Upgrading an HP EliteDesk 800 65W G3 Desktop Mini (DM) PC

[NonSequitur777]

@tcsenter,

It so happens that the HP EliteDesk 800 G3 SFF was an upgrade project of mine, then upgraded to an HP EliteDesk 800 G4 SFF, and again upgraded to an HP EliteDesk 800 G5 SFF:

1.) https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Business-PCs-Workstations-and-Point-of-Sale-Systems/Upgrading-HP-Elite... (i7-7700K)

2.) https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/Upgrading-HP-EliteDesk-800-G4-S... (i7-8700K)

3.) https://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Desktop-Hardware-and-Upgrade-Questions/Upgrading-HP-EliteDesk-800-G5-S... (i7-9700KF)

And yes, upgrading was a breeze since these motherboards all share identical mounting points and front/rear I/O ports.

The most powerful HP proprietary power supply you can purchase for these platforms is an HP 250-watt PSU (p/n: 901760-004). Certainly not sufficient by a long shot for powering a high(er) end graphics card* -that's why I used a 24-pin ATX power adapter to sync ('daisy-chain') a secondary power supply as you can read up on in the aforementioned links.

* With few exceptions: 250 watt is good enough to power a Nvidia RTX A2000 6GB or 12GB, and these cards will actually physically fit inside an HP EliteDesk 800 G3/4/5 SFF case.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[NonSequitur777]

Dear Forum,

All right, thinking over how to best create an enhanced cooling method for a 91-watt processor on an HP EliteDesk 800 G3 65W Mini Desktop, I am going to rebuild an existing heatsink (HP p/n: 914254-001).  I will remove the top cooling radiator part, until only the flat base plate remains, then will attach a tower heatsink/fan combo.

Shown here is the top-view of the heatsink:

And yes, this mod will also require me to cut out a section of the Mini Desktop's top panel.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[NonSequitur777]

Dear Forum,

The 1TB Samsung 870 Evo SATA SSD arrived and installed:

Link: HP EliteDesk 800 G3 DM 65W Performance Results - UserBenchmark

An HP EliteDesk 800 G3 65W Desktop Mini looks very small indeed compared with the much larger HP ProDesk 600 G4 MT and the HP Z240 Tower Workstation:

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[NonSequitur777]

Dear Forum,

Ended up creating my own micro PWM 4-pin adapter using spare parts, soldering and heat-shrink tubing:

And the cooling fan is working just fine (speed-modulating based on CPU temps).  Done this in preparation to put together a more robust heat sink/cooling fan assembly.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[NonSequitur777]

Esteemed Forum,

Started to work to modify the HP EliteDesk 800 G3 65W DM heatsink:

Polishing up the upper side:

Waiting for the thermal pads to maximize thermal contact between this stripped heatsink and a CoolServer R63 4 Copper Heat Pipe High Efficiency CPU Cooler/Fan combo, purchased through AliExpress:

Decided to use a strong thermal glue/heatsink plaster to bond the CoolServer heatsink to the copper HP EliteDesk 800 G3 65W DM heat sink plate together first, and after this has cured, to bond this combo to the three-screw heatsink assembly base:

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[NonSequitur777]

Dear Forum,

The thermal pads arrived, and used to fill various gaps on the CoolerServer heatsink to maximize heat transfer between the HP EliteDesk 800 G3 65W DM copper heat sink plate (temporarily separated from its base).  I outlined where the copper heat sink plate is going to be glued to the CoolerServer heat sink:

Decided to wait to apply the heat sink glue/plaster until an additional order I just placed comes in to make sure I got a sufficient quantity to complete this project: one tiny 5 gram tube I purchased earlier likely wouldn't be enough:

This is how my modified heatsink is going to look -everything fits like a charm:

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[C0mputerH4ck]

Apologies this is regarding your 800 G5 SFF but the thread I saw was locked.

I notice you are benchmarking the system and have noticed the 2666 limitation.  But it is also a fact that you can get improved performance from dual rank memory (it will say 2x8 instead of 1x8 or1x16).  I looked up your samsung ram and it is a singlr rank stick.

I have noticed low latency dual rank 2400 to out perform regular 2666 ram in my benchmarking.  Better timings/tunings may also be achieved with 2 sticks only.

Also a tool such as ThrottleStop may be useful to you.  At times it can increase turbo limits.

Excellent quality posts.  I am awaiting a USB to 20 pin adapter to add front panel USB3 to a P330 (Lenovo) motherboard I installed in a standard Cougar MATX case XD. 

Also working on a 705 G4 mini with RX560 GPU, but fan control on GPU is poor/nonexistent so I have PWM line unplugged for full speed GPU fan.  Using HoloISO steam deck OS, it's very good.

[NonSequitur777]

@C0mputerH4ck,

No worries, yes, I also wished discussion threads would remain 'active' (open) longer.

Btw, the 4 x 8GB 3200 MHz Samsung RAM in my HP EliteDesk 800 G5 SFF runs in dual mode and at 2666 MHz, which is the fastest my i7-9700KF can run RAM on this platform: Intel® Core™ i7-9700KF Processor:

It is indeed true that better tunings can be achieved using fewer sticks, such as this 2 x 16GB RAM example: HP EliteDesk 800 G5 SFF Performance Results - UserBenchmark, which achieved 93.7% for RAM performance, compared with my 88.9% RAM performance.  However, this RAM performance difference is irrelevant for gaming purposes, especially considering that my RTX 3080 has 12GB of fast GDDR6X RAM on board.

Kind Regards,

NonSequitur777

[C0mputerH4ck]

Not dual channel.  Dual rank.  Due to a quirk of Intel memory controllers they can access both banks of a single stick seperately, which can help with latencies.

I know you are in dual channel.  But take a look into dual rank as well.

Check out HWINFO and see your rank layout.

Edit: I see you are also in 2T, whereas 1T is preferred (possibly due to 4 sticks).  Just letting you know there are tunings you can do even on this motherboard to improve benchmarks.

[tcsenter]

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@tcsenter wrote:

My question is about the PSUs. It looks like there isn't any difference between PSU units used in G3 or G5 even though they receive different part numbers. Do you know of any issue I would have? Thanks in advance!

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Well I discovered the answer to my question. The PSU used in the EliteDesk 800 G3 SFF will NOT work with the motherboard from G5 SFF, despite all the similarities such as dimensions and mounting points of the mainboards, same connectors P1, P2 (PWRCMD), and P3 and respective wiring colors, and voltages supplied being the same. You'll get 3.4 error code; three long beeps/red flashes, and four short beeps/white flashes, indicating unspecified hardware fault or failure (CPU, memory, mainboard, or PSU).

After being unsure what was the problem, testing different components, I acquired a 250W PSU that corresponds to the G4 (also Coffee Lake) SFF part # L08417-004 and it all works!