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This "FREE" PC Was A Trap
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- Published on Mar 16, 2026
- Click this link boot.dev/?prom... and use my code SALEMTECHGUY to get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev.
Sometimes, a "free" PC is the most expensive one you can own. In this video, I tackle a machine a customer received from a friend that turned into a diagnostic black hole. With no backstory and clear signs of previous (and messy) troubleshooting, this computer represents a worst-case scenario for professional technicians.
I break down exactly why this system is labeled "Beyond Economical Repair." The hard truth of the modern repair businesses located in high-cost of living areas, is that overhead and skilled labor costs are high. Unless a technician works for free, spending hours unraveling a mystery like this simply doesn't make financial sense for the customer.
Thankfully because of your support, I'm able to provide this customer free labor, which makes it a repair worthwhile.
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Click this link boot.dev/?promo=SALEMTECHGUY and use my code SALEMTECHGUY to get 25% off your first payment for boot.dev.
What a beast
Thanks
You meant to say you dipped your python in to some gooch 💯
Hey I will trade you a 512 gb team poop ssd for a stick of 16 gb ddr5 5600 sodimm ram chips. LOL
sorry i already know software dev
"double it and pass it to the next person" ahh pc 🙏
just say ass
the exact minute you say "that's a dead hard drive" the HDD on my server starts making the same clicking sound......
Sound of money leaving your pocket
"It's afraid"
What a coincidence
LOL
I have a old ide hdd that is still working that is over 30 years old. The motor oil turned to gum long ago i used isopropyl to basically clear it all out and put more fresh oil in turbine oil a couple drops and she was good to go lol . The last time i spun it up was about 4 years ago and i have no needed to pull anything off it in a bit longer than that.
Mine just caused a blue screen right as he said that, luckily I have an ssd
The only things we get for "free" are always problems.
I got free fries with an order at Wendy's and they were pretty good
I got a dell latitude d430 from my old classmate, with docking bay. Upgraded the 1.8" ipod hdd to a 1.8" msata to ide adapter (250gb). Runs decent
Pretty much all my relationships.. 🤦🤦
I have two free w220 merc in the backyard, couldn't even make one free car out of two free cars 😂
@Zombie81212 But the fries were cursed..
I worked for HP as a repair contractor. the amount of times my paper work said "it's broken" was mind blowing. Like "No Kidding. it wouldn't be here if it was working"
I saw $50 for a 512gb ssd and thought you might be overcharging him. Then i did my research, things have gotten so much worse.
Yup, it's insane. And this is with no markup.
Walmart has pretty good pricing for SSDs, I got a WD_Black SN7100 one terrabyte for 79.99 (usd) so I mean, if you need SSDs try Walmart perhaps, I found them In the storage expansion isle in their computer and media section
@SalemTechsperts man I'm so glad the shortage hasn't gotten here yet.
@SalemTechsperts My DDR5 64GB of Corsair Vengeance Ram $169.99 to $880.99 to me that is some BS that just why.
3 years ago I was buying a couple of 2TB sata SSDs for $50, and then it went to $100. I regret to this day not buying 10 of those SSDs at $50
Crucial went from most love brand as they are cheaper and offers the same reliability, to the most hated brand after announcing they don't need consumer's money.
Crazy announcement 😭
That's because they make America the most RAM out of all the other manufacturers. That's capitalism, for ya!
It's crucial to remember and buy either SAMSUNG or INTEL SSD /NVMe
I do have a 1TB CRUCIAL NVMe -- and having just checked -- its health is
reporting 100% and temperature 52℃
something I will have to resolve and reduce the opiating temperature
to at least 40℃ --- High operating temperature will decrease its life
@XRAF-633 I see what you did there
Here's some DDR5 RAM money - Merry Christmas Everyone! 🎅 🎁🎄
Dude! Thank you so much 🙏 You'll enjoy the ZL1 video that we're currently making!
yoooo you just gave em 500MB of ddr5!
