old computer hardware doesn't slow down we've proven it multiple times so then
why does your old PC feel so much slower
than when you first got it the answer lies in the software and it's the same
reason that your phone feels slower as it ages each subsequent Windows update
adds features and bloat that can drag
down performance so then well what do you have to run an old operating system
full of compatibility and security issues no there's a new kid on the Block
its name is atlas OS and thanks to Acer
sponsoring this video to promote their recent earthion green initiatives we're
going to be taking it for a spin with some Hardware that is so obsolete that
we paid less for this entire box than
the cost of the included Windows license let's see if we can get this puppy
running like new spoiler we can and it
is super awesome our adventure begins with a bog standard obsolete Big Box
store PC we wanted something from Acer of course since keeping old electronics
out of the landfill was a huge motivation for them to sponsor this video and we settled on the Aspire
tc780. it's in that weird anti-goldylocks Zone it's too new to be
retro and too old to be current and most businesses would basically just pay a
recycler to haul these things away by the pallet full which is good because it
means they go for cheap we paid 150
Canadian dollars or about 110 us and that included the keyboard and mouse
which weren't amazing but let's say we
could flip them for 10 bucks giving us a total of a hundred US dollars for our
Tower internally I don't know it's probably oh
seen better days Anthony you're fixed
for the dead fan is still on here
spoiler spoiler we have to fix a dead fan I'll get to that later one moment
please overall nothing a can of dust off can't fix and
she powers on 4 pin CPU power 24-pin
motherboard connector oh front USB 3. that's nice to see and four pin for our
CPU fan also standard matx motherboard and ATX power supply this is going to
make the process of refurbishing this thing a lot easier well isn't that just
fantastic wow does this even have m.2 support Anthony it does
what that's awesome 7th gen had m.2
support yeah oh I guess this is as good a time as any to talk about the CPU in
here it's a core i5 7400 so it's four cores four threads 3.5 gigahertz Max
boost it was kind of the seventh gen's bang for the buck CPU with higher core
clocks than its predecessors but at the same cost Not only was it less expensive
but compared to higher end chips it had a 65 watt TDP and could easily be cooled
with low cost heatsinks making it a great choice for a budget system for
that reason we're not actually going to replace this almost Intel stock cooler
in here we're just gonna
destroy our lungs by wiping it down and we're going to put
a new fan on it I wonder how many people worth of dead skin cells I've inhaled
over the years of doing this it's a really uncomfortable thoughts what's not
uncomfortable is that 400 class core i5s
have long been considered excellent value for gaming with the more recent 12
400 and 13 400 being solid contenders for entry and mid-range Gamers for us
though there is absolutely no need whatsoever to change anything in here
we're just going to get some zip ties put this just random fan we found it
happens to be in Knoxville but yours doesn't have to be put this random fan
in here and we should be Off to the Races look at this I found an 80
millimeter fan kicking around and I don't even need to zip tie it anymore
totally lines up twice now we just plug this into the CPU
fan header and no need to change anything here in time you might find
that multiplayer games are going to demand more cores but it's certainly
enough for a responsive desktop experience today and could even be
upcycled later into a Home Server solid
investment moving on our current RAM configuration
is a little suspect we've got a four gig
stick and an eight gig stick for a total of 12 gigs which is a lot of RAM but not
ideal because we're not getting dual Channel and the speeds of these sticks
are mismatched at 2133 and 2400 Mega
transfers per second unfortunately the BIOS of this machine does not support
XMP or setting the RAM speeds manually so it will simply match the speed of the
slowest stick to ensure compatibility our best course of action then is to
pull out our four gig stick here see you
later and replace it with another 8 gig similar speed dim time Tech these can be
found online for about 20 bucks since their slower speed makes them not super
desirable now you could potentially flip that four gig stick to recoup a little
bit of your cost but I think it's probably worth more as a spare for
troubleshooting so I would probably hold on to it now let's power this up and for
a total of 30 bucks for a stick of RAM and a generic 80 millimeter fan we
should have 16 gigs four cores and a
working cooler there are still some things we need to do yes we're going to
do hard drives but first we're gonna do power supply now the
power supply that's in here is an fsp unit good brand rated for 300 watts
continuous which is probably fine too like this was a perfect fit for the
original hardware and probably perfectly reliable with the CPU's 65 watt TDP and
no GPU it probably never ran at more than 50 percent of its capacity but the
lack of PCIe power and the possibility that it's deteriorated over time to
become less efficient means we should probably replace it proactively if we
have space in our budget with that said don't throw it out you can still totally
use this thing as a hobbyist benchtop power supply if you're so inclined and
personally I use what I call doorstop
power supplies for all kinds of things like just running fans for example to
cool something outside of a computer like they're just very very useful one
nice thing about the old school ketchup and mustard style cables is that they're
color coded for voltage red is 5 volt yellow is 12 volt and black is ground so
you can put whatever connectors you want on these things as long as you don't overload the rails which are
conveniently labeled on the side and power whatever you want for a replacement we don't need something
super powerful we just want to make sure that we do our homework and get
something decent so we settled on this EVGA 400 watt unit that is a power
supply I mean I mean it doesn't really we're
