Trash or treasure? Restoring old thrown out computers!

so today's video we're going to talk about this computer that i found over here in the trash so just driving around just cruising nothing better to do of course on the facebook trying to find some good parts that are for sale and i found this one in somebody's trash cans it was just kind of thrown on the top as you see in the thumbnail picture and i was like gotta have it word of advice guys even though sometimes people put things out for the trash you might want to knock on their door and ask them because i've actually run into that where they've put it on the side of the road and it wasn't trash they were just trying to air it out but that's another story don't get into that a whole complicatedness and get yourself in trouble so we found this one and this one's a little pretty old this is a phenom x4 it's an amd it's about a 2007 and it has a whole bunch of stuff inside we got two video cards 560 ti's a golden orb thermaltake fan some memory probably ddr2 if this is the amd 790 two hard drives and actually a pretty decent case so it's got some potential in the sense that it'll be something that's fun to play with and if anything we actually have a pretty cool case that we can use for another budget flip so now whether you find the computer on the side of the road goodwill estate sale or just trash or you're going to somebody's old garage old auntie anne's garage or grandpa's basement and you find one of these i'm going to talk about what i do when i get these computers how to keep myself safe prevent damage to other components and possibly have a better chance of getting this thing running so the first thing to kind of remember is is that this has been thrown out for whatever reason number one and this is the most scenario that i see all the time is well the computer doesn't perform like it used to it's slow and i can't use it for what i need to use it for so most times people just take a perfectly working computer and just toss it out the other reason that i find is that something happened to the computer it got damaged whatever which way and that's why they threw it out so now that we have this what do we do first thing that i always do is when i get these computers is number one i don't bring them inside the house and here's why guys creepy crawlies and critters like to make their homes with electronics especially the old roaches those guys you know they love to kind of hang out up in here and kind of leave their whole uh fecal matter all over the place create issues so leave it outside let it out for a couple of days and then consider working on it but even then there's something else that we need to do so i'm going to talk about these tools that i use that i think is important if you're going to be taking these old computers whether it's an old optiplex for a case swap or something like this so these are the tools that i typically keep on hand and are very important and let's start with this number one a good tool kit this ain't no endorsement by no means but i like the ifixit tool kit has all the different types of screwdrivers and if you don't have one of those just a regular phillips screwdriver works really good some thermal paste so if this thing does work and we have to repaste it to try to see what it does or um test them have some fresh thermal paste because old computers most of the times overheating threw it out and it just needed some thermal paste another thing some type of cleaner i use this one i get this at my old walmart or local stores around over here this works really good and this is not for cleaning the boards or anything but this is for kind of wiping down the case and if you look at this case over here she kind of dirty she kind of crusty even the one over there oh that's got a razor sticker that's like 20 frames per second right there so a good cleaner to kind of wipe it down now another thing too is head mask and gloves and here's why number one we're going to be using this tool right over here and this is a blower where they use compressed air or one of these um data vacs over here these things work great and if you're going to be blowing all this dust out number one you don't want to be breathing nobody else's germs that's kind of gross and yeah don't want to do that and before this computer even enters the house we got to give it a thorough cleaning make sure this dirt doesn't end up in our house another thing with these gloves like i said this think i have some spillage juice action i mean all types of fluids that you won't even know about maybe a dog walked up on it on the side of the road and peed on the case get some gloves keep yourself clean on that another thing i do i keep one of these brushes over here so that way i could kind of wipe off the dust and we'll talk about that in the process of kind of trying to give this thing a chance another thing isopropyl alcohol so when we do have to get in depth and cleaning it better we can actually take the alcohol cleaned um parts components whatever we got to do isopropyl alcohol i use the 91 because well that's what i have works great some good shop towels i like using this you can use microfiber towels some people use coffee filters whatever you decide to do i mean good towels to wipe things off is important and another one that i think is probably one of the most important things and we're going to start with this first a power supply test tester and here's why number one this power supply has probably been sitting for about 15 years maybe got some usage between there but this looks like an old power supply i don't see no name brand on it and i don't want to take a chance that i turned this thing on it fries a component it catches fire which believe it or not that has happened to me i pop turned this thing on i got a pop noise i got smoke got flames yeah we don't want that so kind of keep that in mind and what these power supply testers do is if there's a short these things will actually shut this thing off real quick everything goes plugged into this so there's nothing plugged into your components and this will let you know if that if you have over voltage under voltage very handy to have they're on amazon for about 15-20 dollars so definitely a must so now that we've gone through all these tools let's go ahead and let's start with the process so we've had this sitting out a couple of days we've ensured that there's no critters in it so the first thing you wanna do is and i can't emphasize this enough guys don't turn this on do not do not do not turn it on without number one dusting it and using a power supply tester number one dust can be conductive and i've run into that where it's just been dusted up it's created issues that is a potential less likely but definitely probable and like i said this power supply tester will keep us from uh having any damage so now what i'm going to do is i've already went ahead and i've unplugged all these cables i have nothing going to the motherboard and what i'm going to do is take out these graphics