@CombustLem Wow 500mb?!?!?!? that's being super generous that's more like 500kbs D;
You should donate to people's Patreon, not yt. YT takes 30-70% last I checked. Depending on your level. Patreon takes 10%
@CombustLem Do you know how many starving AIs in Africa would love to eat that 500 MB?
13:36 ‘69 years of my career’ 💀💀💀
At least it wasn’t 6 7!😂
@georgeprice4212 ima uninstall both of u
If it's free there's always something
"There's no such thing as a free lunch."
Hercules probably
The truth is in the gooch.
I'm a 35 year old unmarried, unemployed loser who lives abroad. I'm extremely lonely and sad but these two gentlemen save me from my misery every day because I feel like I'm listening to my friends. Thank you.
Sorry for my poor English haha
You're younger than me and your English is better than mine, and I make these videos exactly for this reason. Keep your head up, set small goals every day and don't be too hard on yourself. Find a healthy hobby, get some air, listen to music, and make the most of life.
I know how you feel. I wish I was dead somedays.
@SalemTechsperts glad to know I'm not the only non tech 35-year-old who watches your videos
Im a 41 year old loser.
You might not be married, but are you permanently injured?
You got 6 years extra... Its not too late yet.
I haven't worked in 3 years. Im married. And I'll be honest, her support has been huge... Ive been wuth her since 2002... But my point is, you can do this dude.
Can I suggest something?
The harsh reality of the repair business: This computer only gets fixed if the labor is $0. It’s tough telling a customer that their "free" gift is actually a total loss, but the math just doesn't work. When you factor in rent, electricity, insurance, and the hours needed to reverse-engineer someone else's bad troubleshooting, the repair bill would crush the value of the PC.
Which is why I can't express how thankful I am to have you all supporting me and watching these videos so I can make these free repairs possible. This PC would otherwise have ended up in the e-waste bin downstairs. We ended up going with a used RX 6600 from eBay and a Patriot 512GB SSD. The idea is to be able to carry over these parts to a newer PC when the time comes.
This is why I got out of PC repair and flipping back in 2018. Unless I get PCs and parts for next to nothing, I don't usually profit
you said right in the video your not a repair shop anymore, what do you classify yourself as then now? have you gone to social media "job" full time?
@adhdhobbyguy6063 if i know correctly(i might be wrong) he is a refubrisher now
@adhdhobbyguy6063did you forget his whole gig shifted to refurbishing laptops?
fake viewer here
@adhdhobbyguy6063 I am still a repair shop, I'm just not open to the public. I either take on jobs from people I know, or I procure the tech myself to fix and either sell on my website, or make content off of and donate. But my full-time income is indeed making content.
16:54
Founders Edition: ME ME ME ME!
PSU won't work with it
I got a free pc by going through e waste. It has a i5-8400, gtx 1070 8gb, 512gb nvme, 32 gb ddr4, 450w psu and a 2tb hdd as secondary storage. It works well for my use cases and have been using it for about 5 months with zero issues.
Holy crap that's a steal. Finding anything with a consumer GPU in e-waste is super rare
Theres sooooo many stuff if you keep your eyes open. I collected a lot of older SO Dims in broken laptops, two 16 gig DDR3, now running in my 10 years old laptop.
@SalemTechspertsthe gpu came from a box full of used 1070s that someone threw to e waste recycling and i took some in box 1070s. Was a really good find for me.
*hyperventilates*
DID YOU SAY 32gb ddr4???????
@CalicoCat8888yes but i had to mismatch ram speeds cuz 2 sticks were 2666 while the other 2 was 2400
"if something is free, you are the product"
I heard that somewhere.
Zach wears Andy's shirt
Andy wears Zach's shirt
Lupe wears their Wifes lipstick.
Perfectly balance
10:39 thank you for pointing this out. Most people will be told by tech support to reinstall the OEM OS, but the techs never seem to understand this when I explain it to them. I tell them that this doesn't fix my problem because once the computer is set back up how I want it, they have no way of knowing if the problem will reoccur. Always refuse to do a windows reinstall unless Windows is obviously corrupted. Make tech support actually help you fix your machine or you're not getting your money's worth from the warranty.
