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- Mini PC VESA mounted
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- Mini PC VESA mounted port side
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- Mini PC VESA mounted audio & additional USB
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- Top of Mini PC
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- Motherboard
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- Motherboard bottom w/ heatsink
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- Motherboard bottom w/ heatsink
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- Heatsink
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- Motherboard bottom heatsink removed
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- Case w/ GPU
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- Case w/ GPU
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- Empty case & fans top
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- Empty case & fans front
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- Empty case & fans side
These photos were taken in my garage when I decided to take the mini-pc apart and apply a different thermal compound (arctic ceramic). Also I wasn’t sure if this unit used a GPU on the processor or if it had a dedicated GPU. It looks, as you can see, like this unit does have a separate GPU board connected by a mini PCI Express connector card (seen on the side of the motherboard in the motherboard & heatsink pictures).
i have 2 of these both have this fake gpu /diasabled gpu . we must expose this marketing cheat . its a brix gaming with the gpu disabled bet your gpuhas saned off numbers for some reason . one of mine is completely missing the gpu and memory on the second board same model
I’m not sure you’ll get this reply as you posted this a long time ago but here’s my two cents on this anyway. I think what happened here is Gigabyte sold two versions of this model. One with just the APU (AMD A8 5557m with Radeon 8550g) and another with a dedicated GPU (AMD R9 M275x) along with the APU. The “disabled/fake” GPU uses an MXM board with a hole in it from the motherboard that only supplies power to it and that power is used by the case fans. So it’s not a “marketing cheat” unless you paid extra for the model with a dedicated GPU. My guess is that when bad GPU’s came off the assembly line they re-used them as power relays in this model for the case fans rather than just wasting the failed chips and PCB. I did not buy the model with the dedicated GPU and I received what was advertised in mine which was an A8 5557m APU with Radeon 8550G. Hope this sheds some light.
Additional Info: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2014/04/fast-but-compromised-gigabytes-amd-powered-mini-gaming-pc-reviewed/