through). The PC itself was packed really well and was basically completely unblemished. Smelled new even. Going to be a bit of a wall of images, but I'll post some benchmarks and thoughts on each aspect of it:

First of all, the CPU situation is a bit tricky. I did two Cinebench 2026 benchmarks, and finally managed to get the CPU within spitting distance of what it should be stock (roughly):
1778819904968.png
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Some notes:
  • Did have to enable XMP in the BIOS. Not on by default, as Steve says. While these are still relatively low speed sticks (5600, though I'm sure they can be tuned higher), it does make a difference.
  • First picture is using the "Intel 200 boost" in the motherboard BIOS or something similar. Second picture is me using a custom fan curve, installing the Intel overclocking app (the one straight from them), and then just clicking "autotune". After uninstalling all of the HP shit and just using the app to do a modest overclock (well, really just getting it back to stock perf), it hits roughly what the stock settings would get you to, and it keeps its rated speeds throughout the 10 minute stress test, which is totally fine for me.
  • By default for some reason the pump is set to run ridiculously low. Need to take this and crank it ASAP. With the pump speed cranked up, the AIO can handle the CPU mostly without issues, though I set a more aggressive fan curve for the tests. The pump at its default settings is LITERALLY UNSAFE.

Next, the NVME SSD.
1778817297938.png
1778819833573.png


Hard to find any information at all about this NVME SSD, but the closest I could find says this might actually be a 980 Pro in disguise or similar. So, actually a surprisingly high end NVME drive, which boosts the value proposition of this significantly. Hopefully this is a "safe" firmware revision. Thread I found when looking up the exact firmware number and then tracing the model number: https://old.reddit.com/r/buildapc/c..._deal_with_samsung_pm9a1_ssd_pcie_40/gtsuovj/

Didn't look like it had much write to it. Most of that was probably just me installing, unzipping, etc. Maybe some OEM use for Windows reinstalls and reimaging.

1778817551706.png
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The GPU performs about average overall. No missing ROPS thankfully. I'm actually surprised it manages to keep this cool (this is after ~10 mins of 4k Furmark, so this is the steady state temp) considering it effectively gets half of a case fan worth of air in this shitty case. Cable thankfully did not melt.

Surprisingly not really much (if any) coil whine either! I have read that coil whine is a major issue with 5090 FEs, so the fact that this OEM HP 5090 doesn't really have any is a massively pleasant surprise. It's quite the behemoth of a GPU, too. Massive fin stack, 3 fans, etc. Actually moderately quiet, too.

The power connector appears to be tilted down ever so slightly to give just a little more breathing room for the connector. Also as Steve notes the GPU support bracket is actually really insane in this case. Absolutely zero sag, insanely sturdy. You could probably throw the case and the GPU would survive.


The ugly:

  • The ugliest thing about this build overall is the PSU. If there's anything I'd recommend swapping out ASAP, it's this PSU. It doesn't have an on/off switch, and I've never seen a PSU that sort of makes a receiver-like startup sound when the PC is turned on, and then causes everything connected to the same circuit to flicker. After it gets going, it's obviously fine. It ran Furmark without issues, and the GPU benchmark ran fine. But regardless, it just doesn't feel safe. I'm going to probably take my Be Quiet 1200W with the native connector and then use it with this. I'll take my 1200W EVGA P2 (via 8x4 adapter) for my 4090, and then this PSU will... probably just go into some box somewhere. Thankfully I already have all of the PSUs that I need for this. I'm actually legitimately curious as to wtf they put in this.

