Trash man rescues surprisingly decent gaming rig from landfill—and it even powers on

You know what they say, one man’s garbage is apparently another’s still pretty decent graphics card worth a few hundred quid. So sayeth the refuse collectors.

A garbage truck driver going by the handle ‘Siezio’ shared an unexpected treasure hoard on Reddit, revealing they’d salvaged the remains of a once high-end gaming PC from the trash (via TechSpot). Alongside a discarded GeForce RTX 2080 Ti graphics card, the sanitation specialist also found an AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X and a water-damaged PSU.

It gets wilder. While Siezio wisely decided the PSU was a lost cause, they cleaned the other parts with isopropyl alcohol before leaving them to dry thoroughly over two days. Having picked up a replacement PSU and some storage in the meantime, Siezio then attempted to power up the system—and it works.

No benchmarking of the rig appears to be immediately forthcoming, as Siezio has since deleted their post, potentially because the post has gone viral and maybe picking through the trash could be frowned upon by their employers. Before that though, they did share that it isn’t uncommon to see old hardware during their trash collection shifts, though often these systems would be real museum pieces or otherwise damaged beyond hope of restoration. Stumbling upon serious hardware that’s only about five years old in their line of work is a lightning strike find.

We rated the Founders Edition of the Nvidia GeForce RTX 2080 Ti when it launched a little over four years ago—indeed we’ve just loaned our original review sample to a colleague to act as a makeweight GPU until the RTX 50-series launches. To see what was a pricey, $1,200 high-end bit of kit upon launch thrown out like old socks makes my head spin, to say nothing of how we once wrote that the AMD Ryzen Threadripper 3970X would offer a ‘taste of the future.’ The forward march of time truly is merciless.

At the very least, those bits of silicon seem to have found a good home, but there’s a thought I keep getting caught on and that’s namely the subject of e-waste. I won’t begrudge anyone an upgrade, but this kit was hardly elderly and—as Siezio’s post demonstrated—was still perfectly serviceable. Assuming nothing tragic has happened to the hardware’s original owner, I can’t help but wonder about the circumstances surrounding this tech’s trashing.

Chromebook churn represents a worrying trend of disposability in tech, and the fact the UK’s e-waste recycling efforts are slowing down rather than amping up really isn’t helping my climate catastrophe flavoured existential dread. I can appreciate that even popping down to one’s local CEX (British trade-in tech/gaming store) or similar second-hand seller can be An Ordeal, but it’s still a better option than simply punting ancient hardware into the bin. That said, the burden of responsibility cannot solely rest with the consumer.

Simply greenwashing products will not save our Earth (a fact EU parliament is growing wise to). Manufacturers need to address the long, end-of-life tail of a product’s existence once it passes out of users’ hands and, worst case scenario, into landfill. I’m not sure water soluble circuit boards will save us—but it’s a start.