Search the Community

I've been thinking of alternatives to buying retro hardware on eBay since many times it's overpriced and coming from some Chinese seller with an 80% rating and won't arrive within the next three or so months. Basically, I don't want to overpay for some product that I can't play around with for 3 months, only to find out the I2 Quad I ordered is some I2 Duo with the BIOS reflashed to report something different. I came up with the idea of approaching electronics recycling centers and asking to take some stuff off their hands / buy them for a reasonable price. I'm wondering if this is a possibility or whether it's even practical to do so as many components are dead by the time they arrive. If it works, it helps save some e-waste and allows me to enjoy some old hardware. Thoughts? Suggestions on where else to look?

I recently swapped out my cpu cooler and now I have a spare wraith prism lying around. I was going to find a place to recycle it but then decided it might be a fun project to repurpose it into something else! that led me down a rabbit hole of trying to find a good resource for repurposing pc components and, unfortunately, there doesn’t seem to be much out there. Does anyone know of a good resource or have any ideas of their own what else I could do? I’m not interested in building another machine out of it. I’d rather turn it into a lamp or something. Thanks!

hi not sure this is the right place to post this, i just saw modding and thought well i gues thats hat im doing so I have an old laptop with a rather broken screen and thought that if i removed the screen i could plug it into an external monitor and use it as a desktop of sorts with the touchpad and keyboard intact the only problem is that the laptop needs to detect that the lid is shut in order to automaticly display to the external monitor via the hdmi port. the obvious soloution is to take the magnet from inside the screen and glue it above the sensor to make it always asume that the lid is shut. however this particular laptop is smarter that that and will not power on with the lid "shut" and requires that the lid is "open" when the power button is pressed but closed within the next 3 secconds to ensure that it displays on the external monitor. my soloution to this that i tested with a basic desktop powersupply was to use a small electromagnet made from a short screw and some enameled copper wire that would turn on a seccond after the power button was pressed to trick the system into beliving that the lid was closed moments after the power button was pressed. to power this small electromagnet i noticed that the fan powered on a seccond after the power button was pressed for about 2 secconds. so i cut the fan cables and soilderd the fan cables back together but with the electromagnet also atached i later found i need to add a small resistor into this circut and after doing so it is impossible to generate a strongenough magnetic feild + the constraints of the measly powere levle the laptop runs on i have since found this to be quite unfeasable. i even concidered removing one of the laptops usb ports to power the electromagnet but i still dont belive that this will provide enought current does anyne have any sugestions for a workaround this silly sensor that dosent involve manualy holding a magnet next to the trackpad every time I want to turn it on? any help would be apreciated thanks in advance

Budget (including currency): $2000 (AUD) Country: Australia Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Work/spare gaming Other details (existing parts lists, whether any peripherals are needed, what you're upgrading from, when you're going to buy, what resolution and refresh rate you want to play at, etc): Thinking of upgrading my current rig previously built in approxiamtely 2014 sporting a i5 4690k (overclocked - best chip ever) and outdated 8gb ddr3 and GTX 970 g1 Gigabyte GPU. Thinking of upgrading to the new AMD 5900x (stock availability permitting) which will also obviously require new motherboard / ram. I don't plan on upgrading my GPU since I don't really game - I play the ocassional game of LoL here and there but nothing too demanding. I am thinking of perhaps running a SLI 970 g1 should I find one at a reasonable price on the used market. I have a few questions because since I was last heavily involved in the tech and pc building community was many years ago and times have changed. My current draft list of parts are as follows: CPU: AMD 5900x Motherboard: Gigabyte X570 Aorus Pro WIFI AM4 RAM: Kingston HyperX Fury 32g x 2 = 64g DDR4 (quad channel) GPU: Gigabyte GTX970 g1 SLI Plan on keeping the rest as is. Questions: 1. RAM: are there any potential issues/problems with running ram that comes in 2 sticks but getting two packs to run 64g in quad channel? 2. Seeing as I don't plan on upgrading my storage solution (changing SSDs/Hardrives) are there any potential issues with a new mothboard and Windows not running as it is installed on a SSD associated with a different motherboard? I will probably have more questions down the track Thank you all advance!