I love how almost half the connector on this desktop is basically a 12VHPWR waiting to go off
I legit had a tech teacher in high school who was teaching us how to fix computers. One time, she claimed a computer was broken. The GPU was not connected to the power supply. When I pointed that out, she said I was wrong and that the motherboard powered the GPU. I'd like to imagine she put this computer together because she would actually build pcs like this and give them away to students.
Seeing a 512gb SSD cost $70 when I could have gotten a 1tb SSD like 2 years ago for less that is just insane to me.
Bought a Samsung 1TB QVO for 40€ in mid 2023. It's just insanity by now. They typically go for 120€ these days.
That's really insane.
I bought a 2tb nmve for 100 eurobucks in october. That thing is like 400 now.
Dude. I own a 300ZX Twin Turbo. I bought it over 20 years ago. When you mentioned my car at that bit from 19:29 something happened to me.
someone assembled broken parts
13:12 whoa, the GPU was pumping 240 fps
failures per second
15:28 dON'T YOU TELL ME THAT CPU WAS COOKING FOR 10+ YEARS WITH HSF NOT PROPERLY SEATED???
Hell, even "pulled" DDR3 has gotten out of hand.
I just got 4x8gb 1866mhz for $86 AUD on eBay and I'm happy to build my i7-4790 hehehe
@KaosKaosKaos1 me with 32GB of DDR3 2400 I got for 60 eur from china on a e3-1285L V4
@schizodruggie nice 👍
@schizodruggie I had to double check that as I didn't think any V4 Xeons ran DDR3. If it could run Registered ECC dimms you could have had 128gb for the same 60 Euros. Those thankfully are still cheap as chips
@Techburn997 It can run ECC, but it's running on Z97 motherboard, so 32GB is everything it can have. Realistically though, it's plenty, and you give up a lot using a server board in terms of feature sets.
Otherwise broadwell is fantastic platform, this xeon is equipped with same L4 cache a 5775c is...making it perform quite well in modern games.
Nothing costs more than a free boat.
Truest statement ever stated.
The first computer I was ever given when I was in foster care, was someones home computer for games back in 2010 .
If you played starwars kotor 1, it sounds like the swoop bikes.
I loved that pc. Best sounds.
Also played my rts games like a champ.
Now i need a new one...
1:03 i love when they say "it doesn't turn on"
the greatest outro that's ever lived
@ 11:43 I had House M.D flashbacks because of this, one day it'll be lupus. trust.
The Ram struggle is real!
I recently started working at an electronics recycling store in Knoxville and we are running VERY low on ddr4 ram. It sucks because we constantly get people wanting bulk orders of computers (minis and regular desktops) and now we are having to ask them if they are willing to compromise Ram over SSD’s.
Love the vids man, keep up the amazing work!!!
Can we get in contact we need hardware that is used
Sure tell them about setting up SWAP space ? In the olden days we had this funny software RAM Doubler that compressed your data in RAM to fit more.
every day i thank god i decided to build my new pc like a year ago. im holding onto this thing for dear life
I have pasted myself with duronaut and I'm judging.
165 for 580 used what the
Not the 3080 in the corner 17:00
I thought the *exact* same though I do not know if this is a 3080
3070ti FE but this PSU couldn't handle it
@SalemTechsperts ah ok
@SalemTechspertsyou can always hook another PSU just for the card. But I guess it is the time to find a PSU laying around too since you have no stock but you can always grab a second pc and do some Frankenstein shit.
@H_Eli now i feels dumb, had to buy gt1030 back then bc the psu dont have the cable nor the wattage to power a gpus thats actually cheap and good enough in used market, didnt know thats possible
8:45 HE SAID IT! HE SAID THE THING!
0:47 Same Andy same.
yo can someone help me sometimes my pc get a blackout but the scren is pink purple withe black brown and blue what can that be is it my GPU ?
