I'm writing this, because I see what enormous waste there is when people throw away their old computers. Of course, if someone throws away his or her computer here on Åland, it's my gain . But since I don't fly around all over the world to scavenge for computer parts, I write this guide, so that you can do the same. And save both nature and money.
Computers
We all know we can scavenge parts from computers. But there's more to scavenge than most people realize. Sure, you can save the motherboard, CPU, various cards and memory, but there's more. One of the biggest things people don't look closer into, is old and/or broken PSU's. Many PSU's, even fairly old ones, have a small, de-tatchable temperature-controlling chips. These chips are often made with very high quality, and they're so simple, that they usually don't break for very long time, and often outlive their host PSU. They are basically a temperature probe that you put between a fan and a power source, and they control the speed of the fan. One of the best things about these, is that they're often stepless, and, of course, fully automated. At this picture, I've attached one to a CPU cooler for an AMD Athlon XP 1800+. At 5v, this fan runs at about 1500RPM, which is not sufficient for the cooling of this CPU. At +12v, it runs at 5500RPM, which sounds like a vacuum cleaner. The chip usually regulates it between 2500 and 4000 RPM, which actually is really good.
Click for full-size.
The temperature probes are usually attached on the heatziks of the PSU's. Either on the side or on the top.
Yet again, click for full-size.
Another really good part you can take from PSU's is the fan. Most PSU's come with anything from 80MM to 140mm fans, the most usual size of fans on those PSU's you'd find are 80 and 120mm. The 92mm PSU's are quite rare, since the 120mm format fits and cools better. But no matter what fan you find, they're usually also made out of very high quality. And by some kind of miracle, most of them are very clean too. On the following picture, you see a picture of a fan taken directly out of the PSU under it. It hasn't been cleaned at all. I tested it, and it's one of the most quiet 80mm fans I've ever seen. A good thing to do, is to save the screws from the fan, allways better to use the original fan screws, because there isn't any really sharp standard for computer fan screws. Using the wrong ones, might wear out the holes of the fan, making it impossible to screw it into a chassis.
You know the drill. Click it.
Another thing that's good to scavenge, is the motherboard plate/backplate from chassies. Most chassis now days are ATX standard, which means you can mount a modern motherboard in them. In most cases, it's just a screw or two. You can use them like I have done here, where I've taken the backplate/motherboard plate (Sorry, can't think of the exact term now) from an old P2 233, put a Athlon XP 1800+ on it, and mounted it in a shelf beside my bed.
Fairly new
Cables. Cables from PSU's can be very useful, since you easily can make a cable splitter. Some PSU's, especially OEM ones (Dell, Gateway, IBM etc) just come with enough cables to support the built-in units, and maybe one more optical drive. I have a 350w PSU with just four MOLEX cables (White ones), wich isn't enough at all, since you can't use more than four optical units or hard drives, but, with the help of the cable from an old Pentium 1 CPU cooler, I've made an adapter/splitter to add two more MOLEX connectors. The Pentium 1 often use a MOLEX cable for the power of the CPU cooler, since not all motherboards had fan connectors, this was a sure way to konw that your CPU fan would work. In one end, it's a female connector, that has two excess cables going out, and in the other there's a male connector, so that you wouldn't lose a MOLEX for the fan.
I changed to Photobucket, and added more compression to the images (Open in Paint, save in paint Reduces filesize bu 75% )
NEW!
Switches and LEDs. They're simple, they're a basic part of the computer. They've been there from the beginning. What would ENIAC been without a power switch? These switches are often just attached by a snap lock behind the front of the PC. Remove or destroy the front, and it's usually just to either rip them loose of their gluey sockets or snap up the lock. You never know when you'll need one. A new switch might cost as much as $10 with cables, so it's really worth saving these little things. In most custom builds you'll need some, and if you just got your new motherboard and CPU, maybe you want to test them without having to screw them into your chassis? They can also be used to build fun "non-computer" stuff. There's nothing limiting them from being a flashlight switch. Here's a picture of what a usual bunch of switches and LEDs might look like.