Hi, I have an old Notebook I wanted to repurpose because it was a multimedia notebook, the screen is presumably broken and the keyboard and chassis got a heavy dent in the center. / (specs at the end) The thing is I can't get the remains of the notebook to post or enter the BIOS even with every peripheral detached, basically just the mobo, cpu with heatsink and fan, ram and power switch with status leds. It is powered by it's brick with the battery removed. There is no obvious damage to the board itself. Uppon pressing the power button the fan starts spinning and the leds light up, after a couple seconds everything shuts off and after another couple seconds it fires back up on its own, again in the same way, then again everything shuts down one last time and on the third run the fan ramps up to a hundred percent indefinetely without running notably hot. I get no video output through it's own display (it might be shattered as it crunches when I run my knuckles across, I can't check right now anyway) or through the hdmi port, also switching inputs via FN macro on the keyboard did nothing. There was a distinct humming sounding like speaker interference but it stopped after detaching the speakers. I figured the cpu might be a problem as I have seen this kind of behaviour when for example it's not seated correctly or pins are damaged. I checked the cpu and socket for damages but everything is fine, switching out ram did no good either. The interior of the chassis is covered in metal sheets and there are metal contacts (hourglass shaped metal strip springs) labeled "SPR1", "SPR8" and so on and I have no idea what they are for, maybe they need to short in order to create ground or something, I have never seen something like this. A new CPU would cost less than 10-20€, an even better one less than 40€ but a new motherboard would be more than a 100€ and thats just not worth it, unless there would be an alternative. Specs: Brand: Medion Model: Akoya E7216 (MD 98550) Motherboard: M10H2 (HannStar?) Socket: G1/988 CPU: Intel i3 M380 @ 2.53Ghz Ram Hynix SODIMM, 2x 2GB 1Rx8 PC3

Sources: Greenpeace, Engadget, Bitcoin, Github (Samsung), Motherboard So Samsung got slammed by Greenpeace but instead of whining and calling Greenpeace fake news, they acted like adults and showcased the ways to repurpose old Galaxy smartphones as show from their Github account. Samsung said that recycling will just produce more waste and more costs when breaking down an old smartphone so they instead encourage re-purposing which they call "Upcycling". Together in partnership with iFixit, they encourage owners of older Samsung phones to use them as IoT devices like a fish tank monitor using an old Galaxy S3, smart pet bowl, an arcade gaming console, and other new ways. One crazy DIY is that it can be used for Bitcoin mining when Samsung strung 40 Galaxy S5's and as it turns out, it can be more efficient in mining than a desktop PC according to Samsung. So they compared the performance of a Galaxy S5 vs an Intel core 17-2600 but unfortunately, I can't find any tests results of these chips that uses the same benchmark and I'm skeptical if an ARM chip like the Snapdragon 801 used by the GS5 is faster than a Sandy Bridge locked i7. Personally I have a bad experience with the Snapdragon 801 because my old LG G3 is constantly thermal throttling but it's probably because it has to power a QHD resolution. Also, wouldn't collecting 40 pieces of old Samsung phones be more cumbersome than just building a dedicated PC for mining? Nonetheless it's a great initiative from Samsung and I hope other companies follow the suit. To be honest, I don't think Apple is following Samsung's steps since they don't want people hacking iOS to do crazy things like DIY IoT and I don't think the jailbreaking community is interested as many of them just submit bugs to Apple and get paid. I was thinking of re-purposing my old Galaxy Note 2 but the wifi no longer works at this moment and it's having awful screen burn in and whites are becoming yellow.

Buy REAL GOLD BARS on Amazon: http://geni.us/UeO1f This company literally takes scraps from electronics manufacturing and turns them into massive amounts of precious materials. And we got to check their process out first-hand!!!

