• Some users have recently had their accounts hijacked. It seems that the now defunct EVGA forums might have compromised your password there and seems many are using the same PW here. We would suggest you UPDATE YOUR PASSWORD and TURN ON 2FA for your account here to further secure it. None of the compromised accounts had 2FA turned on.
    Once you have enabled 2FA, your account will be updated soon to show a badge, letting other members know that you use 2FA to protect your account. This should be beneficial for everyone that uses FSFT.

Why do people buy old processor lots?

S

sphinx99

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Dec 23, 2006
Messages
1,191
I was just window-shopping on ebay and noticed that there are quite a few "big lots of old processors" that people bid for and purchase pretty aggressively.

Examples of closed auctions just in the P3 section,
http://cgi.ebay.com/Lot-of-36-Penti...6QQihZ002QQcategoryZ14292QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.com/LOT-OF-46-INTEL...3QQihZ002QQcategoryZ14292QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.com/LOTof-62-Intel-...1QQihZ014QQcategoryZ14292QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem
http://cgi.ebay.com/LOTof-72-Intel-...4QQihZ014QQcategoryZ14292QQrdZ1QQcmdZViewItem

What I was wondering is, what do people actually do with this stuff? Outside of replacement parts, is there any practical value to these things? I would think that even if you did manage to get them all powered up and working on some highly parallelized task, the power consumption bill alone would make a standard Core2 proc a better bet over a fleet of these things.

What am I missing?
 
As an eBay Associate, HardForum may earn from qualifying purchases.
Well, the are great for replacements, and the other thing is that they are good for simple low cost machines.

I use my leftover stock from years past to build cheap hardware routers and servers for people sometimes as it is more cost effective.


$400 seems like a lot for older processors though (even 36 of them).
 
I know some metal recycling places pay a lot per pound for processors. I don't remember what the min pounds are or the dollar amount from the last time I looked. That amount they are paying is a whole lot though. Maybe they just sell them individually to people who just want to upgrade their old pcs.

 
people build up systems with old hardware and sell them to unsuspecting customers, at one of my old IT jobs the boss had been swindled into buying PII systems with 10GB harddrives and 128mb of PC100 ram :eek:
 
MN Scout said:
I know some metal recycling places pay a lot per pound for processors. I don't remember what the min pounds are or the dollar amount from the last time I looked. That amount they are paying is a whole lot though. Maybe they just sell them individually to people who just want to upgrade their old pcs.

Click to expand...

I saw a PBS show on gold, and they showed how the old processors could be crushed and chemically treated to recover the gold off of the processor/PCI cards.
 
Bill Clo said:
I saw a PBS show on gold, and they showed how the old processors could be crushed and chemically treated to recover the gold off of the processor/PCI cards.
Click to expand...

Exactly, most of the lots are for gold recycling.
 
If i had the money i would use those older processors to build computers for the low income population, Hey man poor kids need some PC love too, and it will also help them keep up with the rich kids Academically.
 
Where I live all the low income kids already have computers and cells phones and broadband and MTV inspired clothes. They and the rich kids get on MySpace and check out trim all night, Not a whole lot of edumacation going on I don't think. Unless "Yo WuZ GoOD My bEoOTCH" features some fancy algorithim I don't know about.
 
Im an iditot. Wrong thread lol

Anyways, I think it is for the gold contacts.
 
Interesting, I didn't know that. I hope there is a fair amount of gold in those processors to make it worth the cost. Does anyone know how much? Just curious.

The bidding can be quite ferocious. I noticed when I was checking to see how much a P3/1GHz processor would cost to upgrade some old PC that I had... I figured maybe I could get one for the cost of shipping... after all, who would buy one? I was surprised to see such demand.
 
Man... I just threw out about 100 AMD processors that I retrieved from an old office computer lab. Like, 4 months ago.

I got 250 of the Duron600 (650s?) systems for 35$. My roomate and I went to go pick them up, it was a sight to behold. The ones that wouldn't boot up properly were gutted for their cases (modding :D) fans and NB/CPU HSFs.

The other 150 that work were donated for local charities for underprivilaged children.

That's my giving spirit for the year 2006.
 
At $20/gram, you'd have to get more than a gram of gold out of each proc to make it worth it. :confused:
 
Processors contain very small quantities of precious metals - you'd have to buy them fairly cheap to make money smelting them down.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top