cards so when i dust everything off i can kind of get all the dust off and kind of see what we have so i got the computer kind of set up where i could take a good look at everything so let me get a flashlight over here and kind of show you so now when i'm going through these computers one of the first things that i'm looking for is number one spillage action if water is gotten here somebody spilled the whole soda juice action that's the first thing i'm looking for and what you'll see is you'll see signs of corrosion you'll see green crusty some the brown color for the rust on that and i'm also looking for anything that may be burnt or capacitors that may have been broken off or popped in this case i know you guys probably can't see it as well as i do i don't have none of that going on so that's actually a pretty good sign now opening up the back we're also going to do the same thing now in this case we cannot really see what's going on in the back but what we can look for is any signs of anything that has spilled i don't see nothing over here i don't see nothing right over here also check for stickiness there's none of that going on so this tells me that there was a good chance that this computer doesn't have any spill action even check the i o over here in the back i don't see anything now it is normal with these older cases to kind of see some to see some evidence of rust and that's just from age or just it being in a humid environment [Music] so with that being said the next thing i'm going to go ahead and do is i'm going to take my data back over here and we're going to just dust and blow the air everything out over here before we go any further [Music] so that's a lot better and you know we're not going for perfect right now the whole point of this is that we want to see if this motherboard works does this graphics card work what's on this computer and we want to maybe test it and see how well this thing uh fares out years later so the motherboard looks a lot better and if we were gonna flip this computer obviously after we do this testing then we would take everything out give it a thorough cleaning make it look brand new and it'd be good to flip so with the power supply the power supply capacitors tend to go bad they leak we don't know much about this power supply and from what i could gather i haven't taken it out but it doesn't look like it's any popular main name brand that i'm familiar with that's why i take these power supply testers i try them out and that kind of saves me from further damaging this if this is damaged not to mention potentially damaging other components another option that you can have if you don't have one of these or you can't get one right away if you have an older power supply that's lying around i do keep one like an evga 600 watt plug them in and that would work good at firing this up so let's go ahead and let's pop in our power supply tester and let's see if this thing works [Music] okay so we got our 24 pin plugged in i also plug in the 8 pin and also plug in the six pin over here and this will let me know if these rails are providing the proper voltage if there's an over voltage issue or short and if there's a dead short in the power supply which could create an issue this thing will actually turn on and cycle it right off and with this one i believe the way it works is because i just got this one i had another one that was a lot better but the way this one works is that it will just beep to let you know that there's a volt you're not getting the proper voltage or it will just shut off if there's a serious issue with the power supply so let's go ahead let's hit the button right over here and pray i don't set my house on fire all right fan is spinning and from what i can see everything looks good 12 volts is 12.2 5 volts all right so everything is looking pretty good on this and like i said if there was an issue this thing would definitely let us know so i feel comfortable using this power supply for this system now would i trust this power supply for a little higher end build probably not all right so now we got everything plugged in we should be good to go now this power supply for this video card is 560 ti it takes three six pin connectors and unfortunately we got to kind of do this stuff not recommended but for what we're doing it'll work another tool that you might need and i should have added this in the beginning of the video get an adapter these have that whole dvi thing going on over here an adapter like this will allow me to use the hdmi for my monitor so you might want to keep one of these adapters for dvi and vga if you're going to be playing with these older computers so let's pop this in right over here we're good and let's see what happens and we got no power nothing's coming on all right so let's take a look at this and let's see what we come up with all right so i went ahead and take out the graphics card so i can get an idea and see what's going on now when you run into this issue don't necessarily give up just yet and say that this thing is fried go ahead with the troubleshooting process now we're not getting power to the motherboard and there's two things that i could be number one the most common one is that the power button is probably possibly not plugged in i went ahead i took a look and i'm sure you guys can't see it and we took out this big connector that they had over here and long story short it was in the wrong place so let's go ahead let's pop it in and let's see if it fires up still not powering up so now this is the part where you can start taking things apart take out the motherboard and start testing it and i took out this power supply for a reason and let me show you what i saw so i'm going to unplug these red connectors these are sata cables right over here and it has nothing to do with what i'm looking at but i saw this when i was messing with the power connector let's get a light if you look i don't know how well it comes on camera but that light looks very dim and the camera doesn't pick it up but it's kind of flickering a little bit that tells me that there is a power issue so the power supply tester told us that this is running okay but i've learned in this that you can be fooled even though it works fine with the power supply tester how does it work with the load you know firing it up in this case i have my suspicions on this power supply so now what i'm going to go ahead and do is i'm going to plug in this power supply over here and see if this thing fires up i have my suspicion that this thing will fire up primarily because what i'm seeing over here these lights over here i have found that when they're dim and they're flickering that is usually consistent with something that is uh power related and in this case i'm on the bet is the power supply so before i rip out the motherboard check for shorts any other types of damage i want to test this first all right so let's unplug this let's plug it back in here before i hear it in the comments section yes this is a game x one but this is not one of the fake