How do you afford to water cool your PC or even maintain it yourself if you can't afford another one

I admit I am a tad crazy but I have 6 working systems (2 with W10, one with W11, one with W8.1 and one with Mint plus my server) and enough hardware to build 5 more but with much less powerful hardware before 2015, there is not really a use for all of them, but I can't part with them, I spent time and money to make them nice, and the selling price would be ridiculous compared to the investments... then I have a few unused laptops, and I don't count the dozen of old consumer desktop platforms that I keep in boxes, and sometimes offers to very limited budget people who only wants a light desktop app machine...I am actually making one for a someone who can't afford a lot more than a hundred euros for a computer

so I became somehow like a car collector who would have too many vehicles to drive them all in the same time, but enjoys to look at them all in his garage...
In my case, of course, water-cooling is just a fun and I don't fear to find myself without a working system

 

I've just done similar to you, @kim - rebuilt a Sandy system for a mate's kid inside a generic beige box that now looks like a UNSC crate. Taken forever and I've made many a booboo/learnt some new stuff along the way (don't EVER use Flame spray paint), but it'll be decent in a couple of weeks when done (obviously I won't be happy with it because I can still see all the defects that wind me up). As long as the GPU can handle the titles, especially DX-wise, I see no reason the older kit can't keep flying. Only because not everyone is chasing 120fps ray traced in Cyberpunk .

 

Great idea, the kid will be happy, and can earn his stripes with it, adding a small SSD and a small GPU (decent ones from 2014/2015 can be purchased for so cheap)... if possible; and installing a light OS can even make it enough powerful to play some games...like you said, not everyone is chasing 120fps
you shoud show us the thing in modding, I'm curious to see it, I like to see old school modding, nowadays, there's quite nothing else but RGB and distros to watch, i like it too, but nothing compared to a hand made modding

 

Good Lord, it would be embarrassing! It's only really a (semi-tidy) paint job and a bunch of parts chucked together...! I suppose I did also drill out a USB 3 front plate.

I did a Gears-themed Xbox 360 RROD charity shop kerbside dump rescue during lockdown as well, gave that to the eldest and she's been battering it ever since. Paint and a fix up again only though...