---
title: "HP EliteDesk 800 G3 SFF - Teardown, re-assembly and upgrade"
source: "https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1ETa3mJ85I"
author:
  - "[[jensd_be]]"
published: 2021-03-08
created: 2026-04-30
description: "In this video, I'll cover the HP EliteDesk 800 G3 SFF  and I'll perform a full teardown + re-assembly of the machine. Once complete, I'll do some benchmarking and gaming to test the GeForce 1050Ti tha"
tags:
  - "clippings"
---
![](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n1ETa3mJ85I)

In this video, I'll cover the HP EliteDesk 800 G3 SFF and I'll perform a full teardown + re-assembly of the machine. Once complete, I'll do some benchmarking and gaming to test the GeForce 1050Ti that came with it.  
  
In the video, I will first completely disassemble the machine, then re-assemble it and install a few upgrades. Once the machine is back together, I'll run some benchmarks with Geekbench and we will check how it performs in Microsoft Flight Simulator and GTA V.  
  
You can use this video if you want to replace your CPU, RAM, SSD, video card or anything else.  
  
My EliteDesk 800 G3 has an Intel i7 7700, a Nvidia 1050 Ti, 16 GB of DDR4 RAM and a 256GB NVMe SSD.

## Transcript

**0:00** · Hi everyone!

**0:00** · Welcome to this video about the HP EliteDesk 800 G3 SFF.

**0:05** · That's a pretty long name for a rather small computer.

**0:08** · This one I got at an auction as well.

**0:10** · To my surprise, when looking at the back and when I opened the machine for the first time, I saw it was equipped with a Nvidia 1050 Ti.

**0:17** · That was a nice bonus.

**0:19** · As you can guess by the title, I'll do a full teardown.

**0:22** · After we got the system back together, let's do some testing with this cart and the rest of the machine.

**0:27** · The rest of the machine is an Intel Core i7, 8 GB of DDR4 and a 256GB NVMe SSD.

**0:35** · In the video, as mentioned, I will do full teardown and, during the rebuild, I'll also be upgrading the memory to 16GB and install an additional hard disk.

**0:44** · First, let's start by having a look at the exterior.

**0:47** · On the front, we see space for an optional SD-card reader, a USB-C port, 2x USB3, and to my surprise, 2xUSB2 still.

**0:56** · Audio connections, and the power button.

**0:59** · Here you can also find the slot for the slim DVD drive.

**1:08** · On the back of the machine we have the audio connectors, DisplayPort, flexible port option, RJ45, another set of USB2 and USB3 ports, power connector and finally the back of that Nvidia 1050 Ti.

**1:26** · We can easily open up the case, without any tools, by moving this latch and removing the top cover.

**1:40** · Inside, we can see the power supply, CPU cooler with the CPU underneath of course, DVD drive, no standard drives, NVMe SSD, memory and video card.

**1:51** · To have better access to the motherboard we can easily open this part here.

**1:57** · This gives us a better look at the NVMe drive, SATA ports and memory.

**2:03** · To access the CPU cooler and CPU, we have to remove this plastic airflow cover.

### remove this plastic airflow cover

**2:20** · During some testing I noticed that the CPU cooler makes an annoying sound, so I'll probably replace it as well while i'm on it.

**2:28** · Let's start with our disassembly by disconnecting the slim DVD drive and by removing the SATA cable connected to it.

**2:39** · Then we can simply slide it out after holding the green latch.

**2:56** · This allows us to also remove the front panel which clearly shows that this is not a standard ATX motherboard but something custom.

### remove the front panel

**3:04** · Time to remove the video card.

**3:14** · As you can see, this GigaByte card is a special low profile model that fits in this type of small form factor case.

**3:21** · It has 4GB of VRAM.

**3:24** · Let's continue by disconnecting the power connectors.

**3:34** · Here as well, as with the motherboard, we have some proprietary connectors which you can find on some other HP models as well.

**3:41** · It won't be very easy to replace the motherboard or power supply in this machine with a generic one.

**3:47** · Then we can remove the NVMe SSD.

**4:04** · Followed by the installed memory.

### remove the cpu cooler

**4:14** · To remove the CPU cooler, we need to unscrew the four screws and we can simply lift it.

**4:31** · This reveals the CPU, which you can see is still covered in old thermal paste.

**4:36** · Let's clean this up a bit so we can see the model number.

**4:50** · Here it is: the i7 7700.

**4:55** · To remove it we can simply lift the lever and get it out of the socket.

**5:16** · Everything that was connected to the motherboard got removed so now we can get it out of the case.

**5:48** · We got all parts lined up nicely here including the upgrades.

**5:52** · We see the DVD drive, hard disk, cover for the fan, the memory, CPU fan, which I will replace video card, CPU, SSD and the motherboard.

**6:08** · Let's have a better look at the motherboard first.

**6:10** · As you can immediately see and noticed before, this is not a standard ATX or ITX motherboard.

**6:16** · It has four PCIe slots.

**6:18** · The bottom one is downshifted to x4, we have two times x1 and a full x16 slot.

**6:25** · Here are the memory banks and this is dimm1, dimm2, dimm3 and dimm4.

**6:30** · which are: channel B, channel B, channel A, channel A, three SATA connectors, integrated front USB ports, the power button, M.2 connector for wi-fi and another M.2 connector for the SSD.