Another very basic, but still iportant thing to salvage from a used computer, is the screws. You can never get enough screws.
Home and office electronics
How many times haven't you seen an old TV or stereo lying on the dump? You think that they might be useful, but they're surely broken. WRONG.
TVs often have very good speakers. Either de-tatchable or built-in. Both sorts are very useful, since old TV's have a picture-tube (Can't think of the word, I'm talking about thick TV's), and picture-tubes don't respond very well to magnetism. That makes those speakers perfect as computer speakers. To add to it, they often have very good sound quality. I use two TV speakers in my 5.1 system here, they actually have better sound than the original speakers of a 500€ surround sound system! You can see them to the left and right of the computer and screen. Amplifier/DVD player on the left.
If your office is throwing out it's old copying machine, there are several great parts in it that you can use. One is the light-tube (Word...) that it uses to scan in the images. These often operate on 12/24v, and make good lights for your desk. Very bright, though. Unfortunately, I don't have one here, so there's no picture. Another great part in them, that I'm going to got through with in a bit more detail, is the centrifugal fans they often use. These centrifugal fans are very good as cooling for computers with bad chassis that doesn't have any, or too few fan holes/places, since they can be put to blow out of expansion slots. They're also great for custom builds, like my shelf-computer, that doesn't have any hole where I'd be able to put a fan, but it has a little "crack" between the door, and the wall of the shelf. These fans often operate on 24v, but they tend to start on voltages as low as 5v. Once made one start of 2 AA batteries, lol. These fans move massive amounts of air, and are often quite quiet whiles running on 12v. Here's a picture of the centrifugal fan I use in my shelf computer. I'm writing this on it, and the fan is on when the picture was taken. I love my camera.
Car stereos. Not quite the thing you associate with computers, eh? But many car stereos make an excellent addition to your computer. Mainly for two reasons: A: They often have very good sound quality and B: If you have a wide chassis, you can, with minimal modification, build one into a 5.25" drive. I'm going to do the later this winter, to the chassis of the computer with the TV speakers, and BF2 running on it. If you're going to change your car stereo, or if you got one just lying around, you should really consider taking it into use with your computer. Most fairly modern car stereos (1997+) usually have line in/out capability, and other nice features, like clocks, tape players, CD changers, etc... Ok, a tape player isn't all that necessary, but if you got some old classic that you can't find on iTunes or in any other digital way. *wink wink*, a tape player of any kind is really good to have. I use a car stereo with a couple of old Tandberg speakers (Best speakers ever!) and two other ones that I can't remember the maker of with this computer. And if you don't want to put money on a power supply for the car stereo, go look through your basement for an old NMT phone. Their chargers usually give out 12-14v at about 5 amps, which is perfect for a car stereo. Here's a pic of my Sony XR-450RDS car stereo (4x35w, really nice thing) that I use with my bed computer. Four speakers really sounds nice, even though it's just stereo.
NEW!
LEDs. LEDs from many small lights, especially those flat ones that you hang with your keys, run on 3v. And since they're so compact, the batteries will die before the LED. these LEDs have very clear light, and run on the same voltage as the power/HDD LEDs in your computer, so they make a very nice addition to your boring, white chassis. The lights I'm talking about, have three screws, it's just to take apart and take out the LEDs. They're often easy to get at your local manned gas station. The best way to connect these LEDs to a cable, I'd say is an old two-pole fan connector, usually found on Slot 1 (P2) and Socket 7(P1, Cyrix II, some very, very rare P2's, AMD K6/K6-2/K6-3) processors. On the following picture of my modded Fujitsu-Siemens chassis, I've used three of these LEDs. Originally it had no lights, except an ugly green and red Power/HDD LED.
I hope you liked my guide on how to re-use tech stuff. I'll probably add more sections and stuff later.
May I have this stickied? It took three hours to make...
To leetkyle: May I join the tech team? Please? PLEASE?
