Ideas to recycle an old PC

Ideas to recycle an old PC

Old PCs are recyclable and are not necessarily to throw. To revive these old machines , you can for example increase their power , replace their hard drive , convert to media player or use it as a wireless router.

Find other handy functions for an old PC

One of the best ways to give a second life to an old machine to make it more powerful . The power of a PC is essentially based on three main elements: the hard drive, RAM and processor. Make a more powerful machine returns to modify these three components. The replacement drive must have a greater capacity than the original hard drive and be faster . Moreover, if the PC is older than two years , it is best to replace the CPU with a more powerful model . Upon acquisition of the new processor , make sure that the motherboard and the new hardware is compatible . New Ram, meanwhile, are already added to Ram to get the maximum number of MB

Change the hard drive from an old PC

If the PC does not have a large enough disk space and begins to saturate , it becomes slow and it becomes tedious to launch the most common applications. Sometimes the simplest solution is to release a certain amount of disk space by deleting files or folders . But if no file or files can not be deleted , you must exchange the downright hard against another more powerful. To do this, you need an external USB enclosure , a 3.5 -inch hard disk, cloning software ( Acronis True Image or Norton Ghost from Symantec ) and a PC running Windows Vista , XP -2000 to 98 . The goal is to change the hard drive without having to reinstall the operating system and software. The first step is to install the new hard drive into an external USB enclosure . Then you have to transfer all the data from the original hard drive to the new drive. The software and the Windows system files are also copied to the new disk. It should eventually remove the outer casing and extract the new disk. Finally, it remains to be installed in place of the old hard drive.

Transforming the old PC into a multimedia player

It is also possible to reuse an old computer turning it into media player. The computer in question must be at least a Pentium III or equivalent. If it is newer , but it’s even better if it is older , it is better to consider other types of recycling. This old PC must include a CD-ROM drive , sound card , video output (S -Video , for example) , a graphics card, and RAM at least 128 MB To run the old PC as a media player , you must connect it to a hi-fi or TV, then use a system such as GeexBox to play Divx files or MP3 format. When the system works well , the menu should appear on the TV screen .

Using an old PC as a wireless router

Another practical way to reuse an old obsolete computer is to turn it into WiFi Hotspot to share an Internet connection in a network of PCs . Wifi Hotspot has the same functions as a wireless router , that is to say that their role is to share the Internet connection among several computers attached to the wireless network . The difference between the hotspot and the router resides on their scope . Indeed, a hotspot has a wider coverage compared to the router. To operate as a router , the old PC must have a wireless card . The PC must also have a network card in order to receive the internet connection from the proposed by Fai (box , key or other ) hardware support. Where has all the necessary equipment , you must authenticate with Free Radius or a community system (such as Fon, Polaris or wifi ) to initiate the functions of the old PC as a WiFi Hotspot .