Oh shit so glad I wasn't drinking my coffee when the "power cord still not plugged in and STFU" response.🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
We had a program that would crash 4-7 times a day and write to its error log. After a few years, the error log, which was all text, reached 4 gigs. Crazy.
DUDE! I decided to to disassemble, clean, and repaste my own XBox One and didn't think to glove or mask up! My own gooch put me down for two days!
When you leave your own bacteria in a warm device for enough time..... they will get back at you with a vengeance. Just like when you put off buying memory Corsair will get back at you with Vengeance.
@mikkelbreiler8916 is this real? i'm very skeptical
@mikkelbreiler8916lmfaoooo good RAM joke
@itstrystenyou generally don't want to breathe in the compressed dust that gets built up in electronics. It's just nasty
I really enjoy these videos. Distracts me from the mental shit I'm feeling that no one knows about, even if for only a few minutes.
just bougth my first thinkpad to fix, the screen is scratched and it has general wear, i hope this will be a good journey repailring thinkpads
Keep an eye out for parts laptops. In no time you'll be able to Frankenstein one Thinkpad after another. Have fun!
@SchoolforHackers I have my eye on at least 5 other thinkpads, just don"t have the money to buy them all, but after i sell the first one ill buy the next one or two
i didnt know you made full videos that werent shorts, i love this.
2:47 valid crashout holy shit😂
Friend without a doubt knew what was wrong but didn’t want to put anymore into it
6:42 I think the dram became sentient and looked at it's prices
Maybe it got excited for Lupe's loops
You could maybe give it a try, changing thermal paste on the gpu and thermal pads on the vram
The Greatest Cameraman That's Ever Lived.
one of the first things i do when people say there pc crashes or freezes is check the paste before i even turn it on and clean video card
The cake was a lie too. 😢
Sorry. I was hungry. It was there, and….
6:37 my issue before was just a dead drive
it would get stuck in the pre-boot with a light waiting for the drive to respond
As a first gen Rx7 owner, the analogy was spot on. I'd question why someone was giving me one for free. I'd take it for parts but there would be questions 🤣
An '83 GSL-SE was my first car back in 2002. I miss that car so much. I've had every gen, probably about a dozen total. That's the one I really miss though.
Amazing how a pc stuff film can be this fun :)
I'm definitely stealing "dipped my gooch into some python". 😂 Nothing worse than people finding out you work IT. Sure, Bob, I'll wade through your nicotine gooch to fix your clogged CPU fan. 🙄
Thanks Will! I'll trade you my line for your "Nicotine Gooch" line 🤣
My dream for Christmas is atleast a A320 msi mother with a ryzen any processor and atleast a 16 gb of ddr4 ram my old mobo got burnt but I still have my 1 Tb hdd and my Nvidia GeForce GTX 560 1gb so ye I'll be the happiest if I get my hands on an am4 mobo cuz I can't afford a gaming pc especially I'm a studying while working my money is enough only for me to buy necessities I hope someone could give me their trash rig or any pc that won't be anymore of us I'll be happy with that super duper happy bro💐☕🫶
@jayjo6404my mom is kinda homeless
@Mikeme137 why you trying not to laugh? That's disrespectful as shit
5:39 this is a new staple of the tech repair/modification industry right alongside the dirty cherry keyboard
Greatest technician that’s ever lived has posted
Greatest Technician that's ever posted
13:11 I have never in my entire life seen so many errors in one log, I'm truly impressed that thing even turned on
Speaking of ram prices, i found 32gb 8x4 ddr3 for 80usd. DDR3!!! I bought 32gb ddr4 for like 40usd in april,
Used btw!
Hands up and slowly put it to the ground, then step back sir.
I could buy 16gb ddr4 sticks for $20 up until 2 days ago
I bought 64gb of ddr5 for $150 back in march of this year and its CL36 and now its over $700 is just insane.
Gamers nexus goes into highly detailed depths before making a statement
Lupe: "It came to me in a dream trust me"
"Just trust me bro!"
