Check your local Craigslist or other classifieds for cheap old GPUs. Or if you have another PC, borrow the GPU and power supply just to get it to boot.

And also are sharp enough to cut your hand if you hold it in the wrong way.

You can check the data the drive itself keeps about disk errors. This data is called SMART.

https://www.howtogeek.com/134735/check-ssd-or-hdd-health-with-smart/

Figure out if the drive is having problems or not, then look at replacing it.

Another thing that slows down old laptops is thermal throttling. Once again there are plenty of programs you can download to check component temperatures. Have you cleaned dust out of the inside of the laptop and re-done the thermal paste?

Sounds like you need a pihole.

Sounds amazing. Onto the steam wishlist it goes.

Send an email to Corsair support and ask if you can have / buy some screws. They’ll probably just send you some. Worst case they can for sure tell you the length you need.

So based on the other comments, I would check the cooler and anything else that was above the CPU to see if something got too hot and dribbled solder on the CPU. Also is the socket next to that drop clean, or are there other smaller droplets nearby?

If you read the little summary, the test drive was in north Africa.

AntennaPod is great, free, and has no ads. Pretty sure it’s open source too.