Thin Clients

A thin client is a simple computer that has been optimized for establishing a remote connection with a server-based computing environment. They are sometimes known as network computers, or in their simplest form as zero clients. Some thin clients released in ~2016 may support up to 32 GB RAM, two sata drives, use less than 20 Watts, are fanless and cost in second hand market less than new Raspberry Pi (version 4).

HP t630 Thin Client

One of thin clients is HP t630 best described on Thin Clients and HP t630 Thin Client Specifications.

UMA Frame Buffer Size

UMA Frame Buffer Size manage the amount of shared memory for graphics. If you use HP t630 without display you can set minimal amount memory for video purposes to get more avaible memory in operating system.

how to change UMA Frame Buffer Size

  • enter BIOS with F10
  • go to ‘Advanced -> Device Options’
  • change ‘Auto’ to ‘Forced’ ( use Space to change value )
  • change ‘UMA Frame Buffer Size’ to 256 MB ( use Space to change value )
  • press F10 to accept changes
  • go to ‘File -> Save Changes and Exit’ to save changes and reboot

In my case HP t630 has 8 GB RAM. And with UMA Frame Buffer Size set to Auto total memory available in system was :

$ free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            6892         196        6455           1         240        6462
Swap:           4095           0        4095

After change described above to 256 MB assignet to UMA Frame Buffer Size :

$ free -m
               total        used        free      shared  buff/cache   available
Mem:            7648         187        7273           1         187        7232
Swap:           4095           0        4095

So it allow to regain about 756 MB of RAM memory.