BitWrangler wrote on 2026-07-18, 22:53:

Ozzuneoj wrote on 2026-07-18, 20:13:

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-07-18, 18:19:

Woohoo, think this is first yard sale computer part of the year. Cost next to nothing so I didn't expect much, bundled in AS bubble wrap. Thought it was gonna be some R5 200 or worse... actually turns out to be an HP 1030GT , which is kinda useful still. Will maybe go in a LP (not the tiny) 1155.

Nice! Is it a GDDR4 or GDDR5 model? There can be a pretty big performance difference between the two, though if it isn't really being used for gaming it won't matter much.

Very little ID on it apart from HP PN LO1825-001 ... and the HP resellers list it, but only as part number and bare minimum details, like GT1030 PCIe 2GB and that's all you get. There's a number advertised on eBay claiming GDDR5 and in shitty looking part stores, but no real definitive source. TechPU seems to use same photo for both versions which is unhelpful. Just gonna go see if GPUzoo lists it..

Edit: ugh, passmark data is a mess, they didn't distinguish between pascal, kepler and GDDR5 and DDR4 so there's 3 peaks on the graph and the average is way back from GDDR5 card scores it looks like.

Is it one of these?
https://www.ebay.com/itm/374975407018
If so, it's a super tiny card so may have reduced clocks (or just run hot), but... amazingly... it does seem to be a GDDR5 model. This Zotac uses basically the same PCB design and says GDDR5 on it:
https://www.ebay.com/itm/318534445838?chn=ps& … ction=view_item

So yeah, not a bad little card! With GDDR5 it is somewhere roughly in the realm of GTX 750 to GTX 750 Ti performance. No XP support though, since it is a Pascal GPU.

Yeah it's that one. Looking fairly certain it's GDDR5, woot. Apparently you can kick some of these up another 20% too, make a real CS:GO pwnage monster 🤣

Bought a Lenovo ThinkPad E570 Type 20H5 at e-waste for NT$1000 (US$30.85). The battery was empty but it had 8GBx2 DDR4 and an unmarked SSD; even with the worst scenario that the MB is completely dead, the two SO-DIMM DDR4 should cover the cost with surplus.

So I bought a Lenovo "Slim Tip" power connector for NT$130 on my way home, plugged it into my universal power brick, and voilà! The system powered on and entered Windows 10 desktop WITH NO PASSWORD PROTECTION. The SSD is a Toshiba 256GB TLC; in addition to built-in Intel HD Graphics 620 in i7-7500U, it also came with a GTX950M (roughly equivalent to a desktop GTX650Ti) with 2GB standalone video memory. And the removable battery still has 85% health after charging.

I wondered just how many working computers ended up in landfills when they could be provided freely or cheaply to elderly, young children, or people with low income (sigh).

dormcat wrote on 2026-07-19, 08:38:

Bought a Lenovo ThinkPad E570 Type 20H5 at e-waste for NT$1000 (US$30.85). The battery was empty but it had 8GBx2 DDR4 and an unmarked SSD; even with the worst scenario that the MB is completely dead, the two SO-DIMM DDR4 should cover the cost with surplus.

So I bought a Lenovo "Slim Tip" power connector for NT$130 on my way home, plugged it into my universal power brick, and voilà! The system powered on and entered Windows 10 desktop WITH NO PASSWORD PROTECTION. The SSD is a Toshiba 256GB TLC; in addition to built-in Intel HD Graphics 620 in i7-7500U, it also came with a GTX950M (roughly equivalent to a desktop GTX650Ti) with 2GB standalone video memory. And the removable battery still has 85% health after charging.

I wondered just how many working computers ended up in landfills when they could be provided freely or cheaply to elderly, young children, or people with low income (sigh).

Congrats, that's a nice score. I paid around the same the other week to slingshot a Thinkpad out of the ewaste stream, from an org I know a tech at, to a pair of highschool kids in the fam, I wasn't quite sure what the specs would be but knew it was less than 5 years old. Turned out to have 16Gb ddr4, 512GB SSD and an 11th gen i7, only Iris XE graphics, but they are not totally horrible. What's crazy is machines like yours and this one are still sold by major chains refurbed at 500-1500 USD. Got nice new ryzen machines for my wife and I last year, paid a decent amount to get some years out of them... and it seemed like genius when RAM /storage crunch hit and the prices of equivalents doubled, but still if we'd been able to get basically "thrown away" machines of this caliber at the time, we'd have been happy to get them instead. Even of they just last a year, the dollars per year is great, they'd maybe bog down on bloat a couple of years ahead of the ones we did get, but still probably fine for 3 years.

I think it's somewhat to do with the accelerated asset depreciation of computing equipment, and to balance the books and not have to restate annual reports, corps have to act like the machines are worth nothing at 5 years old. ... because they've already taken the tax deduction. This probably seemed to make more sense when trying to get rid of late 486/early pentium in bulk in the early Ghz era, (free to $5 was a typical 486 system price then) But periods of utility have stretched out a bit. I'm typing this on a 13 year old Latitude. Equivalent of trying to post from a 286 in the year 2000. (and only be a couple of OS major revisions behind, so the 286 would be trying to run Win95 🤣 )

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-07-19, 12:44:

Congrats, that's a nice score. I paid around the same the other week to slingshot a Thinkpad out of the ewaste stream, from an org I know a tech at, to a pair of highschool kids in the fam, I wasn't quite sure what the specs would be but knew it was less than 5 years old. Turned out to have 16Gb ddr4, 512GB SSD and an 11th gen i7, only Iris XE graphics, but they are not totally horrible.

Wow, that's a much better deal! 👍

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-07-19, 12:44:

Even of they just last a year, the dollars per year is great, they'd maybe bog down on bloat a couple of years ahead of the ones we did get, but still probably fine for 3 years.