So long story short, i have an AIO that it a few years old and of which the pump is struggling (it cools but like not very well anymore). So i have since replaced it and now i need to get rid of the old AIO, any one have any idea of how to properly get rid of this thing? Everywhere i have looked doesn't really answer this question tbh The AIO has the cooler, rubber polymer material for the soft tubing of the AIO, the copper on the plate that goes against the CPU, and i think it is an aluminium radiator but tbh i don't really know about that bit. Anyone really know how i should get rid of this thing properly? being all environmentally responsible and all that ya know. Thanks in advance!

My JBL Pulse 2 broke and i´d like to know whether its possible to use the RGB LED strips that are in it as lighting in my PC case. Is it possible and how would i have to do it? Feel free to ask for further information. I apreciate every answer. Thank you

Hey Guys, I work in a corporate enviroment, we have 2700 people in the office... so we use quite a lot of paper. There is a project im currently leading to reduce paper waste and generaly increase awaraness etc in the office. Except the obvious stuff like locked printing etc i would like to introduce something.. you know, catchy. Maybe some contests even. I'm currently searching for some innovative ideas.. lets call it a non boring approach to the topic. Do you mind sharing some of yours if you happen to know? Like you know.. sometimes you can find those gifs with futuristic solutions to problems, like the robot collecting plastic from the seas etc... Maybe we can make some sort of brainstorm out of it? Anything is welcomed :)

A Rice University grad student has discovered a new process for creating graphene. Flash Graphene uses almost any carbon based matter, placed between two electrodes, flashed to over 3000 degrees kelvin, to create graphene and bleed off most other elements as gasses in microseconds. The process promises to allow the production of graphene, that currently costs up to $200,000 per ton, to drop to a couple hundred per ton primarily in electricity costs. The raw materials can be primarily waste. Biological waste, plastics, papers, etc. Almost anything carbon based can be processed this way to produce graphene. The graphene produced using this method is also far purer than many other methods, requires no massive investments of energy or dangerous chemicals, and is far easier to utilise in practical applications On top of the advancements in high tech and new tech applications it can also help in some surprising low tech applications With affordable sourcing of graphene we could see a lot more research into practical applications and all those oft touted future energy sources and stores could actually be commercially feasible now that graphene can be produced for what amounts to pennies worth of electricity and garbage. EDIT: One proposed use for this process is to shunt coal production from being burned for electricty production to being flashed for graphene production. Re-sequestering the carbon in a form that can be used in a plethora of high tech, and low tech, applications. Like cement, batteries, advanced meta-materials, etc.

Hey all, I work in an electronics repair store and a customer opted to recycle a smashed 55" LG smart tv. The controller itself is fine but finding a replacement panel was next to impossible without hitting up ma boi Quin Tan Yan to buy in bulk on Pannelook. The controllers don't have any obvious display outputs, is it still possible to remote into it or use it as a Chromecast Audio or something? they don't fetch much on Ebay. The rest of the tv is going to a local highschool to be used as a theater prop if anyone was wondering.

Hi guys. So, I have a dedicated server for "The Forest" set up on my main PC, and I don't really want to leave it running 24/7 (especially when im not home as it's watercooled, if it leaks when i'm not here, i'd be furious) Sod's law and all.... My question is, Is there anyway i can transfer the server and all the saves from the individual players to a new machine? I have some old Dell office PC's laying around that I could probably convert into a server. Would it still need to be the same OS? (WIN 10) Or could i run something like linux? As It was getting to a point where I was just playing with people, but now they may want access to it while i'm unavailable, so keeping it live constantly would be ideal. Also, does the PC need to be "decent" I mean, it's a Dell office pc, ddr2 integrated GPU, ram capacity can be upgraded. Hdd, Core 2duo I believe in one of them. New to this server malarkey so if anything is a noobish basic question please forgive me. Thanks

I have an old late 2008 MBP. I want to run ChromeOS on it because it is slow on MacOS. Prepared the bootloader, but after plugging in and going for the boot, it shows me the cloudready screen and then goes blank! Help

Anyone know what happened to FreeGeek Providence? Their website has been down for at least a month and they aren't returning phone calls. On google maps there's some indication that they were in the middle of changing location?? But I haven't been able to get in contact with anyone from the Providence branch to confirm this.. Did they go out of business? On a related note, does anyone know of a FreeGeek-like outlet near Boston? I am trying to get a cluster going and could use some cheap hardware, but don't want to chance it on eBay.

