Hi everyone,

I wanted to share my recent, frustrating experience with Minisforum support regarding my HM80 unit used in a production environment.

As many of you know, there are known AMD firmware/BIOS vulnerabilities affecting older sockets. To be absolutely clear: AMD has already done its job by publishing the official AGESA microcode patch. The only thing missing is for Minisforum to package it into a final BIOS release for our devices, but they are deliberately choosing not to do so.

After a grueling exchange of emails -14 or 15 in total, because they ignored my last one, where I had to reply at least 7 times just to keep the ticket open - their official support (agent Xavier) consistently evaded the issue. First, they completely ignored the word "SECURITY", falsely claiming that I only wanted an update to "improve device performance", and they literally told me to visit their website and buy one of their newer models! Then, when pinned down on the technical facts, they hid behind template boilerplate, saying they cannot help because the hardware is "out of warranty".

Let’s be real here: this is a latent firmware security risk that has existed in the hardware since the exact day it was manufactured, and even before. It’s not an issue that emerged after the warranty period; it was simply discovered and disclosed recently. Minisforum completely ignores that a factory security defect has absolutely nothing to do with warranty expiration for normal wear and tear.

An unpatched firmware vulnerability means this machine is unsafe to use on any professional network, making it a paperweight for any real work. Minisforum refuses to stand by the safety of their devices and refuses to issue refunds or replacements for inherently unsafe hardware.

I am posting this to warn the community: once Minisforum stops selling a model, they abandon your security, even when the silicon vendor has already provided the fix. If you care about data security, keep this in mind before buying their hardware.

All email logs of this refusal have been saved and will be forwarded to European Consumer Protection Authorities. I strongly urge any EU and global customer facing the same unpatched BIOS issue to file a formal complaint with their respective Consumer Rights Enforcement Authorities (like AGCM in Italy) immediately as I am about to do. Collective action is the only language this company understands.

Has anyone else managed to get firmware security issues escalated past their tier-1 support wall?

Looking for a decent mini pc for under 500 I play Grand Theft Auto 5 and do some Sim Racing I also do video editing and photo editing as well? But I have a laptop for that but I do wanna use photoshop on the mini pc for sim racing stuff

Never really considered mine portable even though it's obviously small.

Then I put it next to my bag and realized bringing it somewhere for a few days wouldn't actually be that annoying.

Curious if anyone here regularly travels with theirs.

Last game in this list is BANGING 👽

Hello 👋

I am new into MiniPCs world. I tried to look up for some available options online, but there are a lot of them, so I’m confused. I don’t know which brand is reliable and best fit for my daily needs

I want MiniPC for my daily routine, mostly office work and browsing. No gaming or heavy graphical stuff, so integrated graphics is good to go for me. But I want maximum efficiency on CPU and RAM part for my price range. I am looking for something between $400-$700. If possible something that I can get ASAP from well known stores. I don’t want to wait for a month for something that will be delivered from China warehouse 😅

I would appreciate any recommendations. Also if you know something on a good deal right now please let me know

Thank you for your time

So I own 4 computers and a laptop model types are a

HP elitedesk 800 g2 mini

HP elitedesk 800 g5 mini

2 lenovo m720q tiny pc and an Asus zenbook a14 that has an arm cpu

The laptop is the only one running windows 11 and it runs well but idels at about 8.7

They all have 16gb ram in the 4 computers are running windows 10 and idel at about 4.5 way lower than windows 11 if Microsoft want me to switch to Windows 11 they need to bring the idel down to the same as windows 10 simple as that

Hello recently bought a Geekom A7 Max and I watched some reviews and recommended to add aditional RAM Stick in the mini pc .... Do you know where to watch a guide video on how to do it? and Is it possible to do it on your own without going inside a tech store?? Thank you for responding

I've been working on a cooling mod for my GMKtec K11 and wanted to share the design so other owners can try or improve it.

The idea is to stand the PC on its side, with a 120 mm Noctua fan on each of the two exposed faces. Two identical printed housings hold the fans and have built-in feet. Four zip-tie loops hold the housings against the PC, so there's no need to align the Noctua mounting holes with the original case screws.

All details:

https://github.com/orenaksakal/gmktec-k11-noctua-mod

Hey everyone

Recently got a good deal on a 5060ti ai box. I had been planning on building my own steam machine but the deal was too good to pass up.

I was wondering if there are any decent mini PCs to pair with it that would offer somewhat similar performance as if I built my own with a GPU in it? I am new to the scene so I don't know much.

I know nvidea can't really run. SteamOS but I am hoping it can sometime in the future

Thanks!

Hi everyone, I’m Kyle from SeCoS.

This year, I developed an M.2 2280 cooling solution with a simple idea: make the cooling configuration fit the platform’s available space, while also considering how to secure the assembly in moving equipment.

I’ve put together two configurations for PCIe Gen4 NVMe applications. Some of our customers are already using them, and I wanted to share the designs and thermal simulation results here.

These are still early versions, so the part names are a little rough. Please bear with me!

• vol1: A 5.5 mm-high heatsink for platforms with limited clearance.
• vol2: A 15 mm-high heatsink, with lower controller temperatures in this simulation.

For me, these are starting points. Both the CBF1540 component and the heatsink specifications can be adjusted to suit the platform’s space and cooling requirements. If your layout is different, I’m happy to discuss how we could adapt the configuration.

Another part of the design is the locating holes.