not recommending the cheapest possible thing EVGA does stand behind their
products rip EVGA graphics cards which they still existed it doesn't have
modular cables and you know ketchup and mustard make a triumphant return but
it's more than enough for what we're going to be doing this is actually an
older unit but as the lab ramps up their testing we're going to be building a database of the performance
characteristics of every budget power supply so that whether you're refurbing
an old machine or building a new budget machine from scratch you can get
something decent without overspending oh
on that subject are water bottles on lttstore.com are all the same price
regardless of capacity you can get any size you want without overspending now
while I pointed out earlier that our board supports m.2 drives we don't
necessarily need the fastest drive you
can get an inexpensive 500 gig SSD for about 40 bucks on sale or even a one
terabyte for around sixty dollars ssds have gotten shockingly inexpensive
lately for us we're going with an old WD blue 250 gig and the main reason is that
you can pick these up for even cheaper
on Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace thankfully Acer included mounts for two
and a half inch drives are they toolless nope all together now the correct number
of screws for a two and a half inch SSD is
one that's good enough right yeah she's
not going anywhere this is an extra screw now
the place for an extra screw is not inside the chassis that's true that's
true that's bad what I showed you just now in fact I'm gonna punish myself by
making myself put in another drive for the SSD so add a data or say to data
there's gonna be a war in the comments tonight everyone typing it it's
it's a data I can't tell which one it's a
little late in the day we all just want to go home now there
are many gpus available on the second hand Market that would suit our needs
just fine we could go super low end here 1050 tis can be had for under a hundred
dollars but the bang for the buck of the 1660 TI is hard to argue with it should
be able to gain at 1080p medium at least in this system and it fits within our
thermal power and space constraints these go for around 200 new that's a lot
but this is the E-Waste PC so realistically we would suggest picking
up a secondhand one on eBay for anywhere from 100 to 150 US Dollars the 1660 TI
doesn't have av1 codec support but it'll accelerate h.264 and h.265 and has the
higher quality nvank encoder whatever value GPU you end up going with though
be aware that some require resizable bar to reach their full potential and older
systems like these don't always support it fortunately Acer still has the full
support side up for this desktop which is great and super important for helping
looks like us extend their life spans step
power oh and also this I guess why is
this not clipping anymore did I break it
did did you break it okay bro it was all working oh I bent it I bent it real good
nice plug the HDMI into that now
obviously this isn't gonna boot until we
configure our SSD with an operating system let's talk about that thankfully our
system has USB 3 otherwise this process would be a little on the slow side we're
just going to fire up the media creation tool plug in a USB drive and while this
is Imaging Acer sent over their Vero laptop full disclosure I have a stake in
framework a competitor but Acer has clearly been making great strides of
their own when it comes to sustainable computers starting with an easy to open
chassis and non-soldered components this is what they're calling a green PC and
it's part of their earthion initiative it's Acer's Mission platform for a
Greener future and it's literally green which is because this is super cool you
can actually see the flex of post-consumer plastics just kind of
mashed together in order to make this chassis I actually kind of like it
earthion encompasses everything from product design and packaging all the way
through to production Logistics and recycling this particular one is powered
by Intel's 13th gen core processors that is Intel Evo verified there's enough
horsepower on tap to handle most tasks while maximizing battery life meaning
you need to charge less often which prolongs battery health when you do need
to charge its fast charge capability means you can add four hours of endurance with just 30 minutes on the
wall and their ultimate goal is to bring in their business partners and use their
shared technology to change the world for The Greener you can join the
movement by advocating for sustainability wherever you can or
simply by living a Greener life we're doing our part today by pulling
potential E-Waste from the landfill but if you're not up for all this work
choosing to support initiatives like earthion and machines like the Vero can
help of course you still want to see what this little thing can do though
right and you're saying the trackpad is made of ocean plastic yeah it's made
from Ocean bound plastic the entire chassis is 30 post-consumer recycled
materials so that is super cool yeah you might be wondering why not 100 post
consumer materials we've actually been learning a lot about this for our
acoustic panel project you just can't
because of the unpredictable way that little shrink after molding but 30
percent pretty darn good especially post consumer because I think we were able to
get as high as like 45 but that was just
re-ground new plastic that wasn't post-consumer well you want to know
what's even better yeah the keycaps are 50 percent sure shut up they don't even
look or feel like bad yeah even the
keycaps 50 PCR I don't know how they managed that yeah that's super cool here
while this is doing its thing I'm just gonna open it because it looks like it's
that easy right it's all Phillips screws see the thing is I don't care if my
investment wins or if everyone else just does better
I just want more stuff like this in the long term I want to see this kind of
concept make its way into their higher tier products but I understand you've
got to start somewhere and obviously you've got to mitigate the risk of the
development somehow so starting with something that's relatively small is a
way you can do that I just need one clip
to release so that I can get under it did you get it open Anthony yeah oh okay
