Went thrift hunting for electronics and spotted an HP all-in-one sitting there for $25.49.
Figured worst case, I’d pull whatever useful parts were inside.
Got it home, powered it up, and immediately realized this was not the ancient office PC I assumed it was.
Specs:
HP 23.8" Next Gen AI All-in-One
AMD Ryzen AI 5 340
Radeon 840M
50 TOPS NPU
16GB DDR5-5600 dual-channel
512GB Samsung NVMe SSD
Touchscreen
1080p IR webcam
Wi-Fi 6 / Bluetooth
Windows 11 / Copilot+ capable
Then I ran HP’s hardware diagnostics because I was waiting for the inevitable bad news.
Nothing.
Processor: PASSED
SSD SMART: PASSED
SSD wear: PASSED — 0% wear
SSD Short DST: PASSED
SSD Optimized DST: PASSED
Memory: PASSED
System board: PASSED
Wireless: PASSED
Graphics/video memory: PASSED
Audio: PASSED
USB: PASSED
Ran the second diagnostic pass too.
Everything passed again.
So what was “wrong” with this $25 computer?
Windows was absolutely cooked.
Startup Repair failed.
Reset This PC failed.
Recovery failed.
Meanwhile the actual hardware is apparently sitting there wondering why everyone abandoned it.
I made a fresh Windows 11 installer, wiped the old partitions off the 512GB Samsung drive, and I’m doing a clean install now.
The funniest part is that I originally bought it to flip.
Now I’ve discovered the RAM can be upgraded and I’m seriously considering turning this ridiculous $25 thrift-store find into a local AI workstation instead.
I went looking for scrap electronics and accidentally came home with a modern Ryzen AI touchscreen PC.
I think I may have used up my thrift-store luck for the year.
Update: It lives. Clean Windows 11 install completed successfully. The hardware diagnostics all passed, and this thing is snappy. Still deciding whether I’m flipping it or keeping it. Im leaning toward keeping it, but what do you all think I should do?