Is my legacy, going to be a legacy, of e-waste? Sigh.

[VirtualLarry]

For a number of years, pretty-much since the Core2 era, I've been building PCs. Ever since I moved into my newer, yet smaller, apt., I've been building a PC every month or two, beyond just the ones that I use personally. I've got a storage shed full of them, all becoming obsolete. (Well, you know the story, any PC becomes obsolete the second that you take it out of the store...)

WTF to do with all of them? Keep them, and then when China tariffs get going, try to sell them for a profit, as every other PC dealers cost will increase substantially?

Or blow them out, for $200 a PC or something. (Most cost me $300-500 worth of parts.)

I don't want my desktop custom PCs to end up like CRTs, where no-one wants them.

I know that we are all enthusiasts, with custom-built desktop PCs, but "normal" people? Millennials these days, think that only their grand-parents have desktop PCs.

Who the F wants a desktop PC, to browse the internet and send e-mail, that's not a gamer that wants a custom gaming rig? That doesn't already have one, in the US?

I've given some to my friends, but that "market" (free PCs), is close to saturation (they don't want multiple PCs taking up space either, even if they were free).

I mean, I've got stuff like Ryzen 3 1200 @ 3.80Ghz, 8GB DDR4-2400, 256GB M.2 PCI-E NVMe SSD, Windows 10, dGPU. Not too shabby, IMHO.

I've tried to sell them on Craiglist, crickets.

I've tried to sell them here, on FS/FT. Crickets.

Haven't tried Ebay yet, I might still do that.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/tech...-literally-catch-fire/?utm_term=.b5eeb0b8d847

This article also gives me pause. I've got a number of "lipstick batteries" (cell-phone chargers, vaguely shaped like a large lipstick container), and "battery packs", floating around my place. I bought a whole ton of them off of ebay from BestBuy. While they are quality name-brands (PNY), I still am concerned that I may have already lost track of some of them, and in a few years, when the charge dissipates, they might become flammable. I don't want my apt., nor my neighbors, to burn down.

 

[lxskllr]

Buying stuff sucks, especially electronics. I've got too much crap laying around. I've tried to justify it due to most of the things being used, but it's still taking up space. I mentioned before I have enough BDUs/ACUs to start my own military :rollseyes:

Electronics are really bad to hoard. As you said, the shelf life isn't that long. I ended up with some extra C2D stuff from years ago, but I think I'll be able to get rid of those. I'm hoping I can get a working machine going, and I'll sell it to the boss to replace the fire breathing Preshott he's using at work. I'm not that interested in hardware anymore anyway. I just bought a dell refurb from microcenter. Huge upgrade from my e6600, and *I just plugged it in and it worked. No hassle.

*Not entirely true. I wanted to just swap my drives over and keep going. First time that didn't work. I ended up with grub errors. I'm sure I could have figured it out eventually, but I did a clean install. Kind of nice having a lean system again without the accumulated crap.

 

[whm1974]

There are nonprofits that would be glad to take them.

 

[Viper GTS]

The bigger question is why are you building all these machines? If you're trying to make money it's clearly not working.

The problem with stuff like this is the people it will appeal to can just do it themselves. Why would they buy yours and miss the fun of building it? Everyone else is better suited by an off the shelf machine. And, as you've pointed out, nobody wants desktops any more except people that post here.

If you truly want to get rid of them I bet free on craigslist would work. Accept the fact that they're not likely to result in money for you and give them away while they're still useful instead of letting their value go to zero and then truly be stuck with them.

Then stop building them.

Viper GTS

 

[lxskllr]

The bigger question is why are you building all these machines? If you're trying to make money it's clearly not working.

The problem with stuff like this is the people it will appeal to can just do it themselves. Why would they buy yours and miss the fun of building it? Everyone else is better suited by an off the shelf machine. And, as you've pointed out, nobody wants desktops any more except people that post here.

If you truly want to get rid of them I bet free on craigslist would work. Accept the fact that they're not likely to result in money for you and give them away while they're still useful instead of letting their value go to zero and then truly be stuck with them.

Then stop building them.

Viper GTS

Wouldn't have to be free, but he could make an amazing deal and recover a little bit of money.

 

[dave_the_nerd]

Yeah, you can get rid of them, you're just going to take a bath on them

And you should probably stop building systems on the off chance you might be able to sell it. Have a buyer first, then build them something.

That means, of course, that you will have to find something to do with your time and energy that is not building PC's.

 

[Hans Gruber]

There are investments and there is old silicon. None are wise but what can be said. We all make stupid investments and choices in life. Here is just a handful of what I have.

[url=https://imgur.com/5AGAu6Y][/URL]

 

[skull]

I think your best bets going to be to break them down and sell the parts on ebay. It'll be a bigger pain in the ass of course but it'll get you the most money.

The next step is to stop building systems you don't need. We might be enthusiasts too but its doesn't mean we build systems for no reason. If your bored try a new OS or something.

