I might have accidentally said that the system was powered on when the RAM was changed during the live audio portion of the video - if I did, I meant to say that it was plugged in. The system was not powered on. My bad there!

The old saying: It's never the CPU except when it is.

Beelink's problem is 99.9% a BIOS firmware failure. This type of Chinese semi-finished products has catastrophically problematic BIOS firmware. The HDMI output will not work until the OS boots and therefore no communication will be established between the GPU and the display. Try to copy, save and analyze the BIOS firmware, and it will be very good if you can find an “engineering bios”, try to find a similar Beelink and copy the BIOSa firmware and write a new, working firmware to your BIOS chip. Good luck!

Wow I am so so impressed! Carey's channel administrator here - just had to say I so admire your skill, ability to detail all the steps and the fantastic work you did! Just so so good! Fantastic walkthrough and explanation!

A bit of information for you. The resistor that you replaced with that radial then bridged was probably .02ohms used as a current sense to check that the power button is pressed. Don't worry too much about the ripped pad happens to all of us. Good on you giving it a go. I wonder if the cap right next to that resistor went short and took the resistor out with it before it burned. That could potentially explain the odd solder and the burnt flux assuming someone else hasn't had a soldering iron on it. For the beelink you are probably right that the CPU is cooked although I could be wrong but typically voltage isn't present on the ram voltage rail with the system off. I have never worked on one of these mini-pcs but typically in laptops and desktops the ram voltage isn't a standby voltage meaning it should only be live when the PC enters a powered state.

try desoldering the bios , flash it outside of system .

When I was fixing circuits we would use through hole resistors to replace SMD as a POC all the time. Great job.

I have two mini-PCs and boy, there's a reason that they put a BIOS Reset button on them. With the unlocked do-whatever-you-want BIOS, you can do stuff that you shouldn't have access to, like enabling PEG graphics... (I don't think this applies to your case unless the BIOS really gets stuck without battery power)

If it were plugged in and the ram was changed without draining the power first, integrated graphics uses your system ram< 31:00 (shared) I can understand how that would effect the other.

Try this: Connect a keyboard directly to the machine (no kvm switch). And when you turn it on try to press del, esc, f7, enter or other keys. The f7 is the one for entering bios in normal situation. In similar situation, After some trying, I noticed the keyboard started showing life and display also turned on Some of these mini pcs have bad bios and they does not turn display on boot screen even if they "show" a message and waiting for input to continue.

Given the lack of video support, it may have been wiser to have first attempted a headless Linux boot from a USB stick with serial USB terminal before going so deep.

I've noticed some of the Beelink machines (and other machines from the no-name Chinese vendors) have a thing, where they don't display for like 2-3 minutes on the first boot after you swap out their memory. Maybe it's a memory training issue? On mine, it made me think the mini PC was dead until I walked away from it to make some coffee and I found it at the BIOS splash screen when I got back.

Put a terminal based linux on an ssd and try to access the system remotely to check if the igpu took down the whole cpu or just the igpu part.

For debugging it's worth while investing in a post card, that way you'll know exactly where the machine fails to post. It's a PCIe card but you can use an m.2 to PCI adapter and plug it into the wifi slot

If you have a thermal camera, check the board with the power on to see if anything is overheating. If you don't have a thermal camera you can put alcohol on the board and see if it evaporates quickly over a specific chip to see if there's a short. Northridge fix has videos on this method.

Putting in a POST card and seeing what is completing and where it stops in POST will be the best way to go on these. I have done a number of these this way.

0 Ω resistors are common on smd circuit boards. It posts as close to 0 Ω on a multimeter like yours did.

I bought one of these N100 minipcs for my parents and it came dead, very similar issue to the Beelink. I did not manage to fix it either: tried similar Voltage(and Amps - not that it matters) charger, probed some resistors and no issue there, tried HDMI to DVI and HDMI to VGA adapters, also removed the battery to reset BIOS, did packet capture with my firewall and it’s basically dead(no action, just NIC network discovery that happens anyway), tried with and without RAM and/or SSD. I was really hoping you are going to hit the nail on the head.

For the BeeLink - Recently replaced SODIMM RAM on a laptop (HP). Power is never really “disconnected” and I had no issues. I know there are “power off” options in some laptop BIOS to, as best as possible, remove power but didn’t see one. From other comments from people with boards from the same company, could it be a flaw that they treated power as a desktop instead of a laptop, so that, with plugged in power, that left power on that fried the channel? I definitely think you’re on the right track. Also seems others had issues replacing boards other than RAM, so could just be a manufacturer issue too. Thanks for the great troubleshooting process!

Yeah, do NOT screw around with anything on these mini PCs with the power connected. I fried one of my two Intel NUCs by doing basically the same thing as the guy with the Beelink did, try to change memory with the power connected. Luckily the one I fried was a cheap one. Exact same symptoms as the beelink.

