Trash man rescues surprisingly decent gaming rig from landfill—and it even powers on

HardwareGaming PCsTrash man rescues surprisingly decent gaming rig from landfill—and it even powers onWhen you purchase through links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission.Here’s how it works.

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(Image credit: Future)

A hand has reached down into a waste bin and pulled out an AMD Ryzen Threadripper CPU. It is embossed with the PC Gamer logo.

You know what they say, one man’s garbage is apparently another’s still pretty decent graphics card worth a few hundred quid. So sayeth the refuse collectors.

It gets wilder. While Siezio wisely decided the PSU was a lost cause, they cleaned the other parts with isopropyl alcohol before leaving them to dry thoroughly over two days. Having picked up a replacement PSU and some storage in the meantime, Siezio then attempted to power up the system—and it works.

We rated the Founders Edition of theNvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Tiwhen it launched a little over four years ago—indeed we’ve just loaned our original review sample to a colleague to act as a makeweight GPU until the RTX 50-series launches. To see what was a pricey, $1,200 high-end bit of kit upon launch thrown out like old socks makes my head spin, to say nothing of how we once wrote that the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X would offer a ‘taste of the future.’ The forward march of time truly is merciless.

At the very least, those bits of silicon seem to have found a good home, but there’s a thought I keep getting caught on and that’s namely the subject of e-waste. I won’t begrudge anyone an upgrade, but this kit was hardly elderly and—as Siezio’s post demonstrated—was still perfectly serviceable. Assuming nothing tragic has happened to the hardware’s original owner, I can’t help but wonder about the circumstances surrounding this tech’s trashing.

Chromebook churnrepresents a worrying trend of disposability in tech, and the factthe UK’s e-waste recycling efforts are slowing downrather than amping up really isn’t helping my climate catastrophe flavoured existential dread. I can appreciate that even popping down to one’s local CEX (British trade-in tech/gaming store) or similar second-hand seller can be An Ordeal, but it’s still a better option than simply punting ancient hardware into the bin. That said, the burden of responsibility cannot solely rest with the consumer.

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Simply greenwashing products will not save our Earth (a fact EU parliament is growing wise to). Manufacturers need to address the long, end-of-life tail of a product’s existence once it passes out of users' hands and, worst case scenario, into landfill. I’m not surewater soluble circuit boardswill save us—but it’s a start.

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