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Todays bargain computer

Today I managed to acquire a "new" machine. I say new, it's not new. The monster is sporting a Celeron E3300 with 4GB of Crucial DDR2 667 in DUAL CHANNEL!

 

From the outisde it's a pretty nice looking case. It has IN WIN on the front and PC Specialist up the side with only one bay cover missing. The system is powered by an FSP group 350w power supply with power factor correction. A quality piece of hardware I'm sure.

 

Storage is an interesting one, it has a pair of 250GB SATA HDD's on a dedicated RAID card, and yup, they are in fact a mirrored array. Not just a storage array, but the OS is installed on it. And it boots.

 

I was greeted by the Ubuntu 16.04 login screen and have no password. A reboot, rw init=/bin/bash and passwd soon sorted that one out. Upon logging in I was surprised to see a lack of documents, images and other personal data. The last machines I got had nothing removed.  A brief visit into the trash can revealed a complete lack of deletion and a lot of files, folders, images and, amonst other things, a visual studio account username and password. I get the feeling the previous owner was a developer given some of the file names and github links that I found. At least (most of) the browser history was deleted, although not enough. Hiding in the list of browsed websites were a google search for "vpn that works with ubuntu", followed by "hard pounding", then searches for comodo secure browser and tor browser. I won't dig any deeper into that one.

 

Inside the case is some hardware, screws rattling around and dust, not just any dust but rather that special dust that forms a several mm thick layer in the CPU cooler. How that thing ran without getting hot I'll never know.

 

You may be asking how I got hold of such a powerful machine at a "bargain" price. Well, I will tell you. It was thrown in a bin in 4 pieces with the HDD caddy rattling around inside the case, which had no sides on it.

 

Anyone else found any bargains today?

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My computer was a bargain. Had a friend who went to his dad's business to ask for some computers to toy with for an upcoming school computer camp, and actually managed to get 3 decommissioned Dell enterprise machines the office was planning to toss out. Two Optiplex machines and one Precision workstation. 

 

This kid then, as one does, takes them home and starts taking them apart because he thinks they are old and useless and because neither has an i7 sticker are slow and trash. Thankfully I came over to his house that night, and informed him otherwise.


Push comes to shove and I end up with the lesser of the three systems, the Optiplex 390 sporting an i3-2120, and a GT 430 and 4GB of DDR3 I got for free from a friend.

 

Later on he decides to build his own PC and gives me the best of the three, the Dell Precision T3600. Every part in that system I got for free, except the SanDisk SSD Plus that I got off of Craigslist. The full specs are in the signature. It ain't the best but damn does it run (and scream if I rev the fans)

My profile picure is real. That's what I look like in real life. I'm actually a blue and white African Wild Dog.

Ryzen 9 5900X - MSI Ventus 2x OC 3060 Ti - 2x8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200MHz CL16 - ASRock B550 Phantom Gaming ITX/ax

EVGA CLC 280 + 2x140mm NF-A14 - Samsung 850 EVO 500GB + WD Black SN750 1TB - Windows 11/10 - EVGA Supernova G3 1000W

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11 minutes ago, DaJakerBoss said:

My computer was a bargain. Had a friend who went to his dad's business to ask for some computers to toy with for an upcoming school computer camp, and actually managed to get 3 decommissioned Dell enterprise machines the office was planning to toss out. Two Optiplex machines and one Precision workstation. 

 

This kid then, as one does, takes them home and starts taking them apart because he thinks they are old and useless and because neither has an i7 sticker are slow and trash. Thankfully I came over to his house that night, and informed him otherwise.


Push comes to shove and I end up with the lesser of the three systems, the Optiplex 390 sporting an i3-2120, and a GT 430 and 4GB of DDR3 I got for free from a friend.

 

Later on he decides to build his own PC and gives me the best of the three, the Dell Precision T3600. Every part in that system I got for free, except the SanDisk SSD Plus that I got off of Craigslist. The full specs are in the signature. It ain't the best but damn does it run (and scream if I rev the fans)

I got a T5400 and a T5500 cheap, the 55 is dead but the 54 got another CPU installed and isn't that bad consiodering it's 13 years old. ONly thing letting it down is 4GB memory. Being FBDIMM I don't have any kicking around.

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I would love to see some before and after pics, the amount of dusting off, fixing up, and cable managing would probably look nice.

I WILL find your ITX build thread, and I WILL recommend the SIlverstone Sugo SG13B

 

Primary PC:

i7 8086k - EVGA Z370 Classified K - G.Skill Trident Z RGB - WD SN750 - Jedi Order Titan Xp - Hyper 212 Black (with RGB Riing flair) - EVGA G3 650W - dual booting Windows 10 and Linux - Black and green theme, Razer brainwashed me.

Draws 400 watts under max load, for reference.

 

How many watts do I needATX 3.0 & PCIe 5.0 spec, PSU misconceptions, protections explainedgroup reg is bad

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5 hours ago, Curious Pineapple said:

I got a T5400 and a T5500 cheap

Precision workstations are beasts. Mine is a Sandy Bridge, making the CPU 7 years old and it kicks ass, and it cools under load to max 55C with mere medium fan settings.

 

They're great systems, I'd love to see yours

My profile picure is real. That's what I look like in real life. I'm actually a blue and white African Wild Dog.

Ryzen 9 5900X - MSI Ventus 2x OC 3060 Ti - 2x8GB Corsair Vengeance LPX 3200MHz CL16 - ASRock B550 Phantom Gaming ITX/ax

EVGA CLC 280 + 2x140mm NF-A14 - Samsung 850 EVO 500GB + WD Black SN750 1TB - Windows 11/10 - EVGA Supernova G3 1000W

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