A man from South Dakota who assembled a PC posted on reddit. He used 5 parts he fished out of a PC store trash can. Only two parts of the PC are not from the container, they were still lying around at home. He says the PC lets him play Minecraft and Roblox just fine. People on reddit are impressed – for sustainability reasons.
The man says: In an interview with Kotaku, the reddit user says he’s read about “dumpster diving,” a trend that involves rummaging through a company’s or apartment block’s dumpsters for useful items.
In the summer of 2022 he decided to give that a try too and went to his local PC shop in his town “in the middle of nowhere” to find things there. He doesn’t reveal which city that is exactly – that would destroy his garbage fishing spot.
There was some stuff there. Since then, I’ve kept checking the store’s container. I assembled the PC from the Reddit post almost entirely with parts I found there over the course of 6 or 7 months.
PC with “junk parts” plays Minecraft and Roblox without problems
What kind of PC is this? On reddit he says:
He had bought only the power supply and RAM for another build and still had them lying around at home, useless. He paid about $120 for the two parts.
The other parts are from the PC store’s container. He paid about $120 for them.
PC hobbyist pushed bitchy graphics card into the oven
Did you have any problems assembling it? The graphics card, which is around 10 years old, made trouble. It ran to some extent, but the drivers could not be installed correctly.
The reddit user then baked the graphics card in the oven and after that it actually worked:
What you basically do with the oven trick: You take pretty much everything off the card – once you have the minimum, the printed circuit board, you pack it in aluminum to protect the more vulnerable parts of the board. Then you preheat the oven to about 200 degrees and slide in the circuit board. It takes about 8 to 12 minutes for a graphics card I believe.
Laden throws away old but still working hardware
What was the hardest thing to find? The SSD. He had been looking for such a hard drive for months, but never found anything. If there was a hard drive in the container, it was already disassembled.
When he found the SSD, he initially thought it was new, but there was already some data on it. He then deleted them immediately to protect the privacy of the user.
On the other hand, he found the motherboard early on and that didn’t cause him any problems. Sometimes the store just sorts out old hardware that still works.
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Much praise for sustainable approach
What can he do with the PC? He says he really only plays Minecraft, Roblox and Scrap Mechanic with it. The PC is enough for this:
I could probably play Crysis. But yeah, I don’t play that many games. The only thing I really play is Minecraft, Roblox and Scrap Mechanic. That’s pretty much it and my PC handles these games pretty well.
The hobbyist says that if you build junk PCs from junk components, it prevents perfectly working parts from ending up in the landfill. It is easy to build a computer with little or no money.
What’s the reaction? The Reddit user featured the post on a Dumpster Diving subreddit, where people are also excited about the performance for sustainability reasons.
Some people do dumpser diving because they are poor and dependent on it. But others do it for ideological reasons, to position themselves for sustainability and against the throwaway culture. There are also hobbyists who systematically do dumpster diving to make money.
However, one user notes: He is glad that the power supply is one of the parts that are not from the garbage container.
Also, “baking graphics cards” seems like something to hang a “don’t try to copy without adult supervision” sign.
More from people building PCs:
User builds really good gaming PC for 270 euros – Can play almost all modern games with 60 FPS
The cover photo is an iconic image: Photo by Kevin Butz on Unsplash