I bypassed the bitlocker with a USB and installed a WIFI card with an antenna and it’s working good

I was in the market for at least a 2x2.5gb Intel based mini pc and the prices are just beyond absurd.

So far the most compelling I found is a 380€ beelink n150 16/500 which is fucking atrocious for this CPU. All the CWWK/Topton/Qotom garbage is like 350€ at best with no ram/SSD, if I can even find a listing because Aliexpress is a graveyard for EU residents, the only sort of Intel based chips with availability are bottom of the barrel Celeron types.

What about used Lenovo Tiny's then ? Well good luck finding something with more than 8gb of ram and a CPU newer than 6th gen for a decent price. Throw in the prices of the riser and the network card for 2.5gb and you're back into the same price category for a used product. My only hope at this point is finding a used PC from someone who doesn't realise the value of it.

Just ranting I guess, but holy hell it's bad. It is not just the ram and storage prices because even barebones are twice as expensive as they used to be.

Hey... time for me to put my money where my mouth is and turn my fail-safe investment from two years ago (my mini PC) into a file server for my steam machine when I'm not using for productivity... I honestly don't know what I'm doing and I'm starting on the learning path... is my Gemini hallucination above a usable guide, or could y'all point me somewhere? my basic sharing folder is meant to fork between ROMs for EmuDeck and all kinds of crazy files for YARG

Was given a budget to buy a mini pc for our new school library/resource room. This pc will need to handle basic video editing for school news/podcasts, basic gaming, a lot of Canva presentations, online virtual tours, and possibly hosting a small jellyfish server.

Is it worth the extra $100 for the upgrade or am I better off using that money for a better camera/mic?

I have an HP EliteDesk 800 G5 Desktop Mini with an i7-9700K and a cooling setup with two fans. I need to replace the CMOS battery because I'm getting repeated 005 Real-Time Clock Power Loss errors.

The battery is almost completely hidden under the heatsink assembly. I've looked through the HP service manual, but I'm having trouble figuring out exactly how the cooling assembly in my particular configuration is supposed to come apart.

As you can see in the photos, there seems to be some kind of copper bridge or heatpipe between the two heatsinks. I can't tell whether they're mechanically connected or just very close together.

Has anyone here taken apart this particular 95W configuration to access the CMOS battery? I'm mainly trying to understand which parts actually need to be removed, whether the cooling assemblies can be separated, and if there's a way to reach the battery without disturbing the thermal paste or pads.

I'm a bit hesitant to start taking things apart without knowing exactly how they fit together. The PC works perfectly fine apart from the CMOS battery issue, and I'd hate to damage something while trying to fix it.

Any firsthand experience or advice would be much appreciated!

Is it worth buying this mini PC?

Looking for a Linux PC for videoconferencing and Office. No gaming. Once in a while for watching videos.

If have an offer at ebay for GEEKOM A7 R5-7535HS, 16 GB DDR5 und 1 TB SSD for 480€? Anything better, ideas welcome?

Hi guys, just joined this group and looking for advice.

I have several DJI drones & cameras including the Osmo Action 360. I'd like a mini PC Windows 11 that would be good for video editing e.g. DJI Studio & DaVinciResolve. I could end up paying over £1000 for the top end MiniPC but do I need it? Doesn't need to be Geekcom!

Which would you learned people advise?

Thanks

Dear Engineers and Tech Experts,

I recently purchased a Lenovo M75q Gen 2 motherboard with the PCB marking AM4IV VER:0.2.

This appears to be an engineering sample (ES) / prototype motherboard. Because it is a very early hardware revision, I have been completely unable to find a compatible BIOS dump for it, and the board currently fails to POST (won't boot up).

I am turning to you all for help. Could anyone please help me find or dump a working BIOS file for this specific engineering board? Any assistance or leads would be greatly appreciated. Thank you so much in advance!

Hi everyone!

I'm looking for a docking station for my Mac mini M5 Pro, and I'm considering the Satechi Mac mini Stand & Hub with SSD Enclosure (ST-GNMMES).

My budget is ₹8,000–₹12,000, and these are my requirements:

\\- One usable M.2 NVMe SSD slot

\\- Multiple USB ports for peripherals

\\- 10 Gbps SSD speed is sufficient

\\- Silent operation, as I use my Mac mini in my home music studio for recording vocals

\\- Good SSD heat dissipation without a noisy cooling fan

\\- Confirmed compatibility with the Mac mini M5 Pro

\\- Availability and warranty support in India

The Satechi seems like a good option because it has passive cooling and doesn't require a built-in fan. However, I'm concerned about NVMe temperatures during long sessions, especially when working with large Logic Pro projects and crossover gaming.

If you own this Satechi dock, I'd love to hear your experience.

1. How are the SSD temperatures during sustained use?

2. Have you experienced any disconnections or performance issues?

3. Is it worth buying in India for around ₹10,000?

4. Are there any better alternatives within my budget?

I'd appreciate recommendations from actual owners, especially those using the Mac mini M5 Pro.

Thanks in advance!

I'm thinking about this model for my next pc in my space cramped desk. I'm wondering how the fan noise is during typical office use or streaming youtube, etc...? I don't do any games or heavy computation. I might have 3-4 tabs and a youtube video going tops.

I'm torn between this and the mac mini - I am happy in the Windows world, but really want to move away from noisy pcs and my spouse's mac is silent.

