I Paid $55 for a "Broken" PC | Is it ACTUALLY Broken, or will it be a Quick Fix?
Вставка
- Опубліковано 19 сер 2023
- Hello there and welcome to my video. In this video, I paid 55 dollars on eBay for a "Broken" PC. Here we'll see if my suspicions are correct in that it isn't ACTUALLY broken and that it will be a quick fix and flip! Also, quick note - I made sure to check the CMOS battery and replaced it, I just forgot to film it and put it in the script, whoops!
Music, in order:
Beyond - Patrick Patrikios
Island Dream - Chris Haugen
Sunday Rain - Cheel
I've gotten a few comments regarding the temperature increase that seems to be visible after the repaste. In hindsight, I really wish I had made a note of how those two temps shouldn't be compared, that's a fault on my part. The temps that are shown before the repaste are after ~15 seconds of Cinebench R23, as I genuinely started the benchmark and immediately remembered that I hadn't repasted it, so I shut it off. And the temperatures shown after the repaste were after 10 minutes of Cinebench R23. In the future (assuming I don't need to remove the CPU heatsink to fix the computer or anything) I'll take proper before and after temperature measurements so we can compare them and see if the repaste helped or hurt. I have had bad paste applications slip through before, thankfully I usually caught them, but they happen, and this is a great way to find out if one did! Just wanted to clarify that so that no one worries about that any more down here, and to the commenters who pointed out that poorly presented information, thank you!
I once paid 40 Euros for a defective PC, which was about the worth of the parts I could reasonably hope to salvage, even if the motherboard and GPU were fried. Turn out the "defect" was that one stick of RAM wasn't properly seated. Then I had a nice PC worth about 200 Euros.
Nice one!
Nice, if I ever get my hands on a broken desktop I'll need to try that.
Parallel ports are still being used by industrial equipment (which is often used for decades, e.g. CNC milling) and for programming external circuit boards (not only by hobbyists, but also for low-volume specialist applications in robotics, energy, automation). Some machines also have diagnostic ports which are based on a serial or parallel design (much simpler than e.g. conversion to USB).
Ahh yeah that’s a good point. I do a lot of hobbyist projects and at least the equipment I have right now doesn’t use parallel ports, but the original owner definitely might have had some equipment that did.
Agreed. Though I've also seen modern computers with LPT ports like this added on that run POS equipment too.
Yes, some Dell desktop models which are intended for business do have parallel port card option for usage mentioned by @meckerhesseausfrankfurt4019 above, however, newer model of Dell computer no longer have this option
something else that these are still used for is very old scanners that, like printers, still work REALLY WELL compared to modern ones and usually only have an issue with drivers for modern OS's and may even require booting an old OS then "upgrading it" for Microsoft's driver porting that only triggers on OS upgrades kick in and port it over to, say, Windows 7 or 10 (although in Linux there's usually more luck and less work involved).
That seller just didn't want the PC.
Yeah, that’s quite likely.
As a Dell reseller, I can tell you that any Dell workstation from 2015 (6th Gen) and up will have a minimum 8Gb DDR4 unless "someone switched it". Also, even if you did have the "no boot" screen and there was a HDD/SSD/nVME in it, 95% of the time its a dead bios battery (CR2032) and you just need to change it, and set the correct date and time.
Still don't like it when OEM's use single channel memory on a board that can take up to 4 slots.
I recently bought a gaming PC myself, started with 16GB DDR4 (2x 8GB). Immediately changed for 32GB (2x 16GB).
It now has 128GB installed, that's 32GB in each of the 4 slots.
Thanks for those tips!
It's always satisfying giving hardware a second breath, especially when it's simple!
Nice find, and yes I would also certainly use an NVMe SSD as the boot drive, if the device had an NVMe slot. It also means that the device can have a second (or even third) hard drive added for additional storage.
Somebody gave me one of these a few years ago at work to "Throw away" aka toss in the dumpster. I asked if I could keep it and they said "I guess if you want it, yeah"
It's been awesome. I put Linux on it and it runs really great. It plays emulators, it's a little Plex server, its a good youtube watching device. 10/10 would pick one up for under $100 again
Super cool man! I love when you can save things like this from dumpsters and get good use out of them!