**6:49** · We see a non-standard power input, speaker connector and this button would reset the CMOS.

**6:55** · Here you can find the BIOS chip itself.

**6:58** · Further, we have the connector for the intrusion detection and case lock and some connectors for additional serial and PS/2 ports, the CPU socket, P4 connector and CPU fan connector.

**7:14** · Here you can find something called the option card, which could provide additional VGA, DisplayPort or HDMI output.

**7:21** · Now that we know what we are dealing with, it's time to start the reassembly but let's first replace that broken or noisy fan.

**7:28** · I started with cleaning up the heatsink with alcohol to remove the remaining thermal paste.

**7:33** · Then of course the first thing to do, is to remove the current fan.

**7:43** · The replacement fan has to be of the PWM type with four pins.

**8:01** · Other than that it's not rocket science so we just need to screw it back on the heatsink.

**8:22** · Now that's been taken care of, we can start to put things together.

### start by placing the cpu in the socket

**8:26** · We can start by placing the CPU in the socket.

**8:33** · Just make sure that the orientation is correct, then we can simply insert it.

**8:44** · The NVMe SSD just goes in the slot, then gets fixed with a single screw.

**9:00** · Next up is the memory.

**9:01** · As mentioned, I'll put back two times 8GB instead of one and to make sure that we use dual channel, we need to use the same colors to have one dimm per channel.

**9:19** · Not much more we can do on the board so let's get it back in the case.

**9:55** · Now that the board is in the case, we can install the heatsink with the new cooler.

### install the heatsink with a new cooler

**9:59** · As this gets fixed to the chassis, we couldn't do this while the board was out.

**10:03** · Before we do that let's put some fresh thermal paste.

**10:13** · Then we can simply put back our CPU cooler, and of course connected to the motherboard.

**10:36** · Next up are the power connections, followed by the plastic airflow cover.

**10:54** · This one simply clicks itself on the CPU fan.

**11:00** · Then the power cables for the SATA devices, and the speaker.

**11:08** · Time to reinsert the DVD drive and connect it with the SATA cable.

**11:24** · After that, we can prepare our standard 3,5" hard drive.

### prepare our standard three and a half inch hard drive

**11:29** · On this one, we need to install some standoff screws.

**11:31** · These will hold the hard disk in the drive cage.

**11:37** · Once these are mounted, we can simply slide it in and connect the cables.

**11:58** · We're almost done so let's get that video card back in there as well.

**12:17** · So far I didn't connect the hard disk to SATA so that's the final thing to do before we can close the case.

**12:28** · Looks like we are done with the internals so we can reinstall the front cover, and top cover.

### reinstall the front cover

### connected the machine to a monitor keyboard and mouse

**12:48** · After closing it, I connected the machine to a monitor, keyboard and mouse.

**12:52** · Time to test and see if I did a good job with the reassembly.

**12:56** · Looks like it's starting, so let me enter the BIOS and have a look.

**13:02** · We see that our CPU and memory got detected as expected.

**13:10** · Storage devices seem fine as well.

**13:13** · Let's exit the bios and boot into Windows.

**13:26** · Time to do some testing.

**13:28** · I'll start with Geekbench, which is easy to compare with other systems.

**13:46** · The results of the CPU benchmark look as we would expect from this CPU in comparison with other systems I tested.

**13:56** · Let's do the same for the compute performance.

**13:58** · This relies mostly on the 1050 Ti.

**14:07** · Here again, everything is in line with the other systems I tested before.

**14:13** · Interesting to see how it performs in comparison with my other system that has a 1070 Ti.

**14:21** · This graphical card is not the fastest anymore.

**14:23** · It actually never was, but should still be quite ok for some basic gaming on 1080p.

**14:29** · Let's start by testing performance in Microsoft Flight Simulator.

**14:35** · As you can see, I have the settings set on medium and turned v-sync off.

**14:40** · Not that I really expect the FPS to go above 60.

**14:46** · Let's just pick a random start and destination and start flying.

**14:52** · Obviously I fast forward the loading here but in general the loading times feel very acceptable on this hardware.

**15:12** · Once you're in the game, it feels playable.

**15:14** · It's not super fluent but not disturbing either.

**15:17** · As you can see we get around a steady 30 FPS.

**15:36** · There is a bit of a drop when coming closer to busy areas like Moscow here, but nothing too disturbing.

**15:47** · What is more disturbing, is the temperature of both the CPU and GPU on the other hand.

**15:51** · These are not super as we're nearing almost 90 degrees Celsius.

**15:56** · That doesn't look very healthy to keep over a longer time, if you ask me.

**16:03** · Now let's do another test with GTA V.

**16:05** · This game is a bit older but should be a perfect match for this hardware.

### tweaking the graphics settings

**16:09** · After tweaking the graphics settings, you can see that I ended up with almost everything on very high, with anti-aliasing enabled.

**16:17** · During the game, this gives a fluent and very good looking experience.

**16:31** · The frame rate is good and even in busy situations like during a cop chase or with a lot of people on the streets, it never really drops below 60 FPS.

**16:39** · Temperatures, again, on the other hand are, as with Flight Simulator, on the high side.

**16:48** · Time to end the video here.

**16:50** · This EliteDesk 800 is a nice and compact, yet still powerful, machine.

**16:54** · Even today, a few years after its release, it still does a pretty good job.

**16:59** · Thanks a lot for watching!

**17:00** · I really hope you enjoyed the video.

**17:02** · If you did, please put a thumbs up.

**17:04** · If you like this or similar content, don't hesitate to subscribe to my channel.

**17:08** · I hope to see you back here soon!