2:11 The Gooch Collector!
Somewhere 😅
Is it bad that I have this song saved in my Spotify playlist?
The Chef / Lupe reference is classic.
Wow. I had that exact same Cyberpower pc. It originally comes with an I5-6402P, 8 gigs of DDR 4 ram and an rx 480 4gb.
This brings back memories. I had upgraded mine with an I7 6700k, 16 gigs of DDR 4 before selling it off two years ago in another case.
I still kept that Coolermaster masterbox case since it was so fun to build in for my newer parts (Ryzen 5 5600x, 32 gigs DDR 4 ram, on an MSI B550 Tomahawk and RX6650XT.
Next Year Jan, I'll be building a new PC, new parts and will finally be retiring my current PC. Dammit I'm going to miss that Case.
I'm a gunsmith and it's the same thing in my world. "this gun doesn't work" "it's not accurate" "it jams" and then we're off on a multi day excursion to tear it down, find what's wrong, prepare an estimate, get told no because it's too expensive, put it back together the same way it came in except cleaned, and think about how much more money I would have made flipping burgers for the same amount of time. Like you, I also no longer take public repair jobs and have focused on other avenues of business while still doing the repair thing for friends and family.
I’ve wanted to be a gunsmith for a long time. If you’ve got time, could you tell me how you got into it?
7:34 limited edition micron ram
Except Micron DRAM will still make it to consumer kits, just not under the Crucial brand. If G.Skill, Adata, Corsair etc want to buy DRAM from Crucial they can just as they have been buying DRAM from Samsung and SK Hynix.
Video drivers were almost always the problem back in the day. On the first computer I build from scratch the old Voodoo 3 drivers could be a PITA to get to work correctly on Windows 2000. I don't think video drivers have been the issue since probably the Windows 8 days and forward. Now when I see those errors in the DMP file it is 99% of the time a hardware issue.
1000000%
If something is free there's a catch
One day we're going to witness the last skeleton joke and we won't know it's the last...
the ram crisis is crazy, i bought my ram in 2024 for 175 CAD and now it’s selling for 600 CAD.
Man I bought 32 gigs of 3200 ddr4 for 32$ and now the exact same kit is 129.99$ (usd btw)
I bought around 20 dollars ddr4 sodimm 3200mhz ram and now it is sitting at 100
@Unknown-64209a 8x2 16 gig kit I’m guessing?
"Buy a stick of RAM get a computer for free" coming soon at best buy
I’m surprised he didn’t check the GPU paste
11seconds ago is toe ticking
14 minutes later here😂
Yes
Hmm. Toes. Interesting 🤔
peak outro
thirsty thursday like.... zach tech tips!?!?!?!?! more collabs with each other please.
For a moment I thought the banner behind the GTTEL said "Techsperms"
This is one of the few channels i watch the in video ads
I truly appreciate that. I go out of my way to make them entertaining.
@SalemTechsperts you 2 should do a comedy duo show about PC repairs.... it's gonna be GOLDEN!
i made that same mistake of not plugging in the cpu fan when i replaced my thermal paste
Hey man, been watching your stuff for a good while and love your content and what you do. I have a huge bag of laptop DDR4 memory ranging from 4GB up to 16GB sticks. Id be happy to send you a bag to help you keep selling laptops and keeping them out of waste/landfills. Just let me know
I'd love to pay for it, I wouldn't feel right accepting it for free. Shoot me an email via my website!
@SalemTechsperts Alright, I just emailed you
Memory or CPU errors during startup can occur when the hard drive is cooked.This happened to me on my old PC, and it was a real headache figuring out why it would work when nothing was plugged in and then stop turning on when I reassembled it.
Is it sad that I was like, "Well at least his ram still works..." all relieved? The previous owner rode that computer hard and put it away wet. I'd try a few more tests with the GPU and make sure it wasn't some simple foolery that mucked it up. Sometimes the paste dries out in a GPU too. I've had to repaste a number of old graphics cards in my time and that usually solves heating issues.
