Questions regarding DVD/CD Rom Drives, Disk Drives, etc

So, I am in the process of tearing down these 20+ PCs, and I decided to take one of the disk drives apart...well much to my amazement, there isn't anything in them...1 very tiny piece of board, and in the middle, is like 6 or 8 little pieces with copper wrapped around them, but it is such a small amount, not work getting to it.

Now in the CD/DVDrom drives, I know there is a good size board in them (which if I remember correctly, a lot of people say they go for either medium grade or high grade depending on the buyer)...

But my question for these, is it really WORTH tearing them apart? I know the escrap price for them isn't really cost effective to ship them, so I was thinking that if nothing else to simply throw them into the shred pile.

Regarding Motherboards:

If I remove the slots that finger cards go into, will this devalue the motherboards? Basically they would be removed for refining the gold, BUT if it will devalue them, I will leave them on.

Regarding PC cases:

Not long ago, a member was talking about how he was able to make a few bucks selling the face plates to the PC cases on ebay. I did look some up, and they do seem to sell. My question is, would this be for only a certain brand/model or could it work for any of them (provided it is newer ones of course).

Another thing I was thinking, was possibly selling the whole entire carcass to PC repair shops/Repair people etc. Has anyone ever tried this, and if so, how did it turn out?



Also, I think a few of the desktops might actually work, and I am noticing they come with about 160gb hd, and at least 2gb of ram....if they power up, I was thinking of selling them, once I format the hard drives, and re install the windows of course. Just want to be sure it will be worth my time.

$4 pound for them is not bad. 4 screws and its out. I pull the board out screw it back together and it goes in shred. There is 3 electric motors and a reading head in them also, but i dont take the time to pull those.

Originally Posted by jghilino

$4 pound for them is not bad. 4 screws and its out. I pull the board out screw it back together and it goes in shred. There is 3 electric motors and a reading head in them also, but i dont take the time to pull those.

So your telling me, that CD/DVDrom boards go for more than motherboard or at least the same price? Okay, that is good to know, then I will tear down the almost 50 or so that I got lol

But what about the disk drives? Unless it was just that one particular one, I don't see nothing special about them.

And I do agree, that the rest goes to shred!

When I was active in international trade, I used to purchase desktop and laptops here in the US in working condition, and then ship/sell them to people in the country of Jordan. The reason I sold them to people in Jordan is because we have a free trade agreement with them, so no tariffs.

You should make more money re-purposing computer equipment than breaking it down and selling it's parts as scrap. Also, it does the environment more good re-purposing than recycling, and better to recycle than to throw away. I would say 70% of my equipment is re-purposed rather than new. If you have working systems, it's better all the way around if you sell them as working units, in my humble opinion.

Scott

Originally Posted by MattInTheHat

I have weighed a few of the boards, and all the ones i weighed were worth more than the shred value of the whole drive. The boards generally come off with 4-6 screws and some kind of clip.
I usually put the cover back on because sometimes they throw a fit about the plastic showing.....but they say its ok if the cover is on. makes no sense at all, so i assume its a corporate rule.

You guys are only talking about DVD/CDrom drives right?

Originally Posted by NobleMetalWorks

When I was active in international trade, I used to purchase desktop and laptops here in the US in working condition, and then ship/sell them to people in the country of Jordan. The reason I sold them to people in Jordan is because we have a free trade agreement with them, so no tariffs.

You should make more money re-purposing computer equipment than breaking it down and selling it's parts as scrap. Also, it does the environment more good re-purposing than recycling, and better to recycle than to throw away. I would say 70% of my equipment is re-purposed rather than new. If you have working systems, it's better all the way around if you sell them as working units, in my humble opinion.

Scott

Well the thing is, if they were sold, it would be to someone here in the USA.

If I sell them, it would need to be at a price to where they are bought quickly, as my storage space at the present time, is not all that great.

I have seen a few people trying to sell PCs (older kind) for $160 and they just keep on sitting on them. I would be happy with just $100 a PC myself, as long as the hard drive was a decent size and it came with at least 2gigs of ram.

Originally Posted by MattInTheHat

yes. the floppy borads are low grade, but you can cut off the gold connectors and sell them for $2-4lb
also motors in the floppys if you want to take the time to harvest them

What are the motors in the floppies worth?

$2 to $4/lb for the Gold Connectors isn't to bed. You are referring to the ribbon like wire that connects to the boards?

Dont remove the plastic on motherboard slots unless you are preparing them for a refiner that you are doing prep work for.

on the cases you need to ebay each model number and determine that yourself, maybe check completed listings

desktops worth reselling need to be pentium d or newer, celerons and p4s are not worth the time in my opinion. What you need to do is if you find a pentium d machine, you can put a 960 or a 965 in it for about $50, then drop a power supply and a modern gaming vid card it and you can have a solid gaming machine for about $200 all together. The pentium d 960 runs at 3.6ghz or over 4ghz with a mild overclock on air cooling, they can do 5ghz on watercooling and a good motherboard. Factory motherboards dont overclock though.

I just happen to have a cdrom drive right here beside me. It weighs 29.35 oz at current shred of 9.5 cents a pound that means its worth 17.42 cents. OK it took me 20 seconds by hand to remove the 4 screws and pull the board out. the new weight of shred is now 27.45oz or 16.29 cents the board weighs 1.91oz I pay $2/ lbs for these boards so this board would be worth 23.87 cents. So i took the value of the unit from 17.42 cents to 40.16 cents in 20 seconds for a diference of 22.74 cents. By my math thats $40.93 an hour. Ill pay myself that anyday.

Now if you rip of the PCI/ISA ports off the motherboard that will devalue them.

As far as rebooting the machines and selling them hole beeing worth your time. Well thats up to you. If they are dual core machines you can expect to get $100 for them I would guess. P4 machines I bet you would be lucky to get $50 each for them if they are 3ghz machines. Only you can say weather its worth your time or not. Personaly I dont bother reslling machines much unless I have a friend who wants one. Thats why i specialize in the parts GEO and buy them for more than scrap value from the forum members. I tend to discover parts are worth more than the machine working based on time spent getting machine working. I can tear apart a p4 machine in 5 minutes. Takes another 5 minutes to test the ram hard drive and DVDRW on my