Slimline s3500t - videocard or motherboard problem?

[pamihai]

i had the same problem with my slimline 3630it. the motherboard was fault. the chipset nvidia on motherboard work very hot, case is small, so after some time the chipset get bad soldering on board. the way to fix a failure motherboard is to reflow the chipset. on youtoube you can find many tutorial how to reflow chipset. i did this and i have a functional computer. after reflow i recommand to change the default heatsink on the chipset with one with fan. sorry for bad english. hoppe it help someone

[rubby]

have the same problem. took it to the geek squad at Best Buy. the guy just looked at it and  told me is the motherboard. that it was going to cost me from 400.00 up and i was better off buying a new computer. is crazy. my computer is only 2 years old.  thanks for the post.

[pamihai]

if you have any question , please let me know.

[mucker01]

mtunte, your research was a great help. I purchased the following for a HP Slimline s3600f from cputopia (dot) com for 45 dollars:

HP Pavilion Slimline P/N PN 5188-7520 Replacement PSU

Once you get this power supply, the door is open for other mini ITX boards as well because is has a longer mobo power harness to reach the power plug that is on the side of non-proprietary boards. The new supply is 250 watts and the oem was only 160!  The s3600f always ran very hot because of the psu, and that is why the mobo crapped out after only 2 years. Now, the case is nice and cool.  Only by coincidence, Fry's electronics had only one mini itx board that was cheap enough for this fix, and it was an open-box Zotac 610i ITX for 47 bucks. It works nice.  The board does not have a PCI slot, but does have a pcie 1x, but a pcie 1x card is available for 40 bucks to get dvi/hdmi. It has raid support! There is a plug on the board for a case fan as well! The psu and board are quite a bit smaller than the oem, and once you toss the cage for the pocket media drive bay, there is some room for other devices. you will need a right-angle extension or plug for the dvd to clear the cpu fan if you're using the oem fan.

note: the psu from pcutopia as an adapter plug for the 20 to 24 pin situation as well......

[mucker01]

Forgot.........just cut the right angle plug off the oem supply with some slack and use it.  The cputopia supply came with another goodie...an adapter plug from 4 pin pata  to sata power plug.  It is about 6 inches long.  cut off the straight pata plug and butt splice the right angle plug on it from the oem.  You're in business.  You can run a total of 4 sata drives with both the board AND the power supply using adapters.  The Zotac setup has been run by the wife for about 5 days and it's passed her discriminating facebook test, and that's saying something.....

[mucker01]

It has been over 3 months and the Zotac setup has run flawlessly, better than new.  The only issue is there are not enough on-board usb plugs on the Zotac board I used and only the front panel card reader could be hooked up. There are plenty of outboard usb ports in the rear though. For a little more than 90 bucks total for the new moboard and PSU  this was a great fix, and the board can be purchased for less on-line.

Maybe HP should consider putting a larger power supply and a Zotac board in these compact desktops?

[miesok]

Same familliar problems here to,every thing seems to run but nothing on screen, mobo is dead.

I watched the video on youtube about baking a mo-board, haha funny to watch !

Now i can tell, its more fun when you actually find out yourself that it works

I was afraid it woud be a joke, but what the f... I thought, lets find out.

SO: took every thing off also the little IC next to the Phoenix chip, put it in the hotair oven at 190 celcius on a baking paper. Took a beercan and sigaret and watched, after 8 minutes i took it out to cool down.

That was the moment some electrolite capacitors burst a bit on top.

Never the less after putting everything back as it should, I fired the power button, then I got goesbums and full disbeleave with a smile.....It just booted up!

Next day I went to a store for getting capacitors 6.3v 1000mf and replaced them.

My slimline S3330 is working fine for about 5 days now.

I am gonna get some extra cooling for the internal grafics, there i think is a heat problem,always was perhaps.

So that was my unconventional solution.

[snapper2l11]

Facing the same problem here.For the vast majority of the time, the s3500t FAILS to even display a POST screen. 1 out of 20 times, it does start and works normally. I want to replace the motherboard, but am unable to find the ones mentioned here (zotac g43 or 610) on new egg. Does anyone have any recommendations for a new mini itx board which will fit the slimline casing ?

I still see the HP 5188-7520 available for about $36 . I am guessing that it would still work (its only 200W though)

Thanks

Snapper

[wdrive]

I'm so glad I'm not the only one with this problem, it was so hard to even find the mobo's name.  I'm not a computer whiz by any means so I might be doing something dangerous.  Still, I have somewhat of a solution.

Problem: On startup, the amber disk drive light blinks eight times, then stays off for a few seconds, then repeats.  No BIOS or video or anything.

I bought this computer in June 2012 as a rebuilt machine with a GeForce 8400 card and win 7 installed.  I had one problem a few months ago when the machine wouldn't POST but taking it apart and putting it together seemed to work fine until last Wednesday when it happened again.

Taking out the hard drive, switching memory, and removing the media bay (which I never used anyway) didn't work.  It was only after sleuthing out that the BIOS wasn't working that I tried to jump the BIOS as detailed here.  Starting the computer up, it wouldn't recognize the video card and only booted up on the onboard video with no internet support.

After more trial and error, I've gotten this to work:

1. Turn off computer, unplug the power, press the power button to release any remaining charge.

2. Take the cover off, then move the CMOS jump to the left two pins.

3. Put case back on, plug in, turn power on, the machine should load Windows.  On my machine, it doesn't recognize the video card.

4. Once windows loads, shut down normally.

5. Repeat 1-3 except switching the CMOS jump to the right two pins.

6. As long as the machine remains on, everything including the video card should work normally.

This isn't the best solution, as I can't even put the computer to sleep let alone restart it without having to go through that process all over again, but for right now, things seem to be working.  Hope this helps someone.