Off-lease business-class hardware is a goldmine. I've converted several old Dell Dimensions and Optiplex machines into decent gaming machines by adding a GPU and a higher-end CPU.
Mostly I reformat the drives and install Debian on them, which is always an instant 30% speed increase for development work. Can't say I have done a lot of gaming on them. The laptop from the article does have Wolfenstein "The New Order" from 2014 on it that I did for an experiment, and it's surprisingly snappy.
As development machines though, just unbeatable.
It's not the fastest machine in the world but it does everything I need it to do while being fairly compact and quiet.
Slightly surprised to find out it's 8 years old.
I couldn't get a PSU's that had enough power for a decent GPU while also fitting in the wonky proprietary slot. Nothing a Dremel tool couldn't solve, but almost annoying enough to let the bastards win and buy separate stuff.