ones it's actually a pretty good one it's brand spanking new this thing works solid so i know this power supply works and yes i know game x history but this one's fine so now let's give it some juice and you can't actually see it on camera but the light is brighter and it's not flickering so let's go ahead let's power it up look at that guys we got power we got power so that tells us power supply is definitely not good but at least one that will speak for the power supply tester is if this was a dead short that could have caused the fire or potentially fried the components over here that power supply tester would have let us know that just means that there's something else wrong with this power supply but that's fine this works so now let's plug in our graphics card and let's see if we get a screen all right so i went ahead and took out the old power supply just kind of show you what we have over here and this is a spire psh vd 3.3 volts and 5 volts on is 180 watt max i mean yeah it's a power supply and revision date uh this is august of 2014 so this thing is roughly do my math seven years old and some change yeah pretty shame though would have been fun to just kind of have it lying around as a tester but good thing i keep another one lying around so i went ahead mounted in this power supply got the graphics cards mounted in and the good thing about this one is i have both the cables for the pci express so i don't have to do that whole molex adapter things guys i don't recommend that especially on those higher end graphics cards a lot of potential for bad things so we have everything mounted up i'm going to go ahead and flick the power button my lights which you probably can't see trust me it's bright and green we're looking good let's fire it up and let's see what it does everything's turning on hey look at that look at that we got some post action going on ah sweet so let's get into the old bo's bios there we go we are booted up so cool let me go ahead and play with these bios settings real quick and we'll see if these hard drives actually work so let's see what settings we got so now the first thing that we're getting is that the whole um settings from the bios haven't been saved that's usually indicative of the fact that the battery is probably bad on this i mean we're looking at our time and everything's all jacked up 2008 yeah uh our two hard drives are being picked up i believe it's 160 gig and a 500 gig over there and let's see what cpu we're rocking i know we're rocking the phantom but which phantom are we actually using let's see system information our phenom is the 99 95 50 quad core okay and we got four gigs of ram now that's four gigs of ddr2 so and we'll be doing that in another video we'll talk about that at the end so let's get out of here let's just leave these settings alone because uh we'll have to clean this up a little bit but guys it's pretty awesome we were able to get this thing working and firing for something that was thrown in the trash because of a bad power supply so now let's see if there's a boot is there anything in the hard drives hey look at that nice all right we're starting to boot let's see if we get any blue screens of death a couple cups of coffee a trip to the gas station a couple of bathroom breaks and this thing is finally booted up and that's primarily because of the mechanical hard drives on them they just were incredibly slow on booting these things up i mean we were running a guest account and this thing probably took like 20 minutes just to load up and that was the norm back in the day so now this is running windows vista and it's the athlon not the athlon the phantom x4 is the 9550 and we're going to be doing a separate video and you definitely want to stay tuned for part two of this video where we test this we see if we could get it able to run any games or do anything in 2022. now to kind of recap on this guys these computers they're out there they're being thrown out trash goodwill second hand pick them up these are great tools to actually learn how to build computers how to program just to get your feet wet and get you started not to mention that every now and then you'll get some decent parts out of it in this case probably the only thing that i will be able to use out of this computer is this case over here and we're going to be doing a separate video where i take this case and pop in a better computer better building it and then we'll flip it on that so you definitely want to stay tuned for that now as far as the tips and tricks dust this thing out give it a good cleaning and check for that liquid damage or anything that may be broken or anything like that before you fired it on now the power supply tester although it misguided us it actually did what it was supposed to do and here's why number one if this the if the power supply was bad and it had a short that could short out the components potentially be a fire risk on that one the power supply tester would have detected it and would have kept me from turning this thing on because what it would have done was it would have turned on and it would have shut off the power supply immediately to kind of protect itself especially from over volts which i've seen that happen also making sure that i don't set my house on fire but it did tell me the power supply was good but the motherboard gave me a signal on the fact that that little green light was dim it was flickering so that's what kind of led me down to believe that it's potentially the power supply could i've taken everything out and diagnosed it one by one yes but considering that this was pretty easy to take out i had an extra power supply lying around it was the way to go and something to keep in mind too make sure you have old hardware i keep old power supplies this one i just wanted to test it and i knew it worked but i just wanted to uh throw it in there but keep old hardware lying around in the sense that you can use it to test have an extra power supply maybe an extra graphics card i keep cheap old hd 4000 series graphics cards and even older that i could just pop in get a video port get a display and make sure that the computer is booting and working as it should so something to consider so guys thanks for watching hope you enjoyed this video if you have any questions definitely comment down below let me know your thoughts and any questions that you may have and as always we'll see what we come up with next you

Channel: DLM tech garage

Views: 73,174

Keywords: How do I revive an old computer?, What do you do with old computers that are out of date?, Is it worth rebuilding an old computer?, How to revive an old computer, Is an old computer worth anything?, phenom x4, how to fix an old computer, how to test an old computer, power supply tester, cleaning an old computer, testing an old computer, computer troubleshooting, garbage computer, How To Refurbish a Computer, refurbishing a computer, dlmtechgarage, how to restore a old computer

Id: eHIbIDGCVYA

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Wed Jan 26 2022