Less than two years ago, I managed to snag a free computer from a local gaming company that was giving away older machines. I documented the event here. From that computer, I salvaged a CPU, a hard drive, and more RAM, all of which were considerable upgrades to my own home computer. That allowed my computer to get some fresh legs.
This afternoon, my current place of employment just happened to give away some free computer components. There were about five motherboards with i7-920 CPUs and 12 Gb of RAM. I managed to get one of these. All these components are again a considerable upgrade from what I currently have in my home computer.
Installing these pieces into my home computer is going take a lot more effort than the last upgrade where my friend helped stick on the CPU and I just plugged in the new hard drive. A new mobo installation means I have to disconnect everything my old mobo, take it out, put the new mobo in, reconnect everything, and then also prepare Windows to accept all the new hardware. The result should be a computer that is almost twice as fast as my current one but the risks are a bit higher.
The price is good, however, so I can’t complain about that!