  • The motherboard is... barebones, putting it mildly. The VRM cooling as Steve notes is actually really incredible on it... but unfortunately it has HP's usable-but-shit BIOS on it. I also want to put in a mellanox 10g card into this, but I can't because I can't even reach the port. I have no idea if a riser would even fit under this behemoth of a GPU. Thankfully it also has room for another NVME, so I can put Linux on the other slot. It also kind of has all of jack shit for I/O. Overall, probably the second or third thing I would swap, tied with the case. But not really necessary. Does the job

  • The case is... well it's an interesting idea. Putting the CPU in a completely closed off system by itself is actually a pretty good idea. The problem is that the GPU in this case, I can't even see how the hell it's getting much air. If they just put bottom intakes below the GPU and had some sort of side exhaust or something along with the single tiny fan in the back in charge of expelling 600W, this would actually be a really good idea. As it is now, the GPU effectively gets about 0.75 of a fan worth of air dedicated to it. Pretty dumb design. But it works, if you tweak settings a bit. Can't really argue with results.

  • HP's motherfucking bloatware. This shit is like spyware. I uninstalled all of it and then it somehow all came back. Also some values are unreadable by anything but said software.

  • The RAM is RGB. Which means it's worth more, but it's RGB. Well it's just me, I don't like RGB.
Overall I got this for toying around with LLMs, to be honest, not gaming. For gaming a 5070 Ti+DLSS is frankly all you need these days. I'm going to install Linux Mint and start playing around with it as soon as I can. Hopefully all of the HP shit can't find its way up my ass if I'm on Linux.

That's about it. Unfortunately the other one from Duluth got purchased out, but maybe these will come in and out of stock somewhere else. Just wanted to give a rundown for anyone that was interested. For my part, I'm probably going to do a quick exchange and sign up for the MC credit card so I can do zero interest payments on this and also get rid of the sales tax. That way, a 2 year replacement plan on this would basically be free at that point, and it would be better than HP's shitty 1 year even on a new one. Return policy is 30 days so plenty of time to sort that out. PC seems to work just fine, though, so the 90 day that it comes with may be just fine. Better than most anything you'd get on Ebay for a tiny savings, I think. About it, end wall of text.
 
Last edited:
StoleMyOwnCar said:
Some notes:
  • Did have to enable XMP in the BIOS. Not on by default, as Steve says. While these are still relatively low speed sticks (5600, though I'm sure they can be tuned higher), it does make a difference.
Click to expand...
That's usually the case on all pre-built's, except for smaller custom PC shops, they never run XMP for the memory. From my experience, most DDR5's can overclock at least to 400MHz without much fuss. If they're 1.2V's, then 1.35V's will usually do the trick when getting to 6000MHz or 6400MHz.

StoleMyOwnCar said:
Next, the NVME SSD.
View attachment 803415View attachment 803416

Hard to find any information at all about this NVME SSD, but the closest I could find says this might actually be a 980 Pro in disguise or similar. So, actually a surprisingly high end NVME drive, which boosts the value proposition of this significantly. Hopefully this is a "safe" firmware revision. Thread I found when looking up the exact firmware number and then tracing the model number: https://old.reddit.com/r/buildapc/c..._deal_with_samsung_pm9a1_ssd_pcie_40/gtsuovj/
Click to expand...
The Samsung PM9A1's are solid drives, basically OEM versions of the 980 Pro. You'll usually find them in SFF workstation PC's.

StoleMyOwnCar said:
Overall I got this for toying around with LLMs, to be honest, not gaming. For gaming a 5070 Ti+DLSS is frankly all you need these days. I'm going to install Linux Mint and start playing around with it as soon as I can. Hopefully all of the HP shit can't find its way up my ass if I'm on Linux.

That's about it. Unfortunately the other one from Duluth got purchased out, but maybe these will come in and out of stock somewhere else. Just wanted to give a rundown for anyone that was interested. For my part, I'm probably going to do a quick exchange and sign up for the MC credit card so I can do zero interest payments on this and also get rid of the sales tax. That way, a 2 year replacement plan on this would basically be free at that point, and it would be better than HP's shitty 1 year even on a new one. Return policy is 30 days so plenty of time to sort that out. PC seems to work just fine, though, so the 90 day that it comes with may be just fine. Better than most anything you'd get on Ebay for a tiny savings, I think. About it, end wall of text.
Click to expand...
Basically paying for the RTX 5090, the 2TB PM9A1 NVMe, the 285K, and the 64GB 5600MHz DDR5 RAM. The Motherboard and PSU would be worth swapping out. The case and AIO could be kept. For today's market, it's a decent deal. Before the RAMpocalypse, definitely not.
 