Computers
We all know we can scavenge parts from computers. But there's more to scavenge than most people realize. Sure, you can save the motherboard, CPU, various cards and memory, but there's more. One of the biggest things people don't look closer into, is old and/or broken PSU's. Many PSU's, even fairly old ones, have a small, de-tatchable temperature-controlling chips. These chips are often made with very high quality, and they're so simple, that they usually don't break for very long time, and often outlive their host PSU. They are basically a temperature probe that you put between a fan and a power source, and they control the speed of the fan. One of the best things about these, is that they're often stepless, and, of course, fully automated. At this picture, I've attached one to a CPU cooler for an AMD Athlon XP 1800+. At 5v, this fan runs at about 1500RPM, which is not sufficient for the cooling of this CPU. At +12v, it runs at 5500RPM, which sounds like a vacuum cleaner. The chip usually regulates it between 2500 and 4000 RPM, which actually is really good.
Click for full-size.
The temperature probes are usually attached on the heatziks of the PSU's. Either on the side or on the top.
Yet again, click for full-size.
Another really good part you can take from PSU's is the fan. Most PSU's come with anything from 80MM to 140mm fans, the most usual size of fans on those PSU's you'd find are 80 and 120mm. The 92mm PSU's are quite rare, since the 120mm format fits and cools better. But no matter what fan you find, they're usually also made out of very high quality. And by some kind of miracle, most of them are very clean too. On the following picture, you see a picture of a fan taken directly out of the PSU under it. It hasn't been cleaned at all. I tested it, and it's one of the most quiet 80mm fans I've ever seen. A good thing to do, is to save the screws from the fan, allways better to use the original fan screws, because there isn't any really sharp standard for computer fan screws. Using the wrong ones, might wear out the holes of the fan, making it impossible to screw it into a chassis.
You know the drill. Click it.
Another thing that's good to scavenge, is the motherboard plate/backplate from chassies. Most chassis now days are ATX standard, which means you can mount a modern motherboard in them. In most cases, it's just a screw or two. You can use them like I have done here, where I've taken the backplate/motherboard plate (Sorry, can't think of the exact term now) from an old P2 233, put a Athlon XP 1800+ on it, and mounted it in a shelf beside my bed.
Fairly new
Cables. Cables from PSU's can be very useful, since you easily can make a cable splitter. Some PSU's, especially OEM ones (Dell, Gateway, IBM etc) just come with enough cables to support the built-in units, and maybe one more optical drive. I have a 350w PSU with just four MOLEX cables (White ones), wich isn't enough at all, since you can't use more than four optical units or hard drives, but, with the help of the cable from an old Pentium 1 CPU cooler, I've made an adapter/splitter to add two more MOLEX connectors. The Pentium 1 often use a MOLEX cable for the power of the CPU cooler, since not all motherboards had fan connectors, this was a sure way to konw that your CPU fan would work. In one end, it's a female connector, that has two excess cables going out, and in the other there's a male connector, so that you wouldn't lose a MOLEX for the fan.
I changed to Photobucket, and added more compression to the images (Open in Paint, save in paint Reduces filesize bu 75% )
NEW!
Switches and LEDs. They're simple, they're a basic part of the computer. They've been there from the beginning. What would ENIAC been without a power switch? These switches are often just attached by a snap lock behind the front of the PC. Remove or destroy the front, and it's usually just to either rip them loose of their gluey sockets or snap up the lock. You never know when you'll need one. A new switch might cost as much as $10 with cables, so it's really worth saving these little things. In most custom builds you'll need some, and if you just got your new motherboard and CPU, maybe you want to test them without having to screw them into your chassis? They can also be used to build fun "non-computer" stuff. There's nothing limiting them from being a flashlight switch. Here's a picture of what a usual bunch of switches and LEDs might look like.
Another very basic, but still iportant thing to salvage from a used computer, is the screws. You can never get enough screws.
Home and office electronics
How many times haven't you seen an old TV or stereo lying on the dump? You think that they might be useful, but they're surely broken. WRONG.
