Just finished restoring an old throwaway, and added some minor beefs to it. No point in spending a lot, but it was fun.
OS: Windows 8 Pro 64-bit (upgraded from Vista Home Premium 64-bit)
System: HP Pavilion a6650f
Processor: AMD Phenom X4 9550 / 2.2 GHz Quad Core
Memory: 8.00 GB RAM DDR2 (Upgraded from 6.00 GB)
Integrated Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce 6150 SE / nForce 430
GPU: AMD Radeon HD5450 / 512MB DDR3 VRAM
Storage: Seagate 500GB / 7200RPM HDD (Upgraded from original, which I think was a Western Digital, don't remember. Already threw it away.)
Power: 500W Antec (Upgraded from 250W piece of crap)
Recently been taking in abandoned or throwaway desktops and laptops lately since I can't afford to build up another monster like my last one that cost me almost $1000.
Back in the summer, got myself a thrown away Sony Vaio VPCF12AFM/W gaming laptop. Folks spent like $600 bucks getting help from Sony and Microsoft and asked my idiot help back in the summer who just blankly told them the same crap that Sony and MS had told her, saying that the power supply/DC jack were broken. However, when I got it home, it just had a bad AC adapter and corrupted OS. Two hours to do a system restore and $40 for a new AC made it good as new.
Operating System: Windows 8 Professional 64-bit (Originally Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit)
System Model: Sony Vaio VPCF12AFM/W
Processor: Intel Core i3 i3-350M / 2.26 GHz Quad Core
Memory: 8.00GB RAM DDR3 (Upgraded from 3.69GB RAM DDR3)
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce 310M / 512MB DDR3 VRAM
Screen Size: 16.4"
Storage: Kingston 500GB 3Gb/s SSD (Upgraded from Samsung 500GB(455GB usable) 7200RPM HDD)