Another free computer

Retro6 · 24 Mar 2022 at 19:30

Why an earth would somebody chuck this out? I picked it up from an office as a computer that was going to be chucked away and it was free so I thought it will be good for some parts.

When I first saw it in person I was a bit doubtful whether it would work. It has no hard drive and full of dust. Its got a LGA1150 board in there and has a quad core with 8 GB DDR3 Ram.

I took the cover off and set it up when I got home to see if it turns on and what the problem might be but it seems like its in good working order and has a nice looking BIOS. This computer looks like a good one for Windows 10 and its got the Windows 10 license key on the side as well as an MS Office key.

I haven't tried a hard drive in it yet but it looks like a runner so far.

Retro6 · 24 Mar 2022 at 20:03

As a retro guy this computer is like last years tech to me far from obsolete lol.

Computers don't contain much gold if any at all. I remember youtubers buying up old PC's 486's etc to trash them for there 1 pence worth of gold content. The amount of work it takes to separate the gold from all the other metals is not worth it for a few tiny blobs of gold worth less than a few pence.

Retro6 · 24 Mar 2022 at 22:38

Tom_ed1987 said:
If it has a windows 10 sticker on it I'd still describe that as 'modern'
Moore's law is long dead the difference between a 10 year old PC and a new one really isn't that much in most usage circumstances.

Thats what I was thinking because back in 2013 people were using Windows 7. Windows 10 wasn't on the market yet.

Retro6 · 24 Mar 2022 at 22:42

I have just fitted an SSD I can't seem to find any BOOT options in the BIOS other than boot from Optical Drive or SSD. No USB BOOT Option?

I don't suppose anybody knows how I can boot from the USB? I have Windows 10 on USB

Retro6 · 25 Mar 2022 at 00:59

Quartz said:
Have you tried updating the BIOS? Replace the BIOS battery first.

I'm not really a fan of updating BIOS's just encase something goes wrong and I end up with a bricked motherboard. I'm sure its something simple in the settings I need to change.

I may just do Windows 7 Lubuntu dual boot on this machine because Windows 10 is a bit garbage. There is always too much going on with Windows 10 if its not doing updates its doing something else slowing the system down. Windows 7 will be good for offline gaming with MS Office and Lubuntu for the internet side of things. I have both on DVD's.

Retro6 · 25 Mar 2022 at 21:35

I figured out the problem this morning. I was trying to boot from a non bootable USB Port. Not all USB ports are bootable on this machine. I got Windows 10 installed and activated straight away. Seeing that I also have an MS Office key I may as well download MS Office. Its very fast. No bad for a free PC.

Retro6 · 25 Mar 2022 at 21:45

Yaayuh! said:
I've chucked far better PCs than that and many of them. Straight to recycling.

mid_gen said:
Because dirty old office computers are 10 a penny and for most people not worth the time and effort to try and find a use for. Not that hard to understand.

The sort of cretins you have to deal with on Gumtree/eBay etc....I either sell stuff on the MM or give to a charity shop, or last resort, recyling/bin.

That is a shame. People still pay good money for these on sites like ebay if its a quad core system bidders go crazy for them even if your just selling a motherboard bundle with Ram, processor and cooler. I'd take any old quad core machines if they are going free...

Retro6 · 25 Mar 2022 at 21:47

arknor said:
try a different USB port, on my gigabyte haswell PC my bios looks the same but a different board, some of the USB ports aren't bootable

I just saw your reply. I was using the wrong USB port. I did it this morning.

Retro6 · 29 Mar 2022 at 08:50

subbytna said:
Have you found out the CPU and all the other parts yet?

I have been busy over the past few days so I haven't checked. I did check in the BIOS but there wasn't enough detailed information on the processor other than 3.10 GHz per core I will check it in Windows 10.

Luckystrike123 said:
I still have my 2500k as my main pc, although I've upgraded the gfx and added an SSD since I bought it.

Modern PC gaming is far too expensive at the moment and I'm not into consoles at all. When this eventually bites the dust I think that I'll bin gaming off entirely.

Desktop PC's are on there way out to becoming obsolete, its all games consoles and portable touchscreen devices these days. I prefer having the game on a disk rather than having to play something online like Steam. I've never used Steam but I would like GTA5 and be able to have it physically on a Blu-ray disk or something where I can install it to a computer and play it with no messing about..

Retro6 · 29 Mar 2022 at 20:56

I had a look its got an i5 processor

Retro6 · 30 Mar 2022 at 16:45

I'm going to look for a few more free PC's and see what they have inside. Its incredible the amount of waste there is literally millions of pounds worth wasted in what could be re-used. Maybe I might find a PC that is capable of running GTA5. Some of these computers that get chucked away are pretty decent with good specs.