2000's Systems! Teardown and Test! 

I used to work in a computer shop. Those Best Buy stickers were basically "this computer wasn't fixed" badges.

This guy's channel is like ASMR for turbo nerds

ALDI Computers, dust bunny habitats, crappy power supplies & crapacitors. Mike's channel has it all! 😉

Wow, I love your trick for fixing bent CPU pins.

I like those blue case accents. Funny story, I built a computer several years ago and didn't really know much about parts selection. I got a case with cool looking vertical sections down each side of the front that looked like LED lights, but didn't know for several years how to make them light up. Doing an upgrade one day, I finally found the wire to connect them and discovered they were in fact blue lights! I never said I was a genius 😆

We serviced many Medion desktops back in the day at my shop. They were sold on the Home Shopping Network. They pushed their TV Tuner cards on the Greatest Generation customers who thought it was cool to watch TV on their computer.

these videos are incredibly detailed, concise, and well put together, as a linux user myself i appreciate the little compatibility note, even though it means nothing, us nerds know each other better than we know ourselves!

Came here for those guns, stayed for the nerdery. Nice channel ;)

Mike uploaded and now my day is better 😄

The 'Aldi PC' was the first windows machine my parents bought. There was also a bunch of software with it like 'Microsoft Encarta'. Nice to see it here again 😊

I remember these kind of Medion systems in ALDI. ALDI usually has special offers (super buys) on Thursdays and Sundays. They would have a bunch of stuff on a theme. The PCs would be one model, limited to being released at one time, but often a pretty good deal versus the other makes. My neighbour had a couple over the years and I helped fix them. The custom front panel and an MSI motherboard was a staple of the 2000s Medion. I am sure the offers leaflets are online somewhere.

I always liked how easy it was to distinguish the different Athlon and Athlon XP cores just by looking at the die. Guess there are advantages to having no heat spreader! I used to have a 2500+ Barton back in the day, and the best thing about it was you could set the FSB speed to 400mhz from stock 333 and it was identical to a 3200+ at a fraction of the price!

Every time I see your watch I think the same: "I'm proud of you, dude". :)

I remember back in the day drooling over those PCs while my mom was shopping, but was never able to afford one

Mike your videos are great - the systematic and granular level of breaking down and testing these systems is well done. If you ever want to grow the channel in a new direction, taking your clean-cut and detailed approach to explaining basic electronics could also be a great content goldmine for you. Example: @ 36:40 you talk about the strange setup with the fan header extension. A video covering the basics of connector pinouts and how each are manipulated/communicate could be a great video or series of videos depending on how you cut it. Take care!

I never skip ads for Mike ❤

Medion is not far from me, the company sits on a former German army base. There was a lot of hype about Medion Aldi PCs in the 90s, there are old news reports showing that people were queuing up for the PCs and fighting over them. Price / performance was ok. Medion PCs were also sold under other names, Lifetec. There was a separation between Aldi Nord and aldi Süd in Germany at that time. if I remember correctly Lifetec was aldi süd.

Nice video! Thanks!

great video, so relaxing and fun

this channel is a hidden gem

Great entertaining video. Thank you.

I had a Medion back in the day, was my first "real" gaming PC, upgraded from a Pentium 1. Mine came with a Geforce MX440 and also had this connector to the front panel for S-Video and other stuff. First thing I upgraded was the GPU since the MX440 didn't support some newer shaders. This brings back so many memories... Thank you, great video!

This video was relaxing to watch

Ex Geek Squad here, those are definitely Best Buy security stickers that would have been put there when the customer brought the PC in for service.

another video, awesome Saturday surprise!

Impressive video, I'm so proud of you!👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻👍🏻

your videos are awesome ! I am also a retro enthusiast and have so much fun watching your videos!

Oh man. This brings back so much childhood memories. Thank you for sharing the detailed tear down of those beauties

it's me, i'm the fan goblin. i gotta lot of grow lights to cool mike, i'm sorry. ♥

Just started watching your videos, can’t stop now 😅

Another awesome soothing, relaxing and happy video from you! I just love your magical disappearing screw editing. AMSR to the max! Have a great weekend.

congrats on your steady growth as a channel!