"atleast ram works" what a terrible sentence to celebrate lol
@makaramuss Agreed.
for me, when the GPU driver appeared in the logs, I updated the driver and crashes were gone
14:50 if you go back to bootup you see an MSI logo, which about explains the reason for Multiple Serious Issues.
I wish somebody gave me a 3000GT or RX7 problem :)
11:11 He did the 6 7 hands
😍😍
That's the thermal paste that comes pre applied to the heat sink lmao
0:10 bro you gat 2.3M subscribers !! everybody knows you fix computers!!
Ow my god ! Really?!!!
your so meticulous and patient i have never seen someone like you the greatest technician/engineer ever lived. Merry Christmas to you and family and lupe
8:39...Hand on graphics card....NOPE!....Removes hand....YEP!....Greatest technician.
I was blocking the light to see if it was bootlooping like it was initially 😭
anyone else see the door open at time stamps 1:32 - 1:35?
No. I would like you to stop asking for free things on the internet because no one will ever give them to you and you are just wasting your time. It's also considered very rude and does nothing but annoy creators who get asked this 500 times a day. I can't even afford a stick of DDR5 and you're asking me to spend thousands of my hard earned dollars to ship you a PC across the globe so it can be destroyed during transit and stolen by customs. Please stop.
6:20 Fighter jet ahhhhh
I can confirm, the beginng is true, ive been on both sides there is an aroma we amit that says "hey i fix all tech things
1:33 second video see that a door just swings open is the new sho haunted?
3:32 Never knew the linux kernel had a command line
I have this same case, got it from fry's when it used to be a store in LA.
16:59 - Lower Right...... Lower Right...... I'm looking at a video card....... It's sitting on top of that case in the lower right......
Toshiba drives often have premature failure within 3 months to 5 years a lifetime before they start showing signs of failure.
The last reliable HDDs were made in the 90s. They were slower but they were indestructible.
that gateway fx laptop in the background... Mmmm!
the nostalgia lol
I just pasted both my rig (CPU+GPU) and my partners rig with Duronaut the other day and that was finicky to use. Not only is it super thick, but it does not really want to stick to the IHS or die either, and would much rather stick to the spatula or tube opening itself.
i have a question like my laptop hp voctusss ryzn 5 5600h and rx6500m is getting shutdown mid gaming can u tell me whats wrong with it ??/ help me
Just to let ya know, cant use windows 11 to play league of legends on old CPUs like 7th gen and older, since they lack TPM 2.0 and game wont run.
Made that mistake for a client and had to reinstall windows 10. (Riots anticheat requires that to run).
17:00 " we dont have another gpu do we" while in frame is a gpu
Used to work for PC repair shop. When a PC came in previously worked on, loose parts, and was a "free gift", I would be upfront about how much this "free gift" would cost him to get up and running assuming, every part works, and problem with the system can be corrected that made the original user give it away in the first place. I would also give him a sense of power if he got it up and running and if it was worth the cost. I would give them my opinion, then I would leave the decision up to them. Sometimes, they'd walk away, sometimes they'd put down a diagnostic deposit.
The amount of times I'd hear back that the "free computer" after the repair wasn't worth the trouble is saddening.
At least you had the decency to be upfront - I've had some deeply upsetting experiences with "technicians" at MicroCenter (which was like my version of FAO shwarz as a kid-current) where I thoroughly explain something I would prefer professionals to handle, and each time they have basically destroyed my machine. Naive as I may be, I trusted them to handle their own brand [PowerSpec], which they repeatedly told me before diagnostics that it was a non-issue despite me having logs and showing them explicit errors. They re-installed windows without my approval and charged me about $600+ just to do that unnecessarily but also fail to reconnect basic cables, like in the video, as well as lying about installing all drivers. They insisted I needed reevaluation but I learned my lesson after the second time. Sh*t really sucks when people can't just be upfront to those who are trying to trust the expertise of a shop they trust, only to realize they should have done it themselves and regret it wholeheartedly.