EliteDesk 850 G3? Parts Only? -You'd think I'd learn by now

[@Yandarval]

Things to try. With power and ethernet connected. Does the ethernet lights on the port light up at all. Try removing the thermal sensor and replace it with a one from another G3. Its the black thing at the front, poking through a block of foam. Change the RTC BIOS battery. Reset the BIOS using the button on the motherboard. Remove the motherboard from the chassis. Strip it to the bare minimum. Give it power and see if it turns on. As the case may be shorting something. Check to see if the USB ports have been mangled and contacts are touching. Any further than the above and you are down to missing or blown components from the board. Which may not be worth the effort. As tracing faults with a multimeter requires some skill, time and steady hands.

[@handmedowntech]

Wow, this is exactly the type of thing I was hoping to hear from the community. I will give these a try and let you know.

[@japhule]

Thanks for your vids. Picked up a 65w i7 800 g4 for 125 includes 500gb ssd, wifi, power ac and 16gb on ebay. Seemed like a good deal. Arriving soon.

[@handmedowntech]

Very nice price, especially for an i7. G4s are pretty hot right now since they have the juice and expandability. Is that your first 65w?

[@japhule]

@@handmedowntech i picked up a 65w 705 previously. That i set up for a family member

[@dailylife8901]

There are two dots for soldering an external power buttom underneath the board just where the power button is, I tried but seems like I would need micro soldering since I failed at soldering the small dots, I believe could work though, although not 100% sure. You can configure the bios to powe on upon plugging the power adapter.

[@handmedowntech]

Of course you have to get it turned on first 😉

[@dailylife8901]

@@handmedowntech right

[@MsNIKITA]

@handmedowntech Unrelated to this video. I just aquired a G4 mini the other day, I see what you mean about the second m.2 slot... I think the best solution is to change the m.2 slot out and install a low profile one but then the UEFI battery gets in the way. I put it down to poor design. Normally when I buy computers for "parts" I physically use the motherboard to scavenge componets from, such as hard to find bits like the SATA connector and other surface mount devices.

[@handmedowntech]

I'm actually using the mobo to store some parts like a 6500 CPU and the heatsink. At least with this one I felt going in there was something useful I could scavenge. But I've bought other units that claimed it might not work and they were fine. For the G4 they really should have made it easily accommodate 3 drives.

[@MsNIKITA]

@@handmedowntech Does the CPU from this system work on another G3 board, have you tested it? 🤔

[@handmedowntech]

@@MsNIKITA yes, I was able to put it into a G2 65w and use the lower wattage power supply.

[@johnhudson7055]

I have 13 of the g3 minis, sadly one has a bad mobo. I bought most of them as barebone machines.

[@handmedowntech]

13!! Not that's someone who loves their EliteDesks 😉

[@johnhudson7055]

@@handmedowntech actually I acquired them for when my friends and I have lan parties. They aren't gaming machines by today's standards but the i3 7100T's iGPU is more than capable enough to play all the older games my friends and I still play. And they're small so storing them is super easy. I wish I hadn't gone the barebone route because while they were only $14 each I had to source everything for them, CPUs, HSFs, and drive cages along with the RAM and drives. I love the little things and they are incredibly fast desktop machines given what they are.

[@handmedowntech]

@@johnhudson7055 I agree. After you start adding all that stuff on you could find a preassembled unit for the same or lower price. But then you miss out on the fun and experience of putting them together.

[@clubx1000]

brillant june 24y

[@handmedowntech]

Thank you!

[@andygardiner6526]

I've got a g2 and I've seen several posts about other early models with the green power led and nothing else. Unfortunately no comments as to what the problem may be. Doing what @Yandarval suggested is a good plan but none of it seems to work in my experience. You can short the power switch pins with a screwdriver but that didn't help me. I suspect reading and rewriting the BIOS from a known good unit is probably an idea. It can possibly be done without chip removal and an SO18 (?) clip but is a bit of a risky thing to do as writing to the BIOS on the board may not work correctly (also, depending on future usage it may need a tweak to ensure the machine ID is correct for windows etc but I think badcaps forum may have info on that) - but you will not know until you try and as the board is dead anyway ...

[@handmedowntech]

I was thinking on the BIOS idea too and had thought it might be fun to try the refreshing. Saw something like that on Hardware Haven

[@foamyflightmaster9385]

Have you tried reseating the CPU, that can often be the cause of boot failure

[@handmedowntech]

I actually moved the CPU over to a different unit and put a 6500 in it. I'll see how it reacts to that one.

[@diggerdanh]

Unrelated to this video but possibly something for another that I do not believe you have covered yet… the HP specs state that the upper limit for RAM on the G2 & G3 minis are 32GB (2x16) but the Intel spec sheets for the 6th & 7th gen 35w CPUs (at least the i5 and i7 T processors that I checked) state that 64GB is the max. I have found just a couple posts on Reddit and STH where folks are successfully running 2x32GB. Have you tried this yet? I would really love to know if that is true.

[@handmedowntech]

I will keep that in mind if I'm blessed with 64gb of memory to play with. Which sounds like a lot but it wasn't so long ago that 4gb of memory was expensive and now is considered barely usable.

[@diggerdanh]

@@handmedowntech Yes, I know what you mean, 64GB is a hefty investment, especially given the budget price tag of these little machines.

[@stevenbell9589]

have you thought about replacing the motherboard i did this on a g2 thinking the board was broke but it was not so i had a spare board al i had to do was reprogram the board as the bios had no serial number i think its what engineers use when coming out to fix your pc that could be another video also did you take out the bios battery to clear the bios one of my g2 i had to do this with mine

[@handmedowntech]

I'd entertain that idea if the case was in better shape.

[@dailylife8901]

What's that thing next to the mouse?

[@handmedowntech]

If you're talking about my mouse then it might be my camera remote.

[@daviddaniel1001]

That's an 800 not 850, the fan needs to be replaced and you'll have to find a front panel for it since it's missing

[@handmedowntech]

Oh I know it's an 800. I was making the point that sometimes you can find good deals by looking for mislabeled units.