If you could slap another matching RAM stick in that computer, it would significantly improve the performance by enabling dual channel memory.
Yeah, I'd do that if I had the cash to afford some DDR4 right now!
@@CompHwTipsAndTutorialswhat..?! 😂😂😂 We all know you can afford it.
Some old industrial machinery need old parallel or serial. What (i'm aware of is) some companies do is buy new hardware that's warrantied and then run a VM with old Windows 3.11 or XP OS so that they can continue running their hardware.
4:13 that's what concerns me about the xbox series consoles. When those m.2 ssd's go out, you just can't go out and buy a new one to replace it, because those m.2 ssd's are keyed to each specific console. So when it dies you'll either have a expensive paper weight or have to ship it back to Microsoft to get a replacement m.2 ssd and who knows how much that would cost.
PS5's are worse as their storage is soldered on (with the exception of the expansion slot) so when that storage dies, you really are screwed.
You found a spare matching slot cover, nice!
I guarantee that computer was retrofitted as part of an existing POS and that they upgraded it at the ends of the organizations life cycle. Usually happens to machines around that age and the PCIE card was most likely used to interact with the receipt printer.
Thats actually a really good theory
LPT probably was used for Mach3 or LinuxCNC
Great video, really enjoyed watching it. Well done ❤️
Excellent tutorial! Great safety tips too !
$55 about the right price for that ex office unit and it almost certainly was used in some sort of shipping office due to the port addition,they tend to the be the ones still useing old printers like a continuous feed dot matrix or something,still loads of them about suprisingly
I recently came across a "refurbished" 6th gen. Dell micro with no drive, and marked "NO WINDOWS LICENSE" from a wholesaler, and that was fine because I had a spare NVMe stick for it, and planned on installing Linux anyway. But before I did, I installed Windows 10 as a lazy way to update the firmware, and to run CPU-Z for my notes. I didn't even notice that I wasn't prompted for a CD key. And sure enough, when I was done, I had a licensed copy of Windows 10 Pro installed! So I resold it to a local business that needed a cheap replacement for the Core 2 Duo machine they had. Win-win.
3:19 Probably a retail environment, a lot of older receipt printers in combination with till drawers worked through a parallel port
Your cinematography is great - great content, thanks!!
Thank you! A major part of starting this channel was to work on my video skills - they'll just keep getting better from here!
Really interesting video. Hopefully you do more in the future.
Your content is great, keep going :)
in the way back machine, a store I worked at in the 2000's, POS receipt printer used a parallel port. It's the last time I saw that in the wilds given by then everyone had moved on to USB.
my main storage drive for my computer is a 1tb hdd its from 2009 and last time i checked it had like 77000 power on hours on it but it still works great!
I got almost the same exact Dell about a year ago but was i7 for $100. It had a 500GB HD. Once I swap it out for a 1TB M2 drive and add an extra 32GB with the 8 for 40GB it ran great. The default video card is ok. Did have to shell out about $150 for a 4GB small form factor video card in order to play some of the more intensive pc games.
Just not a lot of space to add cards and drives. So if you need just a work computer this is great.
"back in the day" we would play network games via parallel port..... I like these dells, currently im snowed under with a ton of 6th gen hp g2 sff systems that i found for $10 each
10 bucks each?! Man, that’s a dream come true deal for me!
Many industrial equipments, machines, sensors, etc. still uses serial and paralell connection.
Did you sell the card you pulled out of it, because I imagine that's an oddly specific card.
they are like $10-30 rn
someone uses them, somewhere
@@felicityc Ah.
I picked up a Dell Optiplex 7010 ultra small form factor at an Amazon liquidation store for $5. It had a missing face plate and a dead HD. I suspect it go set in the wrong place by IT and carted away.
Slapped some more memory in it and a 500GB sata SSD and run it with Linux on it as a Docker container host. Only an i3 processor but runs like a champ.
interesting modern PCs don't come with a parallel port.