My fathers gaming laptop's motherboard died, its been sent in for fixing and confirmed that motherboard is dead and nothing can be done. Since I like to tinker and take things apart, I have done a bit of surgery and removed the CPU,GPU's,RAM and wifi module out of the dead laptop, along with other giblets. I would like to repurpose these parts for a desktop for my little brother if possible. I have already took the SSD and SSHD to use for my own desktop, the ssd was the same as my main C drive and I combined their forces for that sweet & speedy raid 0 . Salvaged parts Intel® Core™i7 Quad Core Mobile Processor i7-2860QM (2.50GHz) 8MB 12GB SAMSUNG 1600MHz SODIMM DDR3 MEMORY (3 x 4GB) 2 x 1.5GB nVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 560M - DirectX® 11 (SLI) GIGABIT LAN & WIRELESS INTEL® N130 802.11N (150Mbps) + BLUETOOTH 18.4" Glossy Full HD LED Widescreen (1920x1080) 8x SATA DVD±R/RW/Dual Layer (+ 24x CD-RW) A 2.0 Megapixel webcam 5 speakers 1 subwoofer Is there any tech guru's wisdom you guys could impart on me that could help me make use of the parts I got, It would be pretty nice to use these parts for a neat little pc. I also got a raspberry pi and an arduino, any ideas for cool projects?

Don't get me wrong. I know this isn't a knife it's a straight razor. Making straight razors has been my full time job now for almost 4 years. I started with a 30 dollar cheap grinder and have worked my way up to all the great tools I could ever want. I hope you guys have something you love to do and seek it out even if you don't think you have what you need to make it happen... Keep doing what you love and eventually the things you need will come. Jacob