Nah, my Mom's i5-6400 will be ten by the end of this year. 🤣

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-07-19, 12:44:

I think it's somewhat to do with the accelerated asset depreciation of computing equipment, and to balance the books and not have to restate annual reports, corps have to act like the machines are worth nothing at 5 years old. ... because they've already taken the tax deduction.

They probably created that "5-year rule" back in the 1990s when 5 years would really make a big difference e.g. from 80386DX to Pentium MMX. Five years in the 2020s have much less differences, however.

Guys,
These are some of the best devices I purchased that works with retro computers, Mac’s, pc, tablet ,
iPhones, Android, etc
I use these everyday and on all my computers and they work and sound great.
Great value and good quality build for the price.
You won’t be sorry with any of these products.
I have been using these from 2 to 3 years and they still work and look like new.

1) Soundcore Q45 headphones - Best headphones under $200 ( price $100 )
2) Soundcore-2 Bluetooth speaker - $25
3) Oneidio headphones - $25
4) Creative GC7 DAC - $120 at Creative online store.

You can buy New on Amazon or eBay.
eBay stores sell these NEW at discount.

Take your audio to another level.

Saw a listing for a Radeon VII for a good price. Decided to low-ball the seller and to my surprise they accepted. Will make for a great Windows 7 build.

What an amazing looking peace of hardware! Especially when running.

The 100C+ hotspot did not impress me during testing, but apparently that is actually normal for these cards and replacing the graphite pad with thermal paste will actually increase that temp.

Got an awesome deal on a system recently.

Picked up a prebuilt gaming PC that was sold as not working, but with no further info about what was wrong. In this market, even a 500GB SATA SSD and 16GB of decent DDR4 are worth a fair amount if the GPU turned out to be toast, so I figured it'd be worth trying to grab. It was still a bit of a gamble of course, especially since there's always a chance it'll get damaged in shipping, so I made the seller an offer of $100 (plus $60 shipping) and they took it! They also found a cheaper shipping method and sent me $20 back, which was awesome!

Long story short... rather unexpectedly, the CPU ended up being bad (it would freeze while trying to boot any OS from any media). It was a Ryzen 5 3600. Thankfully, a relative of mine had just upgraded his 3600 to a 5700X, so he sold me his old one (in box) for $25!

In the end I got the following system for $180 after tax+shipping+CPU, plus my time spent testing, cleaning and rearranging the fans so that the airflow makes more sense.

Thermaltake H200 TG RGB (White) Case with 3x RGB fans and controller
Asrock B450M/AC MicroATX Motherboard
Ryzen 5 3600
2x8GB XPG DDR4-3000 CL16
Gigabyte Windforce 2X Geforce RTX 2070 8GB
PNY CS900 500GB SATA SSD (swapped out for a basic 500GB NVMe I had on hand)
600W Thermaltake 80Plus PSU

So far, everything is working great and has passed all memory\GPU tests I've put it through. The GPU fans sound like they are going bad, which isn't surprising. But, I see there is a matching 3D printable shroud available specifically for this model that adapts the card to hold standard 92mm fans, so I am definitely going to do that as soon as I have a chance. I will also be picking up a cheap but decent tower cooler at some point so it can stay cooler with as little noise as possible.

All in all, I'm really happy with the purchase. My daughter has her eye on it, so it may end up being hers eventually. She's currently using a laptop for gaming and I would love to not have to listen to those fans screaming ever again (my office door is directly within earshot of her laptop's fans) so a desktop may also help with my sanity too.

Ozzuneoj wrote on Yesterday, 05:57:

Got an awesome deal on a system recently. […]
Show full quote

Got an awesome deal on a system recently.

Picked up a prebuilt gaming PC that was sold as not working, but with no further info about what was wrong. In this market, even a 500GB SATA SSD and 16GB of decent DDR4 are worth a fair amount if the GPU turned out to be toast, so I figured it'd be worth trying to grab. It was still a bit of a gamble of course, especially since there's always a chance it'll get damaged in shipping, so I made the seller an offer of $100 (plus $60 shipping) and they took it! They also found a cheaper shipping method and sent me $20 back, which was awesome!

Long story short... rather unexpectedly, the CPU ended up being bad (it would freeze while trying to boot any OS from any media). It was a Ryzen 5 3600. Thankfully, a relative of mine had just upgraded his 3600 to a 5700X, so he sold me his old one (in box) for $25!

In the end I got the following system for $180 after tax+shipping+CPU, plus my time spent testing, cleaning and rearranging the fans so that the airflow makes more sense.

Thermaltake H200 TG RGB (White) Case with 3x RGB fans and controller
Asrock B450M/AC MicroATX Motherboard
Ryzen 5 3600
2x8GB XPG DDR4-3000 CL16
Gigabyte Windforce 2X Geforce RTX 2070 8GB
PNY CS900 500GB SATA SSD (swapped out for a basic 500GB NVMe I had on hand)
600W Thermaltake 80Plus PSU

So far, everything is working great and has passed all memory\GPU tests I've put it through. The GPU fans sound like they are going bad, which isn't surprising. But, I see there is a matching 3D printable shroud available specifically for this model that adapts the card to hold standard 92mm fans, so I am definitely going to do that as soon as I have a chance. I will also be picking up a cheap but decent tower cooler at some point so it can stay cooler with as little noise as possible.

All in all, I'm really happy with the purchase. My daughter has her eye on it, so it may end up being hers eventually. She's currently using a laptop for gaming and I would love to not have to listen to those fans screaming ever again (my office door is directly within earshot of her laptop's fans) so a desktop may also help with my sanity too.

Is it me or are these fire sale prices starting to make Americans look desperate?

The shipping being $60 with a cost of the item at $100...