Very thorough explanation and very simple to understand. Really admirable skills you've got there. I tried something similar with an old Lenovo ThinkPad Motherboard but Alas! never got it working. Keep up the good work!

Something many troubleshooters seem to forget to try is boot with no memory. The system will of cause detect it and will beep (if there is a sounder) or flash a code on the system led's. If it doesn't do that its stuck before memory and that is CPU or before bios test starting AKA power problems or firmware.

Wow! Superb job! I did not understand much of what you said towards the end of the video, but it was fun to watch either way!

I think the Beelink issue could be as simple as a corrupted Bios, remember that the bios itself is responsible for the whole startup procedure and if this gets broken the motherboard gets bricked too. either a flashback function or a chip programmer to re-flash the bios again would probably fix this computer. since the bios is powered even with the system turned off it could cause issues if you yoink the ram while in hibernation or the like and the system expects a different chip to be in place it may corrupt the data in bios. make sure the bios is actually completely reset or restored before you quit this one

The moral of the story is don't buy these small PC. Or be sure to get the extended warranty.

My similar Beelink refused starting due to the glue under BIOS battery became conductive and shorted IO signals. After cleaning it works fine again.

This video is 😂 funny, in a good way. When the resistor flew away and when he ripped the pads for the resistor. I hope you keep making videos and learning computer repairs. Also they sell very cheap memory tester to test open and shorts from memory to CPU

Great video. And I agree with your diagnosis on the no post n100

Use an m.2 (x4) to pci-e adapter and an external video card.

did you try unplugging it and plugging it back in? ( sorry had to lol ) great video.

Im amazed to see u already have sponsors at that small of a channel size!

Very interesting ! I'm having the same issue with a Fitlet2 Intel mini pc board. After changing something in the bios the screen is dark. I think a bios problem. So keep trying to fix it !

You can sort of test the mem CTRL in cpu, put + probe on ground and with negative probe go over ram datalines But its like 98% that cpu is done

If the 4th phase was not controlled or broken, the fans would not spin. The 4th phase can also be the turbo booster, which is normally turned off. The 1.8V phase is probably the PCH, not the IGPU, although the GPU is supposed to be in the PCH of the N100. Test all your phases in ohms mode. If they are not close to 0 ohms, say 20 ohms, they are fine. If they are lower, you can confirm that the CPU is dead by applying voltage to the phase (0.5 V, 500 mA) with some alcohol on the DIE. If the whole area gets hot, the CPU is fine. If one corner lights up, the DIE is broken. My guess is that the N100 is fine. Instead, I suggest you focus more on the 3.3V PCH rail, as this is likely to be the problem. Test pin 8 of the bios SPI IC, which should bring 3.3 V. In most cases in these small PCs, the ram SPD SPI IC is in parallel to the bios SPI IC, both powered by the 3.3 V rail of the PCH. My guess is that the ram swap triggered voltager on the SPI lines of the bios IC (through the rams SPD / SPI). Try dumping the bios and open it in the UEFI tool and look for any errors. Also reflash the bios with a clean (ME) dump. Since the pc turns on shorly and the fans spin, my guess is that it 's somehow bios / SPI related.

A good tektronics oscilloscope with a good 1x probe for interpreting signal quality and signal over time would tell you a lot more about what is and isn’t happening. Keep challenging yourself. Looking at things you’re not familiar with is the best way to learn. Don’t be scared, it’s already broken. Well done dude.

You did your best brother and accepted defeat gracefully. Well done.

You need to invest in a hot air rework station for dealing with surface mount devices. Also look for tin whiskers when looking at the board when looking at it through the microscope.

Have you disconnect the cmos battery and short out the positive and negative on the mainboard where the battery is plugin.

Reguarding the latter part of the video - is there not any way to attach a buzer to the motherboard for beep codes? my Desktop pc definitely boots CPU, RAM, GPU and has bios lights to show this stage step through of the post process

I understand the reason for going to all that trouble is for the purpose of doing a video about how to repair one of these mini pc's, but you made the most important point at the end of the video: they are so cheap that it's worth chucking a dead one in the bin and buying a new one to replace it. I have had good luck with MinisForum, and I have a Xulu hopefully coming sometime this year from a Kickstarter project. Fingers crossed on that one. Beelink, though, seems like its reliability is not all that great. Great video, and you showed why these mini-PCs are a bit of crap shoot.

I bought a Beelink Mini PC. All was well, until it refused to work with a brand new SSD mounted in a USB enclosure. At first I suspected the SSD, but my Beelink's USB ports are very flaky, and connected drives malfunction. Beelink were no help at all! Amazon gave me a full refund, and let me keep the Beelink. I then bought a Minisforum, which unlike the Beelink, works perfectly with all my USB drives! I like Mini PCs due to their tiny form factor, and their highly efficient energy usage, compared to my old home built desktop! Also, this allowed me to upgrade to Windows 11, love it or hate it, for very little money!