Hello nerds! I'm here to show off a build that is mostly complete but will be subject to some upgrades in the near future. I called it the resurrection build(yay cliche) because I am using a bunch of parts that I had lying around, some for 4-5 years, and rebuilding them into The 2009 AMD Beast. Our story starts with me lying in bed, for some reason thinking of computer parts(essentially porn for me) and I thought, "Well I have that motherboard. I have that 965be, ddr2 memory(which turned out to be dead), and that computer he has is just sitting there doing nothing." So the next day I asked my dad if I could pull out that pentium 4 and give him something that won't flip out on windows 7 simply browsing the web. Of course he said yes, and so I took a look inside to see what I had to work with. Picture form: -The case is probably an early 2000 model, my dad said he got it from where he used to work. Remember when they used to make everything inside sharp as F#$%? No rubberised coating here! These are after I cleaned it. I really wish I had photos from before, you can see some of that in the videos below but a before and after is always awesome to see. Imagine years of cigarette smoke, dust, hair from cats, etc. because those poor filters were brown. Live and learn I guess. -It was a pleasant surprise to see a recent Corsair GS600, apparently my dad had gone through some bad power supplies and bought a nice one finally. -There was a sound card in there because the on-board audio was "F@%$ing garbage" not very good. -This is an old AGP Ati Radeon 4650 1gb DDR3 video card that I originally got with the computer I bought from Ibuypower many many years ago. Won't ever buy a pre-built again although the NZXT Tempest case is still in use -Here is this old Motherboard and processor, didn't bother to separate them. -Oh yeah and a crappy old HDD and dvd drive that I'm reusing Those 4 pin molex connectors were like fused into the devices, I forgot how hard it is to not pull out your damn graphics card while trying to unwedge those things. Anyways, I took it all out, cleaned it with alcohol while drinking other alcohol, washed the filters and let it all dry overnight. Here is everything I'm putting in as one pic and list: Motherboard: Asus m3a78-cm Processor: AMD Phenom II 965BE Memory: 8gb Hynix DDR2 800mhz Power Supply: REUSING Corsair GS600 Storage Drives: REUSING 250gb WD and DVD Drive Sound Card: Onboard Motherboard Video Card: AMD/ATI XFX 4870 512mb GDDR5 PCI-E Misc: REUSING 2 Fans back in. And after several hours that included: fighting with that garbage AMD stock cooler, cutting myself on the case, trying to find a way to not have a mess of cables with a non-modular PSU, remembering the io shield at the last second, and having to look up the manual for ASUS weird placement of front hookups... its still a damn mess, but its way better than it was before! And I installed that back fan wrong, but its crap anyways and barely spins. First power on resulted in going WTF to discover the RAM was bad, the ram spots on this mobo are picky as hell, its all around weird because it supports ECC, so anyways, got 2 more sticks to fill it to it's max of 8gb. Got through the bios and windows 7 64 bit installed, ran what benchmarks I could (this is like DX10.1 ish hardware so no DX11)! Crazy seeing it produce near playable framerates in Tomb Raider 2013(1920*1080 high, no vsync/AA, 25.6MIN,31.2AVG,35.8MAX) Dirt 3 was a breeze never dipping below 50 on high, CS:GO was around 80-120 average at med-high settings but I didn't play any huge servers. There are some problems however: These two damn things sound like vacuum cleaners when the going gets rough, and here in 2016 it gets rough real quick. Plus that damn 4870 maxes out at 87 degrees C which I know is fine for the card but near 90 has always made me uncomfortable. Soooo I took that heatsink off and replaced the thermal paste with MX-4 and it dropped down to 83-84 C max, although to be clear when I say max tamp I haven't run any full torture tests on the hardware because I don't want to blow it up (today at least). The cpu cooler kept it a cool 59 C max(enough that I don't think this cpu is fully powered on this mobo however with one cpu power connector?!) in a quick cinebench, with score 338 which seems maybe a little low but it works. Again, still sounds like a vacuum cleaner. On to future plans for this build. I want to get a motherboard on the cheap that has some USB3.0 ports and doesn't worry me with just the 1 4-pinned cpu power connector, so probably a cheap 990fx. I need to put a different cpu cooler in there, its seriously unbearable, worse than the graphics card blower fan for sure, very whiney. Looking at a cheap one there to, not trying to spend a bunch on this but I do want it to STFU sometimes. Finally some new fans would help the air flow in this case a ton, and make me worry a lot less about the long term future of this build. He could probably use a cheap 1tb hard drive or small ssd boot drive to replace the cackling joker thats in there now. My dad mainly plays Rome:Total War (actually he founded the mod Roma Surrectum 1 and 2 and is working on "3" or whatever they call it) so the hardware is easily powerful enough to run that, I just want this build to last a decent amount of time. Will update next week because I will probably order those fans and cpu cooler soon, and if i see a cheap 990 board well... which of us can resist taking it all apart just to put it back together again Let me know what you guys think, how is the post formatting, is the content interesting, etc. For those who TL:DR there are 3 videos (which will take you longer to watch than read lol), my awkward first filming and editing experience. They actually get better from one to the other I think!

Sans the long explanation, I'll likely have access to several unwanted, defunct and/or partially stripped/broken laptops (hp Elitebook 2170p) and my plan for the summer is to remove and attach several screens into a huge monitor. Think iMax but terrible. To anyone with any hardware knowledge, is this a viable idea, is this a stupid concept, and what would I have to do to get them all attached? If somehow this is a bad thread, don't hate me I'm new.

I replaced the battery on my dad's Z3 compact, but I'm not sure how I should dispose of the damaged (inflated battery), I know you're not supposed to put it with the regular trash. Also I'm curious to know what happens if you were to throw the battery with the regular trash, what kind of possible environmental damage could happen?

Amazon: http://geni.us/1GcL NCIX: http://bit.ly/1VCBUuq How can you recycle your old electronics, and why should you do it?

