How do you sort out your various HW leftovers?

S

Stardusted

Limp Gawd
Joined
May 10, 2007
Messages
389
Possibly off-topic, but I deemed this section the best one in terms of relevance, so here it goes.

I recently decided to tidy up some of my stuff from previous pc builds (and other electronic/gaming thingies). The fight was from the start a doomed one and sure enough I ended up putting most of them back into the same boxes I got them out of.

An example. I have 3 spare wireless keyboards. And I do not even include my main backup wireless keyboard, that would up the number by one. Several old ram dimms, small ones, like 512 ddr3 or even 128/64mb older ones (not ddr3 obviously). Old pci sound cards, dvd recorders, motherboard manuals/cds...

What do you do? Just throw them all out and be done with them? Help a poor hoarder decide.
 
if they are still decent, give them away before tossing them.
 
Throw em in the trash. The hell with that save the planet bullshit. EPA/goverment cross the line with me when i went shopping for a new washer machine and those new high efficient little water use washers machines with no center post agitator and can't wash a real working man hands on clothes.:mad:
 
Either give them away to people in the freebies thread here: http://hardforum.com/showthread.php?t=1275498 Have the requester pay shipping and have them add some feedback to your Heatware rating. You never know when you're gonna need good positive heat feedback.

Or sell them for scrap. I live near a few electronics recycling centers that will pay you by the pound for obsolete electronics. I've sold a lot of old electronics PCB's and scrap metal from old car parts (for example, when I replaced my car shocks with new ones, the old ones were sold for scrap, whole aluminum cylinder heads, etc).

Sell the keyboards and memory by the lot full on eBay, if you want to put up with eBay. I finally got off my ass and sold a ton of 2GB DDR2 dimms on the Amazon Marketplace, after 45 or so sales last year, I racked up approximately $450 in profit selling various cheap items over time. It did involve a bit of work selling for $12 to $15 each time, but in the end you get used to it, you turn it into a routine and I deposit the money into a separate bank account to make it easier to see how much you've sold, instead of mixing the money into your primary account. I've been selling a lot of lower valued items but at a higher sales volume. This way its less risky, if the buyer complains, its not a big deal. I've gotten some positive buyer feedback which will hopefully help me in some bullshit dispute in the future, if it has to happen. Also, the original retail box of the item should increase its resale value a little bit too.

I think of it as a side job that I can put how ever much time into it as I want to, instead of dealing with fixing people's PC's and annoying phone calls from cheap skates who don't want to pay me a dime for cleaning their shitty malware infected PC.
 
Last edited:
Man I feel your pain here! I am such a hoarder. I am unable to throw away electronics, not out of saving the planet, but out of a hoarding mentality. Usually I end up {eventually} selling the items or giving them away....
 
I've hoarded shit for a long time and just recently I'm willing to go through the trouble of selling something for $10 bucks profit as opposed to getting .10 cents for scrap now. There's been shit I've thrown out in the past that I regret not selling instead. I had this one Zalman fanless PSU that was worth $20 bucks on eBay vs. .25 cents at the scrap yard and yet I chose to scrap cause I was so lazy. And it was in WORKING condition. At the time I said "pffftt... its only $20 bucks, fuck that" and looking back now at how well I've sold over the last 5 months, I would have had more money over the long run if I dropped that attitude.

In my closet, I've organized a setup with a shelf for my Amazon "store merchandise", PC's to test RAM, video cards, Hard drives, various hardware, etc. Then I have a printer and a bunch of shipping boxes and padded envelopes, packaging tape, bubble wrap, shipping scale, etc.. I organized all my RAM that's memtested and ready to sale in memory ESD bags, then organized in ziplock bags by the same type. Video cards are just stacked on another part of the shelf. CPU's all ESD bagged'd and ready to ship out. I have collected ESD bags of various sizes for motherboard to hard drives, and collected hard drive padded shipping boxes that they were going to throw out from my job.
 
Last edited:
I keep everything. Who knows when I'll want to slap an extra rig together out of spare parts. Even if the parts wouldn't be great for gaming anymore, a functional PC is better than none in situations where there's no PC.
 
I used to have several bins of parts but threw away a lot of parts before my last move. I tend to hold onto old obsolete hardware "just in case" I need it for something. Luckily I was able to resurrect an old machine with some hardware I had and saved the guy a fortune on "upgrading" the system because it was for a specialized CNC mill and those are expensive.
 
t1337Dude said:
I keep everything. Who knows when I'll want to slap an extra rig together out of spare parts. Even if the parts wouldn't be great for gaming anymore, a functional PC is better than none in situations where there's no PC.
Click to expand...
That's the hoarder mentality right there! Who knows man, you might need it some time... blah blah. Sell it for cash while it worth something now, than junking it 10 years later when its worth nothing.
 
I used to keep everything down to every cord I'd got with any hardware purchase. Needless to say it was to the point I couldn't find a damn thing and filled up a few trash cans with cords and old pci/agp/isa cards. Yes I could have probably made a couple hundred but once you figure out how much time it would take to manage that many small sales, it just wasn't worth my time.
 
I generally don't have much for leftovers as I have a friend or two that could more often than not use my old parts for an upgrade.
 
I have a rack with labeled tubs that i use to store extra parts and components. Saves money when you want to try something out and you can walk across the room and scrounge some wire or a switch to solder on to whatever project is going
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top