Holy crap, "old" Sandy Bridge CPUs are still expensive as hell!

[Denithor]

Or a SB/IB quad 4GB/250GB+ consumer grade system off eBay for like $120-150. Half already have Windows installed, otherwise just need a disk (can buy from OEM for $10-15 usually). I don't understand you guys buying CPU by itself.

 

[Headfoot]

But you can buy entire SB-EP workstations with 4, 6 even 8 cores and gobs of RAM for $500. There are several Lenovo ThinkStation S30 Xeon E5-1660 Six 6 Core 3.33GHz 16GB 500GB for under $400 on the bay. Systems like that will outlast any crappy $40 consumer level motherboard you can buy new.

Wow you are not kidding - am I reading this right that these come with a real PSU and enough space for a real GPU too? I might get one of these myself to replace my broken guest computer and just swap in the 7950 I've got in the old one

 

[daxzy]

Ok, so I was curious about the price of my Asus P8Z77V-LK (low-mid range Z77 board) board that I have sitting around after my Skylake upgrade.

Why the fvck is a used one going for $90-120 on eBay? That's literally the price of a brand new low-mid range Z170 board. Seeing the price of 2600K/2700K/3770K you're not saving much money doing this over a Z170 + 6700K.

PS, time to eBay!

Edit: I've sold like 10+ items on eBay just this last year. People rarely leave feedback. Sigh.

 

[WhoBeDaPlaya]

Depends. I just picked up two 2600Ks on CL for $90 a piece.
Assuming they OC decently (4.6GHz+), the price/performance of Skylake/Kabylake just doesn't compare.

I'm glad I kept my X58 mobos (and was able to source a bunch cheaply on CL).
Sold like hotcakes for mucho dinero.

 

[DaveSimmons]

Old hardware can be worth the money to keep an existing system running for a business. We've bought laptops off of eBay to make frankentops to let people bad at doing backups recover their Windows-encrypted data, or in one case for an exec who wasn't ready to move to a new laptop and reinstall everything.

Old hardware also supports old OSs, and connected hardware or software that refuses to run on a newer OS. Or the software might have a copy-protected license tied to that PC.

 

[daxzy]

Old hardware can be worth the money to keep an existing system running for a business. We've bought laptops off of eBay to make frankentops to let people bad at doing backups recover their Windows-encrypted data, or in one case for an exec who wasn't ready to move to a new laptop and reinstall everything.

Old hardware also supports old OSs, and connected hardware or software that refuses to run on a newer OS. Or the software might have a copy-protected license tied to that PC.

Literally 10+ years ago, I bought a Core2 era CPU at Fry's and they gave me a free motherboard. The board was some ECS Franken-Board with DDR1 + DDR2 memory, AGP and PCI-E that was about $50 retail brand new (but sold for well under). Fast forward to late 2015. As I'm clearing the closet, I see I still have this brand new ECS Franken-Board. I offered it for $5 on Craigslist, but there were no bites. Put it on eBay, and it recommended a $40 buyout! Low and behold, it got bought out at $40 a few days later.

 

[DrMrLordX]

I think the LGA motherboards hold value well since bent pins etc. Maybe I'm wrong, it's just a guess.

Anyway if you have a dump of used CPUs on the market, that can drive demand for motherboards, creating an artificial bump in price just due to scarcity. It is silly when you consider that Z170 boards aren't that much more, or are priced the same, and some Z68 boards!

It's cool that there are so many cheap Xeons out there, but when it comes to things like Sandy, people want to OC those things. You will probably find more demand for like i5-2600ks and i5-2700ks that can run 4.8 GHz+ than some 3-3.5 GHz Xeon with ECC RAM.

 

[PingSpike]

Literally 10+ years ago, I bought a Core2 era CPU at Fry's and they gave me a free motherboard. The board was some ECS Franken-Board with DDR1 + DDR2 memory, AGP and PCI-E that was about $50 retail brand new (but sold for well under). Fast forward to late 2015. As I'm clearing the closet, I see I still have this brand new ECS Franken-Board. I offered it for $5 on Craigslist, but there were no bites. Put it on eBay, and it recommended a $40 buyout! Low and behold, it got bought out at $40 a few days later.

