I found two free PCs & upcycled them
The other day, I walked out my door and I saw two PC towers lying in the courtyard, and an old scratched monitor and printer at the front of the big apartment building. I kept walking past, thinking:
"Well, either someone just temporarily put these PCs here, while cleaning out their basement and they will be back for them in minutes or, the hardware is totally broken or, the cases must be mostly empty. Hours later, by night-fall I realized they were still there, and it was worth having a look.
Took them up. It is important to note that people in my building often put (even nice) things on the street for others to have because they are moving out, upgrading etc. Free boxes and gifting things are common. These PCs were very dusty all over and I think came from long term storage in a basement, and when a person from this building moved out they decided to give them away.
We quickly found out there was nothing wrong with the hardware and nothing missing! They both just had a corrupted window install and/or master boot record (hence would not boot). Which is a very fast and easy fix with a Mint install. Also both would likely not run Windows 11 (well), which is perfect for me because I never intend to use that alleged OS.
Really appears previous owner simply wasn't very technical at all or not too motivated, likely bought new PC every time the operating system conked out after some years. We made sure to do a quick check of the hard drives with a Live USB drive. The nice one has a Kingston 500 GB SSD + 3 TB HDD. The older one had three HDDs: 1 TB (too many corrupted sectors, pulled it out), a 3.5 TB & a 1.5 TB, both totally fine according to DISC utility. Then, once we were sure nothing important was left on any drive, we wiped them completely. We don't want to invade anyone's privacy.
Above is my good friend helping me work on the best of the two PCs, as it was when I found it: inside a huge, and quite expensive Fractal Designs case. We will put that case online.
The hardware in this PC has these specs:
While older hardware, honestly it is very okay for running the vast majority of games at 1080p en 2026. I am very happy about that, because I always wanted a gaming PC for very casual, occasional gaming during winter, games like Baldur's Gate 3, Stray and many others. My friend installed them and they run just fine! :)
I never felt like paying €300 to €600+, for even a used gaming PC, which I might not use that much, but if I can find one for free and invest a little into it, that is better for me and the environment than buying new or overspending.
Hardware prices have gotten insane and are not likely to change for at least 3 years, and they will probably never go back to the pre-AI prices according to people who research that.
For those reasons I think a lot more consumers will use their current hardware longer, as well as do something similar as I did: small upgrades, and often getting used hardware, so a system remains "good enough" instead of dropping ca. €1200 to €2500+ on a new and flashy one.
Who throws out 16GB of DDR4 memory in 2026,.. with current prices? Crazy.
Below is the final build, my friend came through so much, I paid him a little, but he did so much work (has way more gaming PC knowledge than I and really enjoys this stuff). Cleaned and checked everything, rebuild all the hardware into a smaller case, picked up and added a new power supply. The old one worked fine but seemed dodgy brand and model, and I didn't want to burn out my free hardware, as they say "never cheap out on your power supply", the new one is a much better and safer.
Now, I can ship entire (smaller) PC to Valencia much easier in this new smaller "BeQuiet!" brand case I got a great deal on:
The second PC I did most of the work on, it is old, but even those Specs are not terrible, with Linux Mint, it became very capable, I didn't replace any parts:
I made it into a dedicated Stremio-box and tested it hooked up to my TV, works awesome. Was a bit hard to pull out the HDD cage and remove the one faulty HDDs, but I managed, gave it all a thorough clean. Of course both PCs have their side and front panels on now and look neat and finished, I just posted the open pics to show the internals.