PCs like these sre definitely a good upgrade for people with dinosaur PCs
Damn this Channels growing hella fast
Interesting video, pretty modern PC although it is for office use like HP products I think. What was the defect with that PC, maybe that PCI express card is broken and PC wont't boot like in my old computer with skystar 2 card, or previous owner just take out the hard disk and sold cheap the rest of computer in good hands? Good video
Nice work
i pulled up the spec sheet and this thing isn't bad, if it was fully kitted out it would be quite a little power house.
This was probably a business purchase, as some law offices etc. still use parallel port.
Nice little video. I love taking these little Dell OEM units and dropping in a nice SSD and GPU upgrade. Something like a low profile RX550, GTX 750ti, 1030, 1050ti, 1650 or even something rather beefy like an A2000 all could breath new life into a PC like this. It all depends on where Dell placed the PCIE x16 slot in this particular model...
An RX550 for around $30-50 (preferably a 4GB model) is probably the cheapest and easiest option for an upgrade and will provide at least enough power to run something simple like Minecraft or basic 2d/3d accelerated applications in windows.
Yeah, the X16 slot is annoyingly right next to the PSU in this one... Thankfully, the PCIe X4 slot is an endless one and x4 doesn't really bottleneck even something like an A2000. Technically the 4x slot is only meant to do 50W on most of these models, but I've seen people put an A2000 in the x4 slot on these guys without issue. Super annoying that Dell did that though!
The RX550 is surprisingly good. I hadn't played games for 10 years and bought a used 7010 i5 3570 with msi rx550 oc installed for €120. Just for playing older games that I missed out on. Spent another €50 on SSD and Ram. It's a little budget rocket... Just finished RDR2 with 47fps average, medium settings and resolution. It was glorious. Playing Fallout 4 now on high settings high resolution with excellent frames!
Little update: I have just purchased a 4GB RX550 and hope to make some videos with it here soon!
@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials I look forward to it ^_^
Shesh, with that old style bios and the granny RAM speed I was floored when you found the M.2 port. Makes me want to take another look in my 7010, lol!
Ohh, I was gonna be bummed if you had went to the trouble of running R23 and then didn't post the score. You know me, I live for that stuff. It's like crack or chocolate glazed doughnuts to meeeee!
Oh!!?? And, no fight with legacy, or EIFU(or whatever the stoopid letters are) secure boot fight. Score! Or, Goal as they say in Europe.
Since it's a 6th gen intel system, it was possible that it would have an M.2 Slot and I'm somewhat lucky this one did! I think, if I'm not mistaken, that PCIe M.2 was only supported with 6th gen and newer CPUs, so I'm a bit doubtful that your 7010 would have one (aren't those from the 3rd gen era I think?) Anyway, I'm glad you enjoyed the video!!
@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials ya, exactly. It has an Intel i7 2600. I was just kidding about there being an M.2 port. But, I did pull up a mental image of the mobo to check, which is funny.
Parallel ports are still used for controlling older CNC machines (mostly with Mach3 controller software)
another one saved from trash compactor
that unit has similiar specs to the Optiplex 5040, the first unit that I worked on that shipped with an M.2 nvme. I use to get full speeds from Nvme drives on that unit before Dell used a slower chipset on the 3050s, 3060s and 3070s.
I would also comment that the serial port is commonly used with access control hubs for various administrative functions. A good thing to keep around.
Absolutely, I've stashed it in my drawer with all my other computer parts for the time being
Dell baffles me. That machine seems identical to the OptiPlex 7040. Even almost identical she’ll.
What a great buy this was. Would be perfect pc with it's specs to run a Linux distro on. ❤❤❤
Maybe parallel port connected to old Label Printer. Once you get use to one I would not want to upgrade if I could just add a port cart
Reciept printer or older label printer for the parallel slot
I bought a Dell 3431 Precision PC $900 NZ upgraded it with a Kingston 1tb Hard drive and new 32 gb DDR4 it runs Win-11 very well and its turned out to be a very reliable PC
We need to starts a petition for cooling fins on m.2 controller chips!
Sometimes those old ports such as paralel and serial are used in business environments by certain equipment that run via those ports. Where i work we need to add pci express serial port cards inside new systems because they run as point of sale systems and some shops got older cash registers that connect to the pc via the serial port
Cool 😎. I found a Dell 9020 in the trash. Only needed an ssd and runs fine.