For me I couldn't justify spending 3.1-3.5k on just a GPU. Then I would have to worry about what PC to put it into, and I didn't want to replace any of my other servers or PCs. This sort of came around and perfectly solved all of my issues.

The value proposition on it is kind of unique in today's time, like you said due to the rampocalypse. Even back when the 5090 first came out, getting one for ~2k was close to impossible. I tried to get some concrete numbers for what everything in this build is worth, that you can sell on Ebay:

  • RAM: ~700 total
  • CPU: ~500
  • MB: ~50-100 ? Probably hard to even find a buyer.
  • Equivalent AIO: let's say around 50-100, but you can't sell this easily anyway (?).
  • NVME: ~200-230 on Ebay ATM
  • PSU: I wouldn't wish this thing on anyone
  • Case: Selling cases isn't profitable
So if we just add up the RAM, CPU, and NVME at prices you would probably actually sell them at, it's ~1400. That means the GPU is total about 2100 in this build during today's time... if I were to sell this all off, but I'm pretty lazy. Well, to be fair... again it's a refurb.

I think the MB is serviceable enough for me. The PSU, I agree, it has to go eventually.
 
Can you wipe the hard drive and install Windows on it fresh? Or is there some HP stuff on it that the machine has to use?
 
Darkswordz said:
Can you wipe the hard drive and install Windows on it fresh? Or is there some HP stuff on it that the machine has to use?
Click to expand...

As far as I know, I got rid of all of the HP stuff on this machine. Haven't seen it in a while. Been running Stable Diffusion 24/7 for about a week now. Surprisingly no issues, not even with the PSU. GPU bounces to close to 600W regularly.

I don't think you need to wipe the drive. It comes with an OEM Win 11 Pro for free.

The only annoyance is that you can't control fans in the OS without Omen. You can still do it with the BIOS. I believe the network card is just a standard Realtek 2.5 (thankfully not one of the disasterous Intel 2.5 options), so that should probably be mostly plug and play. The wireless card is just a standard Intel one (and works surprisingly well).

I put in another NVME and I'm about to install Linux Mint on it. I'll let you know how that goes, but chances are for base functionality nothing HP is required at all. It's mostly for dealing with anything the MB decides to obscure, like fan speeds.

I do want to see if I can power limit the GPU. I don't need 600W out of it.
 
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Managed to get Mint running with no problems on the system. Mellanox and all other network adapters recognized without any hitches, and installing drivers for the 5090 was as easy as clicking a few buttons. After some hours of setup, had Qwen up and running:

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Almost 200k context, so not bad though a bit slow. Overall I think this will be a nice little AI box for the money. My main worry is how exactly Microcenter warranties this. If their promise is "we'll replace the system"... well there kind of aren't any other refurbs of this thing. Probably won't ever be. So what exactly are they going to do? Can I extended warranty part by part? All points to be a bit worried about.

Also my Mint installation got completely nuked by Windows Update somehow so I have to redo all of that.... yay...

So yeah, no HP stuff is really required at all. The GPU is a pretty normal 5090.
 
StoleMyOwnCar said:
Also my Mint installation got completely nuked by Windows Update somehow so I have to redo all of that.... yay...
Click to expand...
That's what happens when you dual boot, any Windows Update will destroy your Mint Bootloader. Just take the Linux drive out when you run Windows, or just use a Windows VM within Linux.
 
El_Capitan said:
That's what happens when you dual boot, any Windows Update will destroy your Mint Bootloader. Just take the Linux drive out when you run Windows, or just use a Windows VM within Linux.
Click to expand...
I wish it was just the bootloader, it somehow corrupted the entire drive, and the repair tool put everything into lost+found. Anyway, this isn't the fault of the HP mobo regardless. Was very easy to choose the boot device.
 
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