I recently stumbled upon a motherboard while taking out the trash at my apartment complex during dumping season. It was part of a case I found, which is actually in better shape than mine. I'm curious how to identify the model of the motherboard because my current one is pretty old and doesn't even support WiFi, so I'd love to know if this one is an upgrade. The only markings I found say "msi a520m a pro core boost ddr4 boost," but my Google searches haven't brought up any matches. Additionally, I'm concerned about the SSD I found with it—I'm wondering if using it risks exposure to malware. I might end up just not using it, but any extra storage is valuable! I'd also like to share a photo for better context if needed.
2 Answers
It's a bottom-end AM4 motherboard, and it doesn't have WiFi built in, so you'd need a PCIe card or a USB dongle to get online. If you're mainly doing light tasks, it'll be perfectly fine. You might want to check what else you can salvage from the case—like the memory or GPU if it has one! Just test it first with a Linux live environment to ensure everything's in working order.
In theory, you could get a virus from an SSD, but it's not common. Just formatting it and installing a fresh OS should clear up any issues. And if there’s nothing valuable on the SSD, go ahead and use it! It's nice to have extra storage for sure.
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