What does best buy do with recycled pc/printers. Asking this for an essay

I have been looking into getting a NAS for a while but I absolutely hated the WB, Buffalo, etc ones made by companies. I finally was going to buy a WB MyDrive when I say Linus's video today on YouTube. I have about 3 mobos and cpus laying around that I could use. Sadly the cases I have are old Dell prebuild cases so they have around 2 HDD cages each so I will need a to purchase a server rack or so forth. Here's what I have: AMD FX-8320 MSI Gaming 990FXA-Gaming AM3+ 2 random pentiums 2 random motherboard with the pentiums 16 gigs of mismatched DDR3 memory Can I use this to make a NAS and what would you suggest I buy to complete it? UPDATE: The pentiums are 3-8 years old. I think they were purchased 3 years ago but they were old when purchase. I plan on using the NAS for backups as well as mass storage for RAW video, video projects, and documents.

I had gotten an old water cooling system from a friend with a lack of appropriate screws, so rather than leaving it to die I am going to attempt to build it into a cup-holder inside my desk and maybe see if I can use it to keep drinks cold. Hardest part might be the wiring for me, any help would be appreciated. Do you guys have any creative ways to re-use a old water cooling?

Ok this was way to long to read, heres a shorter version. I was hoping you guys would be able to help me out with upgrading my setup. My Budget is around 500 € but can be more as i plan to gather the parts over the span off a couple months, about 3 months should be enough. Setup is used primarily for gaming and should at least be ready for black Desert online, it also helps if it can handle some of the newer titels at atleast a playable level. Even if i have to go to mid or even lower graphic settings. ___________________________________________ Black Desert online has the following requirements: Minimum Spec (Lowest Graphic Settings) 32bit Windows 7 , Windows 8 Intel Core i3 4GB RAM GTS 250 / GeForce 9800 GTX Radeon HD 3870 X2 Recommend Spec (Medium-High Graphic Settings) 64bit Windows 7 , Windows 8 Intel Core i5 6GB RAM GTX 650 / GTX 550 Ti Radeon HD 7770 / Radeon HD 6770 The build i seek should hit that mark if possible while being as barebone and cheap as it can be. ______________________________________ No additional perripherals needed. ______________________________________ This is the Setup that im having right now Warning, some parts might not be named correctly or fully, as im just writting this stuff out of my hardware manager since this is a rather old build and i have no clue whats actually in here anymore. --> AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series Graphic card with 2048 mbits on GDDR5 (It's blue with two ventilators so i think its a saphire something something ) --> AMD FX -6100- Six Cores processor 3,30 Ghz on a M5A78L-MLX 3 from ASUS Motherboard --> 16 Gigs of Ram (Two times 8 ) --> win 7 64 Bit. --> no SSD But an old time 1 TB Harddrive split into two partitions --> no additional PCIE Stuff like soundcards or some such thing but a tiny 2x Usb 3 Chip. --> Wifi by means of usb stick --> the case im using is a mid tower with two slots for optical drives (i have one but i dont use it so it isnt pluged in) It comes with 2 Front USB Slots as well as front sound in and output. It has two smaller slots which i assume are for SD card reading slots both of which aren't used. --> power supply is a 520 Watt 80 Plus ATX power supply (Model 520CL) from Techsolo. _________________________________________ Thinks i'd like to reuse: Ram, PSU, Harddrive, Case (I have another case around thats a bit bigger but needs an addiotional power cable for an inbuilt fan at the side panel) ________________________________________ So here's the question, which parts should i keep or recycle, and which parts do you suggest to get me a stable and fun (and hopefully good looking) gaming experience in BD-Online and perhaps other freshly released titles? I'd give you some parts from the top of my head but really i spent all day looking at all kinds of videos and benchmarks i don't even understand whats going anymore, i can't tell any i5 apart from the next and apparently there are some who just aren't good for gaming which blows my mind since they seem to be all the same ro me (i mean makes sense, they are all i5's after all, whoever is comming up with the naming routines for PC hardware clearly needs to learn about a more obvious way of naming stuff). Doesn't help that a lot of the Hardware info online is in english and while i think my english is fine it ain't that great. I hope i didn't spam to much and you can actually get an idea of my dilemma from all the stuff i wrote above. I'd much appreciate any help i can get. Happy new years