Motherboard graveyard...where do they all go?

MrGuvernment

MrGuvernment

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Aug 3, 2004
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I was just curious, since i have been looking for a Socket 1336 Intel board for a Xeon chip it had me wondering.

No way every motherboard made for each socket gets sold, so what happens to them?

Do stores ship them back to the manufacturer?
Do store just have sales and hope to sell them all..

What happens to all those motherboards that don't sell..

The same i guess applies for all other PC parts, do they just end up in land fills, or recycled or something..
 
I imagine the brand new ones eventually go on sale and get sold towards the end of each generation; e.g. my local Microcenter had ~$100 socket 2011V1 boards during the first few weeks X99 came out.
I know with some high-end pieces of gear (think $20K+ pro cameras and the like) the manufacturer will buy back excess and used stock to prevent the formation of a secondary market, which lets them better control the perceived value of their products.
 
interesting on the buy back, perhaps PC components it can be the same, otherwise you would think there would be alot more new gear out there of older hardware..or i just haven't found it..
 
e-bay and amazon or other similar sites... gomputergeeks was an awesome place to get old hardware...
 
Most distributors sell them at a discount, until their supply is gone. What is left gets sold generally to third party resellers.
 
Last NOS (new old stock) board I bought was an Abit KT7A. First time I powered it up 4 of the capacitors literally exploded.

Those were made back in the day when pretty much all the mfgs had problems with the crappy caps from China.

The seller offered a 50% discount if I was able to fix it.. which I did.

That board must have been sitting around for around 14 years before I picked it up.

From what I have seen with newer boards though, they go on huge sales and people grab them up like hotcakes when that happens.
 
YeuEmMaiMai said:
e-bay and amazon or other similar sites... gomputergeeks was an awesome place to get old hardware...
Click to expand...

Oh man I miss that place. Their shipping was a bit of a ripoff and their item descriptions were often sketchy, but if you were already making a big order you could get a ton of misc crap for a few bucks.



Most of the old boards, I imagine, go to china where children burn the boards get lung cancer and leukemia, and collect the melted metal(s).
 
We have free electronic recycling. You pay a small amount when you purchase and many businesses like Staples and Habitat for Humanity ReStore take any stuff for free.
 
Was hoping maybe there were more places i guess that sold them vs amazon / ebay, completly forgot about the 3rd world places taking them for scrap..
 
I know with faulty motherboards, the ones that do go back to Taiwan or China they get repaired if possible and end up back as B stock, refurbished or ebay at greatly discounted prices but at the expense of limited (30 days RTB) or no warranty at all.

Not sure about graphics cards but wouldn't be surprised somebody else's RMA ends up being a replacement for another customer's RMA.
 
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