The ex-office Dell computers are generally a good bargain for projects. I normally buy the USFF ones as they're light and easy to pop into tight spaces. I once ordered an USFF Dell with a dual core something or other in it. I actually received a SFF with an i7 gen 2, 8GB RAM and HDD. I swapped out the HDD for an old SSD much like yourself. It didn't fit the project it was intended, but got repurposed for another.
Another thing to look out for is sometimes the CMOS battery (especially if it's been lying around a while not powered up). Modern computers won't boot if the CMOS battery is flat (not like much older computers would).
Yup! I forgot to do this when recording the video, but a little while after releasing it I remembered to replace the CMOS battery, so thankfully that's taken care of.
I run an old dell as a plex server. Fantastic
Man, I was expecting you to say that 1x PCIe was a serial port card, boy was I surprised.
My Zip drive uses a parallel port
Let's face it you weren't exactly in big roller territory. You got a gem for dinner bucks.
I'll give you $100 for it, sans warranty.
I would take you up on that offer if I was shipping computers, but I don't really have the resources to do that properly at the moment sadly. Also, no PO box yet to put as a return address as I don't want to have my home address floating around out there for safety reasons as I'm sure you'd understand. Sorry 'bout that!
My CNC router work on parallel port.
Oh no! Was that an LTT screwdriver flex? LOL
Haha, I mean I sure guess it could be! First nice tool that I’ve ever bought, and I haven’t been disappointed one bit! I want to get the stubby one, but with LTTs situation right now I’ll wait and see if they can clean up their act a bit first.
i got a similar looking one, optiplex 3020 from a car boot sale for £5 , nothing wrong except missing hard drive 😉 does have the optical drive.. if you dont want that parallel card, i'll pay you postage for it , if not too silly price 😉
Nice find! I don't really have the resources to safely ship anything to people right now, so sadly I cannot send you the parallel port card. Thanks for the offer though!
just a off the wall mention that paralell port adapter i had one to modify the game genies on n64 and ps1 they use a para port interface
i meant game sharks lol been awhile
Epson receipt printers use parralel ports
Thanks for the info!
i have a 6400 thouse procesors were great
Just to make something clear for anyone who has this idea:
To be able to use a PC in todays world it has to be either an intel gen 7 minimum (for dell optiplex x020 series minimum), or have a pascal gen GFX card which means a full width PCI x8/x16 slot is needed.
The reason is alot of todays video is encoded in HEVC/H.265 where gen6 has an older generation quicksync that lacks hardware support for 10 bit, which makes a 6gen PC rather limited for video playback (it can only playback 8bit video, for exemple in practical use no 4K or HDR capable video)
And since this PC is an SFF with no room for normal discrete GFX cards, its just not worth the time refurbing/installing it unless for specific intended use.
Also the fact that this is a precision SFF PC is a dead giveaway this has probably seen a life as an industrial PC for a specific application and not as a user PC.
You raise some good concerns here; however, I would like to add that it is absolutely possible to add a capable graphics card to this system if you plan to use it to play back higher bitrate 4k HEVC footage. Although, let's be honest, most people who buy a computer like this probably aren't looking to do that... anyway. Since the i5 6500 DOES support HEVC, just not HDR or very high bitrate, it's absolutely usable still. Even though the 16X PCIe slot is located in a way that you cannot put a dual slot card into it, the 4X slot does not have a back on it so it's designed to be able to hold an 8/16X card while running it at 4X. Contrary to a lot of people's popular belief, 4X @ Gen 3.0 doesn't really bottleneck most LP cards for most use cases. You're right that this system isn't the best choice for some people's use cases (especially as an HTPC), but it is still very useable and expandable.
These guys can make great office PCs for people who want to watch UA-cam on their inexpensive 1080P monitors, people who want to have a cheap and efficient home server, and even people who are looking for a base to a low-mid range gaming PC (RX 6400, 1050 Ti, A2000, lots of options for that).