I've been wondering about dying lithium ions myself. I have an old phone thats been sitting around awhile without a charge. I did a google search on under charged lithium ions due to sitting and nothing all the results talked about overcharged ones. I should probably just get rid of it before it burns my house down.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I go back to why do you have sheds full of built pc's? It seems you understand the market is gone, yet haven't accepted it.

Most people just use a phone.

I'm using the same PC I built in 2010 and playing games coming out now. Nobody but the extreme enthusiasts need new desktop pcs.

Here is my suggestion: Put the parts on ebay at $0 starting bid and just give to the highest bidder with the lowest shipping possible. You get some money, and most likely SOMEONE will buy it. Things that don't sell, put them all in a lot with the same $0 starting bid

In the meantime, find a new hobby There's tons of them out there.

 

[Mayne]

I would gladly take one off your hands.

 

[SKORPI0]

For a number of years, pretty-much since the Core2 era, I've been building PCs. Ever since I moved into my newer, yet smaller, apt.,
I've been building a PC every month or two, beyond just the ones that I use personally.

Why?

 

[Red Squirrel]

That's a lot of PCs. Any reason to build them so often? You could maybe sell them but probably won't get much back since people can just go to Walmart and buy a crappy little SFF PC for like $300 these days. It's crazy they can make them that cheap when building still costs in the order of a grand by the time you get all the components.

Could also make a server farm out of them. F@H or something maybe?

 

[soulcougher73]

Sounds like you have an unhealthy addiction, best to probably just build 1 high end PC to last 5+ years.

 

[Red Squirrel]

Sounds like you have an unhealthy addiction, best to probably just build 1 high end PC to last 5+ years.

That's pretty much what I've always done. As much as I enjoy actually putting together a system I just can't justify the cost. At one point I was on a server building frenzy and built quite a few systems to put in my rack but now that I have them all I pretty much don't need more systems as they all have their purpose. VM, storage, firewall, home automation etc. It would be nice to expand my VM and storage to play around with clustering but really I don't need to. My goal is to have at least 2 VM servers with HA eventually though.

I also recently built a mining rig, that was pretty much my first system I put together in a long time. I would love to be able to put systems together on a regular basis though but it's just so much money, and there's no jobs where you do that either.

 

[skull]

That's a lot of PCs. Any reason to build them so often? You could maybe sell them but probably won't get much back since people can just go to Walmart and buy a crappy little SFF PC for like $300 these days. It's crazy they can make them that cheap when building still costs in the order of a grand by the time you get all the components.

Could also make a server farm out of them. F@H or something maybe?

I can do a budget build for ~$300 thats better than an off the shelf ~$300 computer. Last time I built a computer I went mid range with an ebay video card, a ssd and a windows key was only about 450.

 

[Red Squirrel]

I can do a budget build for ~$300 thats better than an off the shelf ~$300 computer. Last time I built a computer I went mid range with an ebay video card, a ssd and a windows key was only about 450.

how do you manage that? cpu + motherboard + ram alone are going to be AT LEAST $100 per part. That's not counting the rest of the parts. HDD is going to be another $100 if you go with like a 1TB spindle drive, and cases are typically over $100 too. Everything is $100 or more. I guess we just get screwed more here in Canada. There's not that many sites to order from.

 

[skull]

Microcenter and amazon with the microcenter cpu/mobo bundles you can get both for less than $100. My case was less than $40 did splurge on a quality PS, 4gb of ram was less than $50 (did hear ram went up since I did my build), don't need a terabyte don't even use all 250gb of my ssd on my linux drive, which a quality 250gb ssd like a samsung evo can be had for $100.

 

[uhohs]

I mean, I've got stuff like Ryzen 3 1200 @ 3.80Ghz, 8GB DDR4-2400, 256GB M.2 PCI-E NVMe SSD, Windows 10, dGPU. Not too shabby, IMHO.

I'll pay shipping. kthxbye

 

[paperfist]

There are nonprofits that would be glad to take them.

Yeah I've worked with a bunch of them and the things they call computers we call Abacus

 

[highland145]

It won't be for a waste of commas.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I would gladly take one off your hands.

I got just the PC for You, bro. You down for some PC gaming?

 

[pete6032]

Why do you build so many? What is the purpose of building more than one per year?

 

[Thebobo]

Call me old fashion but I only game on a PC. Except at the store I've never even played on a counsel. And the phone hell no to damn small for me.

 

[GagHalfrunt]

Your legacy could be one of generosity. Send the best one to me and the others to anyone else greedy enough to ask and we'll like you forever. Or at least until we're distracted by something shiny.

Seriously though, maybe trade them in for some counseling because clearly you have a problem. You're intelligent enough to know that you're not going to use them or sell them for a profit, yet you keep doing it. Whatever it is that building computers has become a substitute for, you need to find a healthier way of dealing with it.

 

[Mayne]

I got just the PC for You, bro. You down for some PC gaming?

I'm always down for a pc. I love pc's