Electrostatic grounding wrist straps were a thing back in the day for a reason.

Great video!

Getting all the voltages on the various rails is a good way to diagnose some possible problems. Don't forget to also find the on board fuses and 0 ohm resistors between the voltage rails and the actual power using chips. You have found a few, but you did not explicitly say in the video you checked all. You may have done so off camera?

Carey is a legend, one of the OG guys I learned how to build a PC from way over a decade ago back when KZfaq was a very different platform.

when you plug in a RJ45 ethernet cable &/or a optical mouse does the ethernet port blink & the mouse optical led light up? I seen this a lot when people would plug a USB device into a ethernet port. The i/o on the m/b is dead, no fixing it, the time needed ..it would be cheaper just replacing it.

Well one thing that is allso helpful is to setup a postcode monitor. There you get at least an indication where the cpu is hanging.

They must have a way of testing those boards during manufacture. To that end I saw several test pads ready to take spring probes in a jig. What if you try any of those pads with a scope. Is there any lilfe in them?

I have worked on computers most of my life, and I have used a diag board in the past few years successfully. I was wondering though, does that board have any pads or indicated junctions for a post speaker?

Nice video. Hope there's a follow up soon.

I think you can extract video signal from that wifi slot with external gpu wifi to pcie adapter

You're almost their , Check the IC that controls the HDMI if power is their then yes you have a dead super IO and will need to be replaced using hot air rework, but if your not confident in micro soldering I would not attempt. But your close ,Good job troubleshooting

I wonder if that system has a speaker if you pull the ram and it beeps an error code its a quick way to validate CPU and system board from a basic level

have u tried tyepce c video output..it may show is that cpu is working but not i gpu

I was writing something as you were explaining your theory. By the end, i deleted it. The board is cooked. You could try an external GPU unit to see if you get a bios but thats not a certainty

You are probably right about the BeeLink. If you wanted to test further, you could see if you could get an adapter to hook up a PCIe video card to the M.2 slot. I doubt it would yield any results other than more confirmation.

If you suspect that the iGPU are broken, maybe you can buy adapter for M.2 to Oculink adapter, and then connect external GPU using that oculing with external PSU.

Most modern motherboards have a lpc header which can be used with appropriate post debug card to see what is really going on

If the Blink system supports a direct flash BIOS image it might be worth while to see if maybe it got corrupted and just needs to be flashed with a working image. It's logical that something like that would happen if the BIOS were active because their normally connected to the memory in that the BIOS image get's written to memory when the system boots. It does this because the RAM is generally faster than the BIOS chip. At least that was the case for older systems. Point of the matter is this. Attempting to flash a good image to it might be worth a shot. Like you said, "it's already broken."

POST order of checks is pretty different on all the hardware out there. I think your general thoughts are right about the order, but I've seen modern boards with different support for special hardware or just different OSes, that would change the POST order behaviour. Allways guessed there was a general order tree, but in special scenarios it would traverse other order than the actual tree order. And also: Very nice video!

What you could try is an external gpu by using a m.2 to pcie adapter to see if it does work and if the igpu is the problem.

I guess the only thing I could think off that can be done for the n100 is to power on the PC without ram installed and check for heat/power draw differences and hope it's a case of multiple ddr5 modules being bad/damaged by the powered scenario.

your theory makes sense about the blink pc (one you troubleshooted first ddr5 ram that had

That was insane in the membrane 😮

I have a question that is a bit off topic. The mat that you are working on, the gray mat with a grid pattern and the different sized circles on it. Do you have a link for it? I'd like to know more about it. I'm just starting to delve into this "kind of stuff" myself, and I am still getting my work area set up. That mat looks like it would be a nice area to do my work on. Thank you and greetings from Alaska.

for the pc that has the graphics problem, couldn't you use a external graphics card setup, you can get external graphics card dock, maybe that would fix that problem.

Some integrated graphics use ram as of vram so thats probably how it broke

Please send the broken machine on to another youtuber! Th3c0der (or however it is spelled) in the UK would be able to replace the CPU. Not that there is commercial value to doing that, but having him swap it out in a video will be good content, collaboration and it might just prove your diagnosis correct.

the serial port, jtag, spi bus, and post cards are your friend. try putting the beelink in a reflow oven, could be stuck transistors or a dry solder joint.

Integrated graphics uses main system RAM. There is a direct link between the iGPU and the SODIMM

I have a Beelink N100.....you can't upgrade the RAM. 16 gigs of Crucial DDR4 (mine is DDR4) are all you get. The Amazon sales pitch says so. Not sure why anyone would mess with it. Ain't broke, don't fix.

