A man reports on reddit how he found a defective Dell Alienware gaming PC with an Nvidia GTX 1080Ti graphics card at a dump and made it functional again for just 1 $ in repair costs.
You often hear stories about supposedly defective PCs and notebooks on garbage dumps that aren’t actually broken or can be repaired with little effort. A reddit user reports such a lucky find and explains how he found the gaming PC and what steps he took to make it operational again.
Cleaning up can pay off
How did the find happen? His story begins with cleaning out his parents’ garage. At the end of his cleaning session, there was still a pile of electronic junk that he had to take to the dump. Upon arriving at the dump, he discovered the aforementioned gaming PC in the electronic device area and examined it more closely.
He immediately noticed two stickers with a Dell Alienware logo and the inscription “Intel i7 processor 7th generation”. When he saw that a graphics card was installed in the system, he was filled with excitement. His father, who accompanied him, couldn’t find any interest in it and probably just thought about the next junk that would soon be in his garage.
Repairing with minimal cost and effort
How did the PC work? At home, the lucky finder took a closer look at the PC and found out that the installed graphics card is an Nvidia GTX 1080Ti and even has a water cooling system for the processor.
So he started troubleshooting and powered on the PC.
While the PC could be turned on, it shut down immediately, restarted, and then ran without a picture in this endless loop.
This is how he got it back in shape: Using Google, he searched for possible causes of the problem and found out that it could be related to the CMOS battery on the motherboard. After replacing the battery, which he bought in a 6-pack for about 5 $, the device actually displayed a picture again.
The PC still showed issues with starting the operating system, but the reddit user was able to solve that with a Windows recovery.
Finally, he received a message regarding the graphics card’s power cable and was able to fix this error as well by simply plugging the corresponding cable back into the graphics card.
On the trail
What kind of PC was it? After a quick search of the service tag number on the PC, he also knew which other main components, besides the Nvidia GTX 1080Ti, were installed in the “Alienware Aurora R6” model:
- Processor: Intel Core i7-7700K
- Memory: 32 GB HyperX FURY DDR4
- Storage: 2 TB SATA Hard Drive
- Power Supply: 850W PSU
In his search, he also discovered an old Wal-Mart ad from 2017 with an original price of $1600 for the system.
In the future, the man plans to upgrade the PC cheaply with a faster SSD storage to install the Windows operating system on it.
Reddit users congratulate on the “treasure”
What do other users say? In the reddit comments on his story, many readers congratulate him on this find, while others seem to be downright envious. We have compiled some of the reactions for you:
- “A damn 1080Ti at the dump? You just found a treasure”
- “For me, that would be a good upgrade to my AMD Radeon RX 580!”
- “People constantly throw things away. Believe me, I could tell stories. They don’t care, they just throw it away.”
What about you? Have you experienced anything similar and resurrected hardware thought to be dead?