I wonder if part of this is just because of the Plastics that might be that might
actually be why there's so many clips and screws yeah because there's the
tolerances are going to be not as tight with this post-consumer plastic there it
is socketed RAM socketed SSD everything
very easy to access in here actually socketed Wi-Fi which you can't even take
for granted anymore these days that didn't used to be impressive but now I'm
seeing a lot of soldered Wi-Fi two screws on the battery total that's it
very cool I gotta say this started out
as just sort of sponsor talking points and has turned into I'm pretty impressed
this seems to be more than just paying lip service to Green this is like super
serviceable okay uh editor good luck
before we gain though I feel like we should do a peel here oh ew this is very
old electrical tape it's icky oh what why did they why did they put on tape to
keep the peasters and you know who you are
because nobody else put on tape quite like you did let's play some games oh
wait well first I guess we should just sort of navigate the operating system
right you know Chrome launch uh yeah all
right and we're not screen recording locally it's an HDMI pass-through to a
separate PC so it won't affect performance in any way things are
definitely a little bit hitchy this is a standard Windows 10
install fully up to date with some mild manual decluttering so we uninstalled
OneDrive Skype Etc it's chugging a little whether we're talking alt tabbing
out of games launching programs I mean
even start menu animations it's chugging
a little there's no denying that while we wait for this to load is a perfect
time to talk about Atlas OS you might remember the video we did on Windows 10
ameliorated a project that got pulled
because they were technically Distributing Windows isos without
Microsoft's approval well Atlas OS used
to do the same thing but thanks to the efforts of ameliorated Dev actrons is
now using a new framework called AME wizard that lets you do all of the
ripping and tearing out of excess bloat post install meaning that they can do
what they used to do but they no longer need to distribute pre-modded isos so
the whole thing is fully above board we've actually got an early access
version of it here and by the time this video goes live you should be able to
download it for yourself it'll work not only on older Hardware but also on
Modern Hardware which is super cool okay
we're gonna try our little Halo game then we're gonna fire things up with
Atlas OS double kill
okay well there's no denying it it's a gaming machine for gamers
Rage Quit let's fire up Atlas OS we did
some movie Magic Anthony's the one who set up Atlas OS ahead of time I haven't
touched it yet I am super stoked check this out the E-Waste PC love it
all right Google Chrome
interesting why don't you take a look at the process list is that it
whoa whoa
this is markedly more responsive I don't
even need the side by side this feels like a brand spanking new machine
look at that look at her go you know this basically
kills Linux as like
well right because that's what people use Linux for is getting more life out
of old Hardware that can't run Windows anymore if you can run Windows with this
kind of performance Jeepers Creepers I
mean even NVIDIA control panel launches without being dog slow with that said I
am not expecting markedly better performance in games
that's really just constrained by your GPU however you know we might get a
little less stutter if our CPU is less busy working away at background crap I
just got rid of my last Windows 8.1 embedded industry Pro I'm just going to
use this why not right this is awesome
oh man what this is on a quad core from seven
years ago quad core four threads
she's responsive
you're losing Telemetry automatic updates
that's probably something they turned off I don't know I actually haven't looked that closely at it let's talk
memory usage right now look at how quickly I can check that we're at five
gigs with Halo infinite running and that's 2.4 gigs so we are sitting at
just over two gigs of total system use
other than no because another over 200 Megs is also steam this is
incredible our RAM usage outside of Halo
and steam is like negligible I know this
is a lot of Hoops to jump through to extend old Hardware shelf life and you
can obviously only go so far before you are adding to the E-Waste problem just
like buying more stuff to what be greener that's why it's important to
think carefully about the computers you buy a machine with enough power to
handle what you need today and a bit of room to grow into tomorrow always a good
bet and recycled material construction and packaging are huge bonuses if you
want to be environmentally conscious equally important is that old Hardware
like this doesn't have to die just because software keeps getting more
bloated for less than 350 bucks here we've got a machine that may be a little
old but is still totally capable of
handling modern titles at decent settings this is 1080p medium life
doesn't always have to be about the latest and greatest especially when the
environmental cost can be so high remember the three R's reduce use and
recycle are in that order for a reason now with a 13th gen core processor back
to our sponsor Acer's Aspire Bureau has plenty of power for today and tomorrow
but that doesn't mean that you shouldn't give Alice OS a try on it if nothing
else it should contribute to battery life savings on top of the vero's
already impressive endurance which as Acer already had us point out to you is
good for the longevity of your battery as well and hey later on down the road
when it's time to upgrade who's to say you can't use it for something else like
streaming serving Media or even a Thin Client its more modular design makes
repairs easier and is already made out of recycled materials they've taken care
of the reduce and recycle so it's on you to reuse and we're going to have this
length down below now it's time to play some more Halo
infinite here oh it's Capture the Flag uh well thanks for watching guys if you
like this video hit like And subscribe um maybe go check out the video on
reusing your old computer as a server that's a good one a really good video I
really liked it I hosted it but uh not biased at all right not biased at all I
didn't write the video it was somebody else who wrote it