Great video as usual. I started pootering in 1994 and now have computers all over the house and I can still relate to the early machines. My earlist working pc is a P1 75mhz overclocked to a massive 100mhz now running W95. My latest are Ryzen 5000 series powered and Intel 9000 series. I mainly run Linux now, but still use W95, 98, 2000, XP, 7, 10 and recently 11.

You have a very pleasant demeanour and knowledgeable. Good videos. Subscribed

Been a subscriber since you had 2k subs and can already tell, that it’s going to be a long way full of subscriber milestone moments ❤️

The molex connector for the fan in the third one is because older MBs couldn't handle fans with high amps, the fans simply wouldn't spin up. I had a few fans in those days that would not work when connected to MB headers.

Must be nice to have access to all of that ! I'd be happy with just one computer. Thanks for sharing Mike. I have learned so much from your videos. 👍

Hi Mike, thanks for the great vintage computer stuff. greetings from Germany! :)

These videos are amazing! Thank you for taking the time to share your passion with us. Recommendation: Make an ASMR of the POST process, hard drive click of death, and uncasing a full-size tower, to name a few.

I love this channel

Mike, Brill videos , been into retro computers for a while, enjoyed your you tube now subscribed nice one keep the vid`s going

These videos always feel nice to watch, learning new things, seeing old things, and admiring how computers have progressed. Makes me want to build a custom mid-2000's PC

I look forward to your new videos as much as I do channels like LGR... congrats on all your success so far and to much more!

Thanks for another super pun video! Cheers

During my time working for a small PC builder, I used a razor blade to straighten pins on older Ryzen CPU's. As you could straighen multiple pins at a time.

I like this channel. It reminds me 20 years ago.... Things were not that simple and PNP. excelent job @MikeTech!

I wasn't a huge fan of the first video i watch of yours, however after watching a good number ive become a fan, your style and presentation is fantastic, thank you for your time and effort.

10 minutes in and I already love this channel. You're awesome.

Greetings from Scotland. Another brilliant video Mike! Love watching these and seeing all these 'vintage' computers being saved. If I had to guess, I reckon the business that owned the 2nd and 3rd PC, probably retired the 2nd one when support for Windows XP ended (the date of those last used files are very close to that time period) and then shoehorned Windows 7 onto the 3rd machine to squeeze some additional life from it for the software they used.

Wow an Aldi computer! I bet they were sold in larger Aldi stores. Until this video I never knew they existed. I love the look of it so cool! It certainly had a lot of dust inside. I like the mommy board.😆 I love learning new things from your videos. My pleasure is watching you dig into every system. I never new you could fix pins like that.

Never imagined to see a Medion Aldi PC on your channel, that’s just awesome 😂

i live near and Aldi and they do still sell Computer laptops phones, i didn't know until now that there are Aldis in the US. And Windows 7 that is so recent in my work they did intall Windows 7 on allot of XP machines and it works great besides the dead internal batteries they can even handle Aero, that's how good Windows 7 was.

Always like your videos there cutie!

I owned the 1st Medion PC as a kid in 2002! Never thought I'd see it again

They were actually sold in the Aldi stores as promo things. Usually they had just a couple in stock for each store, so you had to be there fast to get one. Good prices though! Medion also sold their PC's through their online shop as well, but they stopped with that recently.

Those old lite-on direct drive DVD drives are some of the most reliable drives i've seen. I never had one fail on me

@3:12 I worked for Best Buy many years ago (2001 - 2003ish), those stickers were used to tag things coming into the store so you knew they were not part of the sales inventory. Basically it was an anti-theft measure to stop people from leaving with not paying for things. My guess is that that PC was taken there for repair or upgrade, and that tag just marked it as not owned by Best Buy. It is a date.

8:25 i did not know marlbolo made an thermal paste! btw im an fan of you @MikeTech! i like ur content alot! i hope u will ind more systems to clean and explore them! and keep ur content up (:

Cool channel brother, I love watching these old PC's. Reminds me of those good and simple days using them 😊. +1 sub for you 👍

Still watching, but love the puns as-always 👌. It's a perfectly cromulent power supply ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

neat computers, also i love your apple watch background :D

Feel ya!