Oh yeah one little side note that might be partially relevant here: All my videos are exported at 4K30FPS with H.265 (HEVC) encoding - EDIT: except the few that accidentally had to be 24FPS because I forgot to set the timeline to 30FPS before doing hours of editing. My secondary Lenovo Thinkcentre M700Q with an i5 6500T plays them back beautifully at 1080P. Definitely not the most capable system for enthusiast level video quality, but let's once more be honest, no one who has a 4K display that is properly capable of utilizing 10-bit colors is going to buy an old, refurbished office PC for less than 100 bucks. ;)
Again, excluding the HTPC people. Thanks for your comment!
@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials yes it does have HEVC support, but only in 8bit which means it can only playback if the video file is encoded in just that. I would argue alot if not most HEVC encoded video nowadays is 10bit or more meaning video playback is or will be very limited without 10bit support.
If you look into what GFX options are available to fit an SFF enclosure, you will notice there are not that many and they are too expensive to be worthwile.
The 7020 boxes you had in another video are great boxes for this very reason.
So yes, gen6 just as gen 1-5 are still perfectly useable (I still have a couple optiplex 980 with quadro pascal in them for daily use at my parents place), but just see that it fits a modern GFX card and you will be fine. It's a more important factor than NVME.
@@prose1733 Very good points that you've brought up here in these two comments that I hadn't thought of, thanks for that!
@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials I'm happy to contribute some experience.
Its awesome when we find ways to mitigate consumption by prolonging the life of perfectly fine and useable hardware and find new use for it. Keep up the good work!
Hey, before you sell to new owners, why not trying to find an SFF low profile GPU (RTX A2000, Arc A380, RX 6400) and making it gaming capable?
I really want to do this with some of the computers I'm sure I'll come across in the future, but sadly right now I just don't have the funds to do that no matter how badly I want to :(
That should change in the not-so-distant future though, so stay tuned!
That is really one slow cpu. Wow how tech improve. Back day that 6th gen i5 is considered fast and now my ryzen 5 can smoke the 9th gen i9.
So a Linux boot USB could have started right up in this "broken" PC?
I believe so!
I got a free PC just like this its got an i3 6100 and 8gb ddr4 in. I wonder if I can upgrade to an i5 cex do them for under £15 its a FUJITSU ESPRIMO P556/E85+
Should be no problem. These are all supported processors:
Intel® Core™ i7-6700 processor, 8 MB, 3.40 GHz, up to 4.0 GHz
Intel® Core™ i5-6600 processor, 6 MB, 3.30 GHz, up to 3.9 GHz
Intel® Core™ i5-6500 processor, 6 MB, 3.20 GHz, up to 3.6 GHz
Intel® Core™ i5-6400 processor, 6 MB, 2.70 GHz, up to 3.3 GHz
Intel® Core™ i3-6100 processor, 3 MB, 3.70 GHz
Intel® Pentium® processor G4500, 3 MB, 3.50 GHz
Intel® Pentium® processor G4400, 3 MB, 3.30 GHz
Intel® Celeron® processor G3900, 2 MB, 2.80 GHz
45C before re-pasting, 50 C after... Job well done.
I need to pin a comment on this because the shots that were taken of the temps were quite misleading. The shot of the temps before the repaste was after about 15 seconds of cinebench running, so nowhere close to enough for it to get up to temp. After the repaste, the temps that were shown were after cinebench had been running for 10 min. Wasn't really meaning for it to be a temp comparison which is why they aren't fairly compared, but I should definitely make a note of that as to avoid confusion!
Put a cheap gpu in there like a gt 1030, and you got a semi-gaming pc.
@lurch789 ok but that actually costs a lot of money, putting a gt 1030 in is much cheaper
bro how do i get mx 4 big size?
where to buy, link plz!
Amazon
Here you go! www.amazon.com/ARCTIC-MX-4-2019-Performance-Durability/dp/B07LDJY4X2/ref=sr_1_1
"Thank you for watching Goodbye. " What are you AOL? 😂😅
Lol no it's just a super simple outro cuz I'm not too big a fan of super long ones personally
I love your content,but dude wasnt that hell much thermal paste?
nah its fine
It was a bit much, accidentally squeezed the tube a bit too hard while reaching around the tripod to apply it, but it won’t harm anything thankfully
much better than not putting any on at all, MX-4 is cheap anyways
👍
Funny, cuz I paid 45 for the same model, but a working one.
Wow, that’s an awesome deal you got there!
