@indubitablyodin I likely won't. I found a Dell Inspiron 5593 in the e-waste bin a couple of weeks back. It was in parts as someone had removed the SSD, and it was missing various screws and a power adapter — all very cheap to order online.

Specs:
Intel i7-1065G7 CPU
FHD screen
backlit keycaps
fingerprint reader
16GB RAM
spots for an M.2 and a SATA SSD (and so I installed one of each)
Windows 10/11 licence (if anyone cares)
battery in good condition

It's very quick compared to the 6th gen i7 laptop I paid thousands for quite some years back, and even that wasn't slow enough (when running Arch) for me to justify replacing it.

My living room gaming PC is also an e-waste rescue computer I got a year or so ago; a 6-core i5-12400, also with a 1TB SSD, Win11 licence, etc. It mainly just needed a new CPU cooler and GPU, and it too is also very fast. Works great with SteamOS. Good enough even for gaming that it may be hard justifying PC purchases going forward.

Heck, just yesterday there was another PC in the e-waste bin that was an 8th gen i7, but someone had gotten to it before me and stripped it down to the motherboard for parts.

@boltronics I love that! Honestly, e-waste rescue is absolutely one of the best things we can do, and for most people would be more than sufficient.

I went ahead and saved up for all new parts to (for the firs time) build my own PC for gaming and AI work last year, but what's so exciting to me is that I can do really top-of-the-line stuff and I won't need to replace its components for a long while.

@indubitablyodin Nice one. And if buying new, your suggestion is a great one.

I decided to grab that mini 8th gen Lenovo e-waste PC that's missing parts, as I realised that I think I might have everything missing from an old machine (ATX MB desktop) I have in storage. It can replace my existing 2nd gen i7 Acer mini-PC I use from time to time when I need a spare for something — and that too was from the e-waste bin some years back. ;)