That sounds like a pretty unique board. I vaguely remember that one. I'm not to surprised that sold for $40.

I've bought some unique hardware myself off ebay for more than it was really worth, I have a strange fetish for it seems.

 

[moonbogg]

Everytime I play BF1 at around 100fps I can't help but love my sandy. Sexy damn sandy. She just won't quit. If I were to wait for the day when my sandy performs as bad as my old dual core did before I upgraded, I'd be waiting for one sad hell of a long time. The core i7 2600k is the level of performance at which you have full permission to not care about buying a new CPU, and it will stay that way for a pathetically long time yet.
People have said, "Your sandy is starting to creak. Its old and bottlenecking your system. You need Skylake. Sandy is dead. Sandy is old. Sandy is blah".
Sorry folks, but I'm just not feeling it. This chip still flies.

 

[Blue_Max]

I'm in the opposite situation... i5-2400's coming out of my ears they're so cheap... and no boards anywhere to put them in.

all I can say is check your local kijiji.

 

[2is]

Literally 10+ years ago, I bought a Core2 era CPU at Fry's and they gave me a free motherboard. The board was some ECS Franken-Board with DDR1 + DDR2 memory, AGP and PCI-E that was about $50 retail brand new (but sold for well under). Fast forward to late 2015. As I'm clearing the closet, I see I still have this brand new ECS Franken-Board. I offered it for $5 on Craigslist, but there were no bites. Put it on eBay, and it recommended a $40 buyout! Low and behold, it got bought out at $40 a few days later.

I miss those ECS Fry's bundles! Those were the days

What I've been encountering lately is a lot of Dell OptiPlex machines running i5 2400 or 2500's with failing/failed hard drives. Most clients would rather buy a new computer then spend the money on repairing one that's 5-6 years old. I've acquired a few of these and made half way decent gaming machines out of them. Slapped an SSD and GPU that I've outgrown in them. Installed Win 10 using the Win 7 product code that's on there (even after the free upgrade period passed, this method still works) then given the computer away to a friend or a friends kid.

 

[kwalkingcraze]

It's going to get better. LGA1155 CPUs are now on par with LGA775 at 2013 year depreciated market rate.

 

[VirtualLarry]

What I've been encountering lately is a lot of Dell OptiPlex machines running i5 2400 or 2500's with failing/failed hard drives. Most clients would rather buy a new computer then spend the money on repairing one that's 5-6 years old. I've acquired a few of these and made half way decent gaming machines out of them. Slapped an SSD and GPU that I've outgrown in them. Installed Win 10 using the Win 7 product code that's on there (even after the free upgrade period passed, this method still works) then given the computer away to a friend or a friends kid.

VirtualLarry approved!

(Ok, those gaming rigs are probably simultaneously faster, and also cheaper, than the G3258 / GTX950 "Gaming rigs" that I built to sell.)

 

[sm625]

Wow you are not kidding - am I reading this right that these come with a real PSU and enough space for a real GPU too? I might get one of these myself to replace my broken guest computer and just swap in the 7950 I've got in the old one

I've bought a dozen of these systems over the last few years. No problems with any of them... until this week. The geniuses in manufacturing decided they like to move PCs around just for fun and I think they beat it a little too hard while moving it and the power supply failed. Luckily Dell T3500's use standard PC power supplies. That pushes the maintenance costs on these dozen 4-7 year old PCs to a grand total of... $40.

 

[Headfoot]

Do you know off hand if those Thinkstation S30s use a regular ATX PSU or is that a custom sized unit?

 

[PingSpike]

I've seen a lot of workstation pull motherboards from 1155 machines for sale on ebay. The power supply unit on many of them looks like a regular ATX. I didn't think the front panel headers were standardized or perhaps even labeled from what I could see though.

 

[jhu]

Expensive? Nonsense. I got 2 E5 2670 for $110. That's a total of 16 cores.