Goodwill shopper discovers $30 PC hiding an RTX 3080 Ti and Ryzen 7

[midian182]

WTF?! Everyone loves a bargain, especially when it involves spending $30 on a PC that has over $1,500 worth of hardware packed inside. That's what happened to one Goodwill shopper who stumbled upon the RTX 3080 Ti/Ryzen 7-powered computer in a South Carolina store.

No-Investment9793 posted on Reddit that his dad is a regular customer at the local Goodwill, where he knows everyone. According to the post, someone at the store pointed out the PC, which had been donated by a mother after cleaning out her kid's room. The redditor's dad snapped it up for just $30.

It seems the donor was likely unaware how much the PC was worth. Inside the case was an MSI RTX 3080 Ti. The Founders Edition of this high-end card had a $1,199 MSRP when it launched in June 2021. It's unclear which MSI model is in the PC, but there are top-tier Suprim X models on eBay reaching almost $1,000.

Found this PC at goodwill for $30
byu/No-Investment9793 inPcBuild

Also in the PC was a Ryzen 7 3800X. The processor carried a $399 MSRP when it launched back in 2019. There's also an unidentified water cooler.

The PC has certainly seen better days. It's very dirty, and the person who put it together didn't prioritize cable management. No-Investment9793 posits that it was put together by someone young, based on the number of stickers on the case, and there was so much thermal paste used that it leaked into the CPU cooler.

Whether the PC would work is unclear as there's no RAM, either because it was removed before being donated or stolen.

The machine is being stripped for parts. No-Investment9793 says his dad will be selling the RTX 3080 Ti – hopefully, it still works (he says he doesn't know how to test it).

Even though the redditor's current PC has an ancient GTX 1660 Super, he says the Ampere card would be too large for his case and he doesn't "run super crazy games" anyway. However, the Redditor will be swapping out his current Ryzen 5 2600X for the newer Ryzen 7 3800X.

Being the internet, a few commenters have cast doubt on the claims, but it's easy to imagine someone who didn't know much about PCs simply assuming it was broken --hence the $30 price. It just goes to show that even in today's connected age, there are still some bargains to be found.

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Goodwill shopper discovers $30 PC hiding an RTX 3080 Ti and Ryzen 7

 

[WhiteLeaff]

It's almost like finding a winning lottery ticket, of course, if it's not defective.

 

[nitebird]

It's almost like finding a winning lottery ticket, of course, if it's not defective.

Even if defective, short of a lightning strike, it's almost impossible for every component to become non-functional at the same time.

 

[Neatfeatguy]

My younger brother found some old physical PC games at his local Goodwill a couple months back. He doesn't do anything with them, but I do, so he grabbed them all for about $18. Got myself a few more physical games I didn't have and added them to my collection. Got them up and running on my system without needing a physical disc in the drive to play them.

3080Ti is still a helluva card to have, that's what I've been using the past 3 years and I've had no reason to need to upgrade. I even run the card at 75% of the normal power draw and things run amazing at 1440p. I don't even bother with any of that upscaling or frame generation crap that's getting shoved down our throats and I have zero issues.

 

[mgwerner]

Even if defective, short of a lightning strike, it's almost impossible for every component to become non-functional at the same time.

Never underestimate the power of a teenager to destroy tech equipment.......

 

[Neatfeatguy]

Even if defective, short of a lightning strike, it's almost impossible for every component to become non-functional at the same time.

Lightning strikes are awesome, they range from doing minimal damage to taking everything out. I've seen a lightning strike completely fry a system and I've seen a lightning strike only take out the NIC on any device physically connected to the network.

I've also seen a PSU take out a lot of stuff in a computer: GPU, CPU, RAM and MB. Only thing not harmed was the HDD.

 

[Axeia]

I've also seen a PSU take out a lot of stuff in a computer: GPU, CPU, RAM and MB. Only thing not harmed was the HDD.

That's exactly why it's never recommended to skimp on the PSU. That used to be a thing back in the 90s for quite a few PSUs but nowadays it shouldn't with any worth anything.
I'm sure you can still find one lacking all security features on eBay, Amazon etc if you really want to. Stick to known brands and this shouldn't be an issue anymore nowadays

 

[wiyosaya]

I'd say that a "bargain" like this is a rarity and unlikely to be found elsewhere whether or not the components in another such "bargain"are the same.

The story sounds somewhat off to me. Why would the woman just "dump" her son's PC without consulting him first? Many reasons are possible, however, if she said anything at all about it to her son and her son legitimately purchased the components for such a PC, the son would have very strongly protested, and unless the mother was totally unreasonable, I doubt she would have dumped it like that. Who knows what happened.

 

[StupidPeopleSuk]

Been there, done that, although on a different note:

Many years ago I was looking thru some assorted stuff at a local goodwill store & noticed an unusual looking glass bowl that I though was interesting...so I bought it.... for $15

I showed it to my Mom & she almost had a heart attack, cause it was one of the original "Carnival Glass" items from an early 20th century fab that specialized in mixing colbalt and pure silica together in a gas-fired oven, then molding or blowing them into all kinds of cool shaped things, which produced a very random but usually one or two of a kind color patterns in the glass.

She knew it was the real deal, since she had been collecting the various pieces from since I was very young, and knew exactly how to read the coded numbering systems they used on the bottom...

Turned out that the piece I bought for her was worth ~$20K at the time, which was back in the early 90's....I would imagine their values have probably increased significantly since then, as they are ever rarer today than they were back when I bought it...

Thanks GOODWILL