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Salvage parts from a laptop after an "attack?"

5

5pips49

Weaksauce
Joined
Mar 7, 2025
Messages
78
My neighbor is throwing out a "broken" HP laptop.
The laptop mainly consists of 3 pieces--
1) the half with the screen (screen is smashed in 2 places)
2) most of the half with the keyboard,
3) a large plastic piece/shard, which was 2/3 of the casing on the bottom of the laptop. In other words, it's the piece that you would unscrew to get to the parts inside.

It's weird how the bottom was cracked, jagged edges. It's not obvious what the story behind that could have been.

I want to say that someone took a small hammer to the computer. Maybe the guy was thinking that "I am destroying the hard drive so that no one can steal my passwords." But, the M.2 SSD does not appear to have any physical damage. Same with the internal parts.

There is also another laptop of similar status but that's a story for another day.

I don't think it got rained on at all but it could have.

So far, I think I will remove
Edit more detail: the data drive, "WD 250 GB PC SN530 NVMe SSD... 17 May 2021."
2 x 4 GB Samsung RAM,
maybe the wireless card, and maybe the CPU.
Also, I saw a date of 2019 somewhere on it. But, can't find it again.

So, I don't know much about what model the computer is. I could not find anything that reveals that.

My question is
1) is there much else of value that I can salvage?
2) If I do take the CPU out, will it be labeled enough to know what it is?
 
Last edited:
1. Not much. 250GB SSD won't be NMVe, so pretty slow. 2x4GB is pretty much worthless these days, even if it's DDR4. From that date, it's probably 2400MHz or slower. WiFi will also be outdated.
2. CPU won't really be labelled, and will be pretty slow these days. It'll also likely be soldered, and would be more trouble than it's worth.

Maybe if you have a crucible and a forge, you can melt down the parts for small bits of gold and copper.
 
5pips49 said:
My neighbor is throwing out a "broken" HP laptop.
The laptop mainly consists of 3 pieces--
1) the half with the screen (screen is smashed in 2 places)
2) most of the half with the keyboard,
3) a large plastic piece/shard, which was 2/3 of the casing on the bottom of the laptop. In other words, it's the piece that you would unscrew to get to the parts inside.

It's weird how the bottom was cracked, jagged edges. It's not obvious what the story behind that could have been.

I want to say that someone took a small hammer to the computer. Maybe the guy was thinking that "I am destroying the hard drive so that no one can steal my passwords." But, the M.2 SSD does not appear to have any physical damage. Same with the internal parts.

There is also another laptop of similar status but that's a story for another day.

I don't think it got rained on at all but it could have.

So far, I think I will remove
Edit more detail: the data drive, "WD 250 GB PC SN530 NVMe SSD... 17 May 2021."
2 x 4 GB Samsung RAM,
maybe the wireless card, and maybe the CPU.
Also, I saw a date of 2019 somewhere on it. But, can't find it again.

So, I don't know much about what model the computer is. I could not find anything that reveals that.

My question is
1) is there much else of value that I can salvage?
2) If I do take the CPU out, will it be labeled enough to know what it is?
Click to expand...
You need to start a thread specifically for this rebuild. I want to see this!
 
The drive is the most useful thing in that whole pile. If I had a 256GB fall into my lap I'd pick up a USB-C enclosure for it. They're ~$20.

WiFi 6 became widely available in 2020. If it has a WiFi 6 card it might be possible to use it as an upgrade for a slightly older WiFi 5 laptop. Anyone trying that is going to need the part number if it's Intel WiFi. Some Intel WiFi adapters require chipset support and won't work unless the machine has a compatible Intel chipset.
 
I take things out of things, but except for the things already mentioned, I can't think of anything.
 
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