My family bought a medion core 2 duo system from aldi here in the UK after our emachines PC died. Was an awesome windows vista machine with similar media capture features in your system.

I didn't know that Aldi made PCs. Shouldn't be surprised I guess. An Aldi computer that is collectible from what I keep seeing, is the Aldi Commodore 64 though it may be limited to just Europe. Great video as always.

The guns though 💪

The first PC you showcased was the first computer I've ever used, down to the Sims 2 DVD that must be still laying around somewhere at my parents' house. Mine came with an Athlon XP x2 and 256/512 mb of RAM though so i guess i got the low-end trim of the lineup. The PSU on mine was different and had an OBNOXIOUSLY loud 120/140 mm fan arranged in pull configuration on the bottom of the shroud. Good times. It was also the first PC i ever disassembled, and the first time i learned what happens when you don't handle a mechanical hard drive with care. Oops! Sadly apart from the dead drive, either the PSU or motherboard went kaboom may years ago, and i never got around to diagnosing it. But the reason that PC holds a special place in my heart is the time my mother opened it up to clean it and i started wondering what all those things on the inside were there for. Fast forward a decade, and now I've got a computer engineering degree and halfway through a machine learning master, all because of that old underpowered (keep in mind i was using it in the 2010s) rust bucket, lol!

They sold the Medion PC's directly in store, it was always quite an event, people were lining up before the store even opened because they sold pretty cheap for what it was at the time. (source: i am from Germany)

That first Athlon was 1666 Mhz but you booted it nicely at 2083Mhz, good overclock. The second was a 2083Mhz.

I had a Medion sometime ago. They always put the dessicant inside the case. At least here in EU. But given the fact your Medion was built in Germany, I guess your dessicant bags are also from the factory =) Btw, I'm addicted to your channel. Looks like we're from the same era (born in 1984 for me).

Nice selection. Great transition into newer systems but keeping the beige being top of the list. I actually like the Beige/Blue color combo. That Aldi PC was better quality than my over priced chEap machine of the time. Nice specs throughout. FSP actually makes very good quality power supplies for many OEMs. Too bad that one bit the dust.

Neat trick to use the foam for holding the CPU and keeping the pins safe.

ah medion, it's for sure a system on my list of stuff to acquire, yet i am dying to get another ATX case for my next vista build, you could say you effectively "coaxed me" into messing with my old desktops again, can't wait to see some Dells!

I love the nostalgia of that era, although I used and sold only Athlons in preference to the P4s in those years. Those brown caps are United Chemicon, a very high quality brand that we can always rejoice in seeing on a board.

Hey man, ran into you over at vcf southeast and been loving your content since you mentioned the channel to me! Thought you might wanna know, the original graphics card was likely a Medion as well for that first system. I have a handful of their VGA cards and a few of them have similar form factor connectors, but I wouldn't be surprised if it was specifically a Medion GeForce ti4200, I've got one with the input for that connector and the yellow matches perfectly! Pretty neat as although I knew what the connector was for after some research, I've never found a system that actually had the output ports!

Hey! It’s that one guy that does cool things!

Love your work mikey brah another couple machines saved from thos evil gold scrapers

I have around 30 computers of this vintage. My ex father in law showed up to my house one day with a pallet stacked full and he said I’m moving and throwing these away. Do you want them? So I’ve had that pallet for over a decade. There’s a 2002 Powermac and a bunch of Win 95,98, and XP towers. I just stumbled upon your channel and I now want to see if I can get some of them going. This is cool. I subscribed.

yay... glad you made it today. sorry for bothering you on friday

We had one of those Aldi PCs, and yes you bought it in the store, came with a branded keyboard and mouse as far as I remember. I still have 2 Medion notebooks from 05

Medion PCs were kind of famous in germany in the early 2000s. And they were mostly sold in the ALDI grocery store which had a small electronics assortment which consisted of temporary offers until sold out. So they never had a regular assortment of electronics, just an isle were they sold everything from mattresses, to BBQs or vacuum cleaners on an occasional basis. The Medion PCs were very reasonably prized and were famous for being sold out on the first day of the offering. Buyers were mostly normal folks not the computer geeks.

