In earlier parts of this series of blog posts, I acquired, upgraded and re-assembled an older PC. It was never my intention to keep it, so the final act was to try and sell it on. Preferably with a small profit. But before I could do that, there was the HDMI issue to resolve.
Selling a PC without a working HDMI output was going to be tough. It’s the most commonly used display connection, so I needed to get it fixed. I was able to find some older forum posts where people reported similar issues. While I’m not 100% certain of this, it looks like Intel simply does not offer working Windows 10 drivers for the integrated GPU in Sandy Bridge and Ivy Bridge processors.
Discrete graphics
The solution was of course to replace the integrated graphics with a dedicated GPU. But in the middle of pandemic and amidst the worst chip shortage I remember that was not easy. Any card with decent gaming performance was only available at a steep premium. Even second hand they were going for double their original retail price.
My only option was to go for a card that had so little gaming potential that it is not attractive to gamers at all. Enter the Geforce GT710. This is a dedicated video chip that actually gets outperformed by any modern integrated GPU. It’s cheap and mostly terrible, but it does have an HDMI output. And it can be cooled passively.
The sale
Once I installed the card, I had a working PC again with a quad-core i5, 8GB of RAM, an SSD and the option to connect a monitor. The only thing left was to find a buyer. My total spend at this point was higher than I’d originally hoped, and dangerously close to what I was expecting the PC the fetch.
It went mostly unnoticed on Marktplaats (essentially the Dutch equivalent of Graigslist and Ebay), but eventually someone made me an offer that was slightly above what I had invested. All in all, this was a fun project, and I believe the buyer got a real bargain.