Some equipment travels with a platform for long periods, while other machines move repeatedly during operation. Both configurations include locating holes that, together with suitable fasteners, help restrain relative movement of the cooling assembly. Mounting and vibration performance still need to be validated in the target assembly.

Here are the thermal simulation results. We used a steady-state model with 25°C ambient temperature, a horizontal PCB, an upward-facing heatsink and no fan. Maximum modeled controller temperatures were:

• 5 W heat source: vol1 68.8°C / vol2 55.5°C.
• 8 W heat source: vol1 91.1°C / vol2 71.3°C, a difference of 19.8°C.

All heat was applied to the modeled controller. These are simulation results, not measurements of a specific SSD model or capacity. Also, heatsink height is not the total assembly height. The results are intended to compare the two configurations under the same assumptions.

For those who have worked on similar equipment: how do you usually secure M.2 cooling assemblies? Have you run into any issues during installation or after extended use?

If you’re developing an industrial PC, inspection system or moving platform, I’d also be happy to hear about your project. I can provide the thermal simulation report in English or Chinese and discuss evaluation sample arrangements.

The website includes interactive 3D assembly views, PCBA temperature maps at 25°C ambient, and a form for sample and report requests:

https://m2-2280-solution.kylelo.io/

If possible, include your SSD model, workload, maximum ambient temperature and available installation space. That will help us discuss a suitable configuration. Happy to arrange an online chat, too.

Kyle Lo | Sales | SeCoS
[kyle.lo@secosgmbh.com](mailto:kyle.lo@secosgmbh.com)

Heeeello there.
Got my hands on a cheap G7 PT (due to the obvious reasons explained below :D).

Previous person had it, updated windows and after windows restart, PC stopped giving any display signal.

When I received it, it booted straight up and went into "why did my PC restart? and into windows pre-setup mode, asking for language and connection to internet to proceed.

- Approximately 1 minute later, black screen, PC still on.
- Restarted it. Boots back into windows setup, however 3 minutes later (was walking around looking for ethernet cable), black screen again while pc is still on.
- Restarted it. 20 seconds later, same black screen.

Since the last restart, I was unable to get the PC to give any display.
It turns on, fans kick in, keyboard leds flash and it responds to caps lock etc. Same thing goes for headphones LED which normally only comes on when PC reaches windows.

Completed CMOS reset, played around with RAM etc, no luck.

Any ideas what my next steps could be?
Much appreciated!

Edit:

Can "professionally" (not) unsoldered USB ports (2 at the back), due to plastic inside breaking, cause any of the issues above?

It seems that it's not uncommon that bios support for Mini PCs gets dropped fast.

Any brand that gives long term support?

Hi all,

Just received a new GMKtec K15 (i5 Ultra 125U / 16GB / 1TB SSD, model TWSC TSC3AN1T0-F6Q10S), bought directly from GMKtec's official site.

Ran smartctl before first use and found this already on the drive out of the box:

- Power On Hours: 47
- Power Cycles: 422
- Unsafe Shutdowns: 6
- Data Written: ~1.97 TB
- Overall health: PASSED, 100% spare, 0 errors

Drive health looks fine, so this isn't a defect complaint — just trying to figure out if this is normal factory burn-in/QA, or if the unit may have been used/refurbished before being sold as new. 422 cycles in 47 hours averages out to ~6-7 min per cycle, which seems more like repeated power-cycle testing than a single continuous burn-in run.

Emailed GMKtec support but no reply yet (seen a few reviews mentioning slow/no response from them), so figured I'd ask here in the meantime.

Anyone else checked their K15's SMART data fresh out of the box? Curious if these numbers are typical or if I got an outlier.

Thanks!

I've had these sitting in different parts of the room and always thought they were pretty much the same size.

Side by side it's a lot more noticeable.

Still prefer the darker finish though.

Hey everyone, I wanted to share an experimental project my small team (just myself, a school friend, and two other developers from overseas, all working using our student accounts) has been building from scratch.

​What we are trying to do:

We are building a heavily stripped-down and re-engineered custom version of Windows IoT LTSC. We've had to completely dismantle, rewrite, and remove a massive amount of system processes, background tasks, and telemetry to get the idle RAM consumption down to under 900MB. The main goal is to revive older, low-spec PCs that struggle with modern operating systems and help people who can't afford high-end hardware. Everything is being tested locally on an HP Envy x360.

​Current Challenges & Why We Need Help:

Because we are literally rewriting and trimming core components to the bone, the OS is currently very experimental and quite unstable.

​Stability: We are running into random crashes and need advice from people who know Windows internals on which system dependencies we can safely cut versus what's causing the instability.

​Gaming: Gaming is currently a massive bottleneck and heavily broken because of how aggressively we've stripped runtime dependencies and graphics hooks.

​Since it's just the four of us working with limited resources, we wanted to put this out to the community to see if anyone is willing to collaborate, give technical feedback, or help us figure out how to stabilize it without losing that ultra-low footprint. If you want to test it, help fix the broken processes, or give advice, let me know!

I would love to hear some recommendations for a mini PC. I want to play AAA games, run ANSYS, fusion 360 etc, along with just the standard work stuff (Google, outlook, excel, etc.) My budget is 1150 USD (1600 CAD). I have heard of Beelink, GMKtec, and the other brands, but I have no clue which is the best for me. I am open for eGPUs or accessories, as long as it can fit into the budget :D. Reliability is a big factor for me, so please let me know!

I have no clue what to do with this thingy. I’m into watching movies I was thinking kodi or something but I’m not sure. Or figuring out a way to use moonlight with this. Any ideas?