TVs often have very good speakers. Either de-tatchable or built-in. Both sorts are very useful, since old TV's have a picture-tube (Can't think of the word, I'm talking about thick TV's), and picture-tubes don't respond very well to magnetism. That makes those speakers perfect as computer speakers. To add to it, they often have very good sound quality. I use two TV speakers in my 5.1 system here, they actually have better sound than the original speakers of a 500€ surround sound system! You can see them to the left and right of the computer and screen. Amplifier/DVD player on the left.
If your office is throwing out it's old copying machine, there are several great parts in it that you can use. One is the light-tube (Word...) that it uses to scan in the images. These often operate on 12/24v, and make good lights for your desk. Very bright, though. Unfortunately, I don't have one here, so there's no picture. Another great part in them, that I'm going to got through with in a bit more detail, is the centrifugal fans they often use. These centrifugal fans are very good as cooling for computers with bad chassis that doesn't have any, or too few fan holes/places, since they can be put to blow out of expansion slots. They're also great for custom builds, like my shelf-computer, that doesn't have any hole where I'd be able to put a fan, but it has a little "crack" between the door, and the wall of the shelf. These fans often operate on 24v, but they tend to start on voltages as low as 5v. Once made one start of 2 AA batteries, lol. These fans move massive amounts of air, and are often quite quiet whiles running on 12v. Here's a picture of the centrifugal fan I use in my shelf computer. I'm writing this on it, and the fan is on when the picture was taken. I love my camera.
Car stereos. Not quite the thing you associate with computers, eh? But many car stereos make an excellent addition to your computer. Mainly for two reasons: A: They often have very good sound quality and B: If you have a wide chassis, you can, with minimal modification, build one into a 5.25" drive. I'm going to do the later this winter, to the chassis of the computer with the TV speakers, and BF2 running on it. If you're going to change your car stereo, or if you got one just lying around, you should really consider taking it into use with your computer. Most fairly modern car stereos (1997+) usually have line in/out capability, and other nice features, like clocks, tape players, CD changers, etc... Ok, a tape player isn't all that necessary, but if you got some old classic that you can't find on iTunes or in any other digital way. *wink wink*, a tape player of any kind is really good to have. I use a car stereo with a couple of old Tandberg speakers (Best speakers ever!) and two other ones that I can't remember the maker of with this computer. And if you don't want to put money on a power supply for the car stereo, go look through your basement for an old NMT phone. Their chargers usually give out 12-14v at about 5 amps, which is perfect for a car stereo. Here's a pic of my Sony XR-450RDS car stereo (4x35w, really nice thing) that I use with my bed computer. Four speakers really sounds nice, even though it's just stereo.
NEW!
LEDs. LEDs from many small lights, especially those flat ones that you hang with your keys, run on 3v. And since they're so compact, the batteries will die before the LED. these LEDs have very clear light, and run on the same voltage as the power/HDD LEDs in your computer, so they make a very nice addition to your boring, white chassis. The lights I'm talking about, have three screws, it's just to take apart and take out the LEDs. They're often easy to get at your local manned gas station. The best way to connect these LEDs to a cable, I'd say is an old two-pole fan connector, usually found on Slot 1 (P2) and Socket 7(P1, Cyrix II, some very, very rare P2's, AMD K6/K6-2/K6-3) processors. On the following picture of my modded Fujitsu-Siemens chassis, I've used three of these LEDs. Originally it had no lights, except an ugly green and red Power/HDD LED.
I hope you liked my guide on how to re-use tech stuff. I'll probably add more sections and stuff later.
May I have this stickied? It took three hours to make...
To leetkyle: May I join the tech team? Please? PLEASE?
Last edited by Freezer7Pro (2007-08-03 18:25:28)
The idea of any hi-fi system is to reproduce the source material as faithfully as possible, and to deliberately add distortion to everything you hear (due to amplifier deficiencies) because it sounds 'nice' is simply not high fidelity. If that is what you want to hear then there is no problem with that, but by adding so much additional material (by way of harmonics and intermodulation) you have a tailored sound system, not a hi-fi. - Rod Elliot, ESP