What a mess!

Everything is full of Nicotine!

i cleaned the whole Case with Water, Brush, Dish soap, scouring milk and Isopropanol

Board lives!

PSU drain and drying.. no other way getting this stuff clean..

i put all fans into trash, except the psu fan.

Had some RAM laying around:

8Gb is a good amount !

Partial Assembly:

Much better without all the Dirt:

And Finally working !

Front USB - 2 Ports are broken and Wlan Module in 3,5" Shaft is also useless, does not work anymore.
i guess they made a short circuit on the USB Frontpanel.

Windows 10 fresh installed, had Home license left.
But be sure to remove network cable before install, or you can`t procced with a offline account.

Purchased a Athlon X2 620 from Ebay for 9€, its more fair then paying 60€ for a X6 CPU.

Props for cleaning that mess up and getting it working!

I cannot take any computers that got the cigarette smell. Cannot get the smell out of paint, and the plastic as well and takes lot of cleaning even the parts, as I was playing with electronics and computer stuff since when I was kid. Trust me, I have done this before trying to save some.

The expense of buying a large ultrasonic machine outweighs waiting and find one that was from clean environments.

Cheers,

Awesome! I imagine the smell must still be lingering around, seeing those huge amounts of dirt.

It's not impossible to get rid of cigarette smell, what worked for me in the past was sealing the components with coffee powder into a box for a few weeks. That helps a lot and the rest of it will be taken away by time afterwards. Unless it's a notebook keyboard. I was never able to clean one of those properly, they just go straight into the trash if they stink.

I envy your persistence. I would have taken a flamethrower to that thing 🤣

I've worked on some filthy PC's that worked 24/7 in dirty industrial warehouses where it's accepted PC/printers have shorter lifespan thein their office counterparts (or more accurately where the older equipment gets sent to die)
But that beats anything I've had to deal with hands down. dirt, tar, even spider webs! very good job indeed.
oh and I've also had interment showers with my hardware, Wife does look at me strange but doesn't seem that jealous 😉

A great rescue job. I really enjoy this 'sub genre' of the retro PC scene; the rescue and restoring of a trashed PC!

I rarely bother with a generic power supply that is that dirty but I have cleaned some motherboards and CPU fans that were nasty (soap and water then air dry).

You can smoker smell off of motherboards with a washing but not out of power supplies.

Yeah PSU was covered with Yellow Stuff i cleaned it of with Alcohol.
It does not smell anymore.
I had to decide quick so i choose to put the tower in a bag to protect the car from filth and put it in to the car.
As i saw the full extent i really wanted to barf.

I had a much more curious Experience with this one:

It was stored in a storageroom and a gallon of oliveoil was running over it.
So it was fully covered in oil and oil was creeping into every ritz/crack.
It was stored filthy a long time and the oil become resin like consistency.
You know like old Fat is smelling ? decomposition oil is really disgusting

Yeah, old fat is gnarly.
Plus it is extremely hard to remove, even with alcohol.

Im a cook in a restaurant and even just oil that's sat from the beginning of the day can be a bear to clean up. That's why we try to give the kitchen a good deep clean once a week to prevent anything from really building up.

Kudos for having the persistence to clean it up.

I normally would have thrown that PSU away .... but would have washed the motherboard/case/other parts in a strong dishwashing liquid solution, then dry in oven. When use parts for years and years in computers, they often almost that dirty anyway unless you are really often cleaning them. (I typically have stuff running 24/7 for years ... I see more than my fair share of dust and grime)

Thankfully I haven't had too much to do with heavy smoker PCs.

canthearu wrote on 2020-10-16, 19:25:

Kudos for having the persistence to clean it up.

I normally would have thrown that PSU away ....

Yes but i don`t have Cheap Replacement PSUs 😀 and avoiding E-Waste is good for your Environment.

9,50€ CPU arrived

matze79 wrote on 2020-10-17, 13:44:

Yes but i don`t have Cheap Replacement PSUs 😀 and avoiding E-Waste is good for your Environment.

Last time I tried properly washing a PSU, it exploded after I powered it up, probably didn't dry it enough. Since then, been just content with brushing them clean (and maybe more aggressive PSU fan/case cleaning) and replacing capacitors if needed.

If a PSU board was particularly dirty/sticky/smelly, I would probably have to give up on it, especially if it was just a low quality cheapy.

canthearu wrote on 2020-10-18, 00:21:

matze79 wrote on 2020-10-17, 13:44:

Yes but i don`t have Cheap Replacement PSUs 😀 and avoiding E-Waste is good for your Environment.

Last time I tried properly washing a PSU, it exploded after I powered it up, probably didn't dry it enough. Since then, been just content with brushing them clean (and maybe more aggressive PSU fan/case cleaning) and replacing capacitors if needed.

If a PSU board was particularly dirty/sticky/smelly, I would probably have to give up on it, especially if it was just a low quality cheapy.

Yes water can be inside coils etc you really should dry it for days on a warm place.
Also you should not use water only, i added vinegar acid to the solution.
Distilled water would even better!