VIDEO: Recycling Destroyed Tech into Beautiful PCs

Welcome to this forum thread related to my video showing how to recycle laptop motherboards into PCs!

Search terms, and where to get boards.

eBay is the best place to buy these boards, and there are many to choose from.

NEVER buy a board that’s ‘untested’ or ‘spares or repairs’. You will NOT be able to repair them so you will be wasting your money. Only buy boards from reputable sellers (look at their feedback rating), and make sure the listing explicitly says that the board is tested to be working. Also make sure that the seller accepts returns just in case you end up with a dud board.

Want a board with an Nvidia graphics card on it? Simply add ‘RTX’ to the search and it will capture a whole sweep of boards that have RTX GPUs. Look up benchmarks for the mobile versions of these cards before buying.

Here are some searches that pull up a number of boards:

Motherboards with RTX graphics cards:

(Disable and Ad-blockers as they break eBay's search)

eBay US: https://ebay.us/QzBzWz

eBay UK: https://ebay.us/NEsWfC

General board purchasing notes:

“On-board” pre-soldered RAM allows for the best value, as the memory can’t be used elsewhere so is cheaper than the inflated RAM prices at the moment. This applies to on-board discreet GPUs too.

Use reputable CPU benchmarking websites (like Passmark) to see if you’re getting good CPU performance for the money. Compare it to desktop CPUs, and look at the whole price comparison of not only a comparative desktop CPU but the motherboards available for it also.

Try and confirm before purchase the location of the power button on the laptop model you’re looking at. This will give you clues for how easy it’s going to be to trigger a boot – some laptops have separate power buttons, others have them on the keyboard membrane. Identify where the power button is first and evaluate whether you’re going to be able to get it into ‘booting’ state.

Prioritise boards that also have a heatsink cooler. These are sometimes listed separately by the sellers – a search is the only way to know. If a seller does have a heatsink cooler and a board you’d like, negotiate buying both together. This is good for the seller as they sell two things at once, and good for you as you can negotiate a good discount for the cooler. Make sure the fans are included too as these are annoying to ‘mod in’ manually (although it is perfectly possible if you’re up for it).

Also note that if you can’t find a cooler for a board you can still ‘diy’ your own cooler for it. I will be introducing this in my next video so stay tuned for further instructions, as this allows for even better ‘value extraction’.

I also recommend looking for boards with barrel power plugs. It’s just cheaper to buy old Dell/HP/Lenovo power adapters and mod them to work as I did. Boards that don’t have barrel plugs usually rely on USB-C for power – great for lower power boards (ones with on-board graphics specifically) but it can complicate things if they have a discreet GPU as USB-PD only goes up to 100w on most USB-C power supplies and docks etc.

Depending on what you need power wise, an old Thunderbolt USB hub is quite a fun thing to explore. If a board can be powered by USB-C, plugging it into a Thunderbolt hub (like a Dell WD19TB) will not only provide power to the board but give you a load of USB ports and display outputs – it basically converts it into a mini PC with a single cable.

Some new boards rely on the laptop’s original battery to retain CMOS/BIOS/Time settings. I only encountered this on an HP Omen motherboard. If you want to avoid annoying time resets and messages, look for a board with a visible cmos battery or make sure you keep it connected to power. Alternatively, source a replacement laptop battery and plug it in.

Power button notes:

Some motherboards have solder pads for power triggering near the keyboard connector - it's always worth looking for these first as it's a lot easier to connect to them compared to making a ribbon cable. 

Also, some motherboards have 'daughter' boards with their power buttons on them. These are usually connected with smaller ribbon cables, so the method is the same - just on a different smaller connector. Have a look at images of the laptop your motherboard is from for clues as to how it's all connected together.