The main difference is that BMAX only offers a one-year warranty, whereas the other two provide three-year warranties. Is it worth spending an extra $200 for those two additional years of coverage? I’m currently using a mini PC that has been running reliably for two and a half years, so I’m quite torn on this. Given that their specifications are comparable, could there be a significant difference in hardware quality despite the price gap?

So I turned this hp stream into a cardboard mini pc.. it works and everything I was wondering if anyone wanted to trade me a pi pico for it 😭 I have the charger for it (I'm in Bremerton if anyone is out here)

Will this work?

Minisforum UM870: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0DRVSK2T9

Wavlink Dock: https://www.amazon.com/WAVLINK-Docking-Station-DisplayPort-Ethernet/dp/B0GF1X4J15/

I am planning on connecting 3 monitors, 2 on HDMI, 1 on DisplayPort, as well as 65-100w power through PD USB-C and ethernet.

Just a hunch, but I feel like i will run into problems with this approach. I am trying to achieve a one-cable mini pc setup.

I have just bought myself a refurbished AI X1 (Ryzen 255) and expected to pay U$249.00 for it until I realized the final price of U$224.00 at the checkout, I realized they're offering considerable discounts for other mini PC's too. They're doing it for both their main store as well as the refurbished too.

These are the URLs (no referrals here, screw all the people who do this):

• Main store: https://store.minisforum.com/pages/halloween-sale
• Refurb store: https://refurbished.minisforum.com/collections/all-products

Happy Halloween everyone! 🎃👻🍬🦇💀🧡

Hey everyone!

I'm planning to build a small, portable computer dedicated to running local LLMs, AI agents, and coding workflows 24/7. I'm trying to decide whether a prebuilt mini PC or a custom SFF build would be the better option.

My main goal is to find the best balance between inference speed and model intelligence. I want a fast and responsive system, but I also want to run capable models that can reason properly, follow instructions, write good code, use tools reliably, and complete complex, multi-step tasks without constantly making mistakes.

I'm not interested in running a tiny model just to achieve high inference speeds if it struggles with relatively simple tasks.

What I want to do:

• Run Hermes Agent or OpenClaw for personal automation.
• Create multiple specialized AI agents for research, email management, and everyday tasks.
• Build AI study assistants for analyzing PDFs, explaining concepts, and generating quizzes.
• Use local LLMs for software development, coding, debugging, testing, and working on larger projects.
• Run coding agents locally without relying on cloud-based coding subscriptions.
• Run capable local models through Ollama, llama.cpp, or another optimized inference backend.
• Access and manage everything remotely from my laptop or phone.
• Expand the system with more advanced agents, integrations, and automation capabilities over time.

I want this mini PC to handle both AI automation and software development. Ideally, I'd like to run autonomous coding agents capable of working on projects, making changes, running tests, and debugging code locally.

Hardware preferences:

• Budget: Around $2,000–$3,500.
• Size: Ideally 1–5 liters, but I'm open to slightly larger SFF builds.
• RAM: 64 GB minimum, potentially 96–128 GB.
• Storage: 2 TB NVMe SSD.
• Quiet, power-efficient, and capable of running 24/7.
• Upgradeability would be a big plus.

I've been considering Ryzen AI Max+ 395 mini PCs, but I'm also interested in building something myself so I can upgrade components later.

Model preferences:

I'm open to Qwen, DeepSeek, GPT-OSS, GLM, Nemotron, Liquid AI, or any other capable local models.

Ideally, I'd like to run relatively powerful models in the 20B–35B range, preferably efficient MoE models if they offer better performance.

I'm looking for fast inference without sacrificing model quality, reasoning, coding capabilities, tool-calling reliability, or successful task completion.

My questions:

1. Would you choose a Ryzen AI Max+ 395 mini PC or a custom SFF build with a dedicated GPU?
2. Which local models offer the best balance of intelligence, coding ability, tool calling, and inference speed?
3. Is 64 GB RAM sufficient for running coding agents and multiple AI agents, or would 96–128 GB be worth the additional cost?
4. How much does context length affect performance when working on larger codebases and multi-step autonomous tasks?
5. What inference backend and quantization would you recommend?
6. Can local models in this hardware class reliably handle autonomous coding workflows, or would I need more powerful hardware?
7. What kind of real-world performance should I realistically expect within my budget and size constraints?

I'd really appreciate hardware recommendations, real-world benchmarks, and experiences from people running local coding agents and automation systems.

Thanks!

Planning on buying my first ever pc and after doing some research I feel like GMKtec G10 would suit me but I need advice on if it is worth it or not?

I want something that can run league of legends, my simple drawing program (MediBang) and works for general usage. And also isn’t going to be super expensive (preferably $300-500 max).

Would any of you recommend that mini pc or is there another one that would be better??

Happy for any feedback!

Hi, my new aoostar maco mini pc ryzen 7 8845 has micro stutters under windows 11. I installed all drivers, including amd chipset.
The stutter is for like 1 second, they happen every few minutes. Any idea why this could happen?

im going to try linux to rule out a windows issue.

Also what should I set the uma buffer size? I have 16gb ram, so setting it to 2gb leaves me with 14gb which is the minimum I want to have, leaving it on auto, I have 16gb like normal.

I got bosgame p4 mini pc ,. I am wondering if anyone tried connecting egpu using nvme to pcie adapter

Heya!

Like the title says, I'm looking for a good worthy machine. I have a leftover set of 64GB of DDR4 Laptop ram, and am looking to get a 4k streaming machine, preferably with HDMI 2.1 for 120Hz.

Which would be recommended?