I recognize that Medion's case. Turns out Medion PCs were branded as Cicero and sold at Future Shop in Canada.

FSP is actually a very well regarded power supply manufacturer as far as I know. At least in terms of their OEM supplies. (I think their consumer ones are slightly less well regarded tho if I remember right) Might be worth a repair, then again I imagine you don't have a shortage of ATX power supplies.

More XP-era stuff please and thank you :)

The end of a mechanical pencil works even better for straightening cpu pins. Perfect size.

The first machine is very nice looking!!!

Digging the BFG sticker.

I use card space blank from pc case to straighten cpu pins, just put it between the pins and wiggle it, go thru every pinrow, rotate cpu 90 degrees and repeat. You still have to manually straighten the edges and corners, but all the pins in the middle will self-alling perfectly

Now I gotta check out Aldi again, don't go there often but whatever sauerkraut they sell it is fantastic.

MikeTech posts....this will be a good day.

I remember Aldi having pcs and laptops in store over the years. They were in the glass display case along with the other random special buys

I'm from the UK and vaguely remember seeing desktops for sale (with powered up demonstration models!) in my local CO-OP supermarket :)

People are forgetful about CD/DVD drives and what they leave behind in those. However, any driver/burner start to misbehave after a while. And to make sure a read-only/burner drive opens /closes when you want them to, you often have to leave a (mini-)CD in it. Once you do, drives remain behaving so much better. Scrapped the use of DVD drives completely at least 10 years ago. Here in Paraguay (South-America for those geographically challenged) the quality of drives and misaligned laser lenses, combined with poor quality writeable discs, couldn't wait to get rid of those drives after phasing them out of any company process. Best decision ever.

Fun fact: My main PC was a Medion prebuilt from 2010 up untill recentely

LOL that ending, I don't know what to think about it either.

Grrrrrr that thumbnail! 🤩

Hey, my family had a Medion computer from ALDI with that exact case and silver globe power button! Same looking modem card with the white plastic block on it, too! Oh, the memories! Must've missed the P4 and MX4000 spec by a year or two though, ours had a P3 1000 and a GeForce 2 and it also didn't have Windows XP, it came with the dreaded Windows ME which honestly worked out perfectly stable and reliable for us though.

early 2000's were great for PCs and gaming. PC cases today are boring compared to what you could do with those. Gotta love them stickers!

The embossed Powerbutton and Made in Germany on the Medion PC: Thats a Terra Case labeled for Medion. The Button is the Terra Symbol. This Chassi was around for about 10-15 years only with different Faceplate. The second Aldi PC had it for sure. The Pentium MMX 166MHz from 1996. The Chassi was used till about 2008. Lite-On was a close partner to Medion and Medion sold Lite-on products directly in Germany, even in Aldi-Stores you could buy the Optical Drives, when it was Computerparts weeks. Thats how those were and still are sold: One or two Weeks twice a year in the "special Week" they are sold to get more costumers into the Shop. Wortmann AG is a PC Manufacturer in Germany and it's Professional Trademark is Terra, with it own Productionline. Today they do Office PC and Servers. Older German Gens may remember their Consumer Line and Shops: "Vobis" Todays Medions PC and Laptops gomes mostly from MSI.

Nice job, Mike. It's fun watching you go through these old clunkers to give them a new life. But really, where do they go and how are they used in their new lives? 🤨

Greetings from an Italian fan! The only one i think 😂 When you opened the second PC that motherboard was familiar to me... in fact it's the same Asus A7V8X-X that I have in my first PC, that I gelously keep in my bedroom 😅 back in 2002 I was only 4 years old and I was already torturing my dad to buy me a PC (instead of toys like other kids 😂). He had a friend assembling one with this motherboard and Windows ME (YES! I strictly wanted it, God knows why 😂). I used it for years, first for playing games, then I quickly installed XP because Me was crashing everytime... then at 8/9 I started disassembling it and swapped random components with others taken from other PCs that were donated to me 😅. That thing survived all of these tortures... and believe it or not, in 2012 I upgraded the ram to the maximum 3 gb, installed Windows 7 and used it until 2017, when browsing internet with it became impossible... anyway, your videos are my favourite ones, watching them kinda relax me, remebering good old times 😊