Good stuff.

I love those Beelink PC's. I have four of them. They are all AMD CPU based. The oldest one will sometimes "forget" which SSD the OS is installed on and you have to boot to the BIOS and select the correct drive. Other than that one issue they work great.

While putting the RAM in while the power was on it is possible a circuit got more power it than was designed for and the chip holding the CMOS or BIOS got zeroed out which means the computer has forgotten how to turn on (POST). Install a new CMOS chip or use the box for parts.

For some guy like tihs Carey that works with computer over the years, not disconnecting the power from the mini pcs... is a crime. Obviously, something will break no matter which platform. I once installed a RAM module when the power was still plugged and ended up burning the slot. ALWAYS remove power/battery when replacing RAM modues or other parts.

Fascinating! I am most certainly nowhere near as smart as you, but I had a thought about the remaining dead one! I have a similar issue with a NUC of mine, essentially dead beyond the power light and fan. but I noticed that trying to boot it with the RAM removed, the power buttons light had changed, AND with speakers plugged in to its headphone jack I DID get a beep! so there is some kind of a status check still operating! I'm planning on getting a thermal camera so I can see if anything is abnormally hot when attempting to boot, RAM installed or not. Could be helpful! Great video pal, keep up the good work! 😁🧡

sometimes, the gravity.test and shotgun tribulation makes your day a little bit better.

I had four of these mini PC units and each one packed up mostly with overheating problems all claimed to run 4k and none did .........desktop for me now ............

I would try putting in a usb to VGA cable and see if I get a display with that

"Finding schematics for __THIS__ computer was never going to happen" - i like the approach :), sad but __TRUE__ ;) Thanks for pointing that "CMOS" reference - cmos technology was a great break in the 70s but nobody now remembers how great it is, i dont even remember when have it started.

Stupid question... Is there any motherboard speaker output jumper on that motherboard? If there is, and you can hook a small speaker to it, it may give you some diagnostic beeps.

That could be a boost phase, ie, off until it's needed. Since most voltages are ok, I think I would go for bios.

Bad RAM might stop you from getting a post screen, but zero RAM shouldn't, should have tried booting with no RAM. And with it plugged in & plugged into the network, check it you saw it on your router. To me only 3 minutes in I'd guess the i/o was blown, meaning half the m/b was dead. But seeing if the Ethernet port was blinking would tell me it most likely is still good.

kudos for getting a through hole resister to solder to smd

You say you have a scope. I would try and find the data line for the BIOS chip and put a scope on that when powering on to see if the computer attempts to boot. If it does, you should have fully functioning processor, bios, RAM and such.

The burnt resistor was probably a zero ohm resistor used as a fuse. That should be replaced with same part.

Its never ever the CPU. Until it is. Side note, I love those little Beelink PCs. I have two! They work great for home office type environments.

Is there oxidization or metal eaten away on the RAM connector pins? RAM unplugging and replugging while the system is on could make some pretty little sparks. Deoxit and if that doesn't work, soldering in a new RAM slot might be an interesting thing to try. Also, something to consider, if there were pretty sparks created, then maybe it could be physical slot damage due to human jumping.

in smaller systems like laptops and mini pc's with igpu's the ram is sometimes shared between the cpu and igpu so switching it while plugged in killing the igpu is actually very likely if it is one of these systems (probably since a lot do it this way)

Wouldn't the voltages to VCore be limited or off as well as the Display core/Memory side of things? I would work backwards from PQ8 to see WHY there is no voltage output, in short are all the enable pins of all Chips activated and why one enable is not being enabled..

Introduce a signal to the igpu power driver to jump start it. If it starts there’s something in the power circuit If it doesn’t the igpu is dead 🤷🏻‍♀️

On the Zulu, that resistor is likely acting as a fuse. Most times they are very small values. Less than 1 ohm, or maybe even zero. Shorting with solder is fine for test, but putting in a 0 - 1 ohm link is preferred.

bios chip failure. Every mini pc that get a windows 10 update always messes up the bios putting them into perm sleep mode. Try finding a bios bin and flashing it with a eeprom reader/writer

what "power supply" you used for testing?

A Malaysian in the house y'all 🙋‍♂😄

was quite scary when you put in that 10k ohm resistor, if my understanding is correct if that was r2 of a voltage divider, you could end up diverting more voltage towards the vOut of the divider circuit?

You could try connecting an external GPU through the M.2 connector with an adapter and see what that does on the Intel mini PC.

You should plug in a network cable and see if it lights up. It might be booting with no video.

Maybe there are bad cpu pads 😮 but cant know till you know great insight on broken things to bad many things can break them and not enough safety 😅

your skills are neat, and somehow these two Mini-PCs would be great as a Server for Media, Files, etc.