@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials Yeah it is, but it didn’t come with a hard drive so that’s probably why. I’m using it as a DIY router and it’s awesome.
It was likely a PC that was being used to control some sort of industrial machinery or device. As many old industrial machines require serial or parallel ports to interface with software. This would also explain why the PC didn't come with storage. It is very common for storage devices to be destroyed to protect proprietary software/licenses and/or sensitive data.
Definitely makes a lot of sense, thanks for that theory!
I think it was sold as broken just to avoid possible refund hassle.
I don’t think so because the listing showed that the seller would take returns and pay for return shipping for 60 days which is interesting
@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials Oh I didn't spot that. Quite interesting then. Maybe he/she forgot to change that option. Seems bit bizarre combination :)
Definitely a bizarre combo haha! Yeah, no clue why they sold it as broken (other than my guess of them just being confused about it not booting into windows) but hey it worked out in my favor!
Do I see a LTT screwdriver?
Haha, yes you do! I love this thing, would recommend!
honestly looks new..
Just FYI, that was an obscene amount of thermal compound for the CPU - yikes !!!
Lol it looks worse on camera cuz the glob got smooshed. It was a bit much though, however it's better to have more than not enough (within reason though).
Last thing I would do is put winblows on it. Linux all the way.
Fair enough! I plan to try and resell this computer, so linux isn't really a viable option if I hope to get a buyer anytime soon, but it would definitely allow it to run better!
2:36 Single channel memory alert... why a single stick of RAM? Here would be a great upgrade: fill all the slots up so you get 32GB RAM instead!
Haha yeah, I don't love the single stick of RAM either. Don't have any DDR4 on hand at the moment though, sadly, and I'm all outta cash for the time being so it'll be a bit before I can afford to order some to keep on hand for stuff like this!
should have updated bios too.
I've had a few people say this and a few people say not to do this, so I'm not certain on whether or not I'll end up doing it on the computers that I refurb...
On one hand, sometimes a BIOS update can help with stability and improve performance and even security.
On the other, some people have said that they've done that on older PCs they refurbish, and it's caused stability issues for the computers...
For now, if the BIOS seems to be fine, I generally leave it, but that may change in the future as I research this more and more!
@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials I think the people that are against flashing has had issues with bad flashing because of not having a UPS when flashing and then bricking the pc. I know how bad the US is about power. I also think that if the people once have had something go wrong in a bios flash then its ALWAYS gonna go wrong, even if its many years since they had this fault.
It's possible, however the commenters came across as having flashed the BIOS successfully and just having some strange stability issues afterward. Still looking into it, but thank you for providing your feedback!
Hmm. Put in a low profile graphics card 😎
Edit: fill the rest of the system with ram too
Would absolutely do both of those things if I had the money on hand to do them right now, haha. Waiting to sell a couple things and also hoping to get some YT ad revenue soon as I'm so close. Super excited to see this start turning out a bit of cash that I can reinvest into the channel!
count w me, new subscriber!@@CompHwTipsAndTutorials
Parrelel port was probs used to jailbreak an old Xbox 360 pmsl
That's a really interesting use case that I haven't heard anyone else mention yet, awesome!
I can beat all of you with a freebie Dell optiplex sff 790 with a strange rebooting issues which I paid less than €3.50 for a replacement power button as this fixed the rebooting issue and I upgraded the ram to 8gb which I had laying around and bought a DVD to 2.5inch hard drive adaptor for €15 now it have 1tb 7200rpm as primary and 1 1tb 2.5inch for movies and tv pretty solid pc on a 49inch lg tv no lag or stutter from playing movies and tv shows
It's still not worth anything though
@@incandescentwithrage It worth something to me but not intended to sell it as it used for media only not gaming so it serving a purpose than going to e-waste
1:35 Take this seriously guys, I cut myself on one of these before XD
Lol its better them my pc😂
Haha, hey, at least you have one!
This will make a great BSD based firewall.
You paid $55 too much for it.
I deem it a worthwhile investment as I'll easily be able to find a buyer for around 80 dollars. SSD was free, so that means I make a 25 dollar profit off of it. Nothing too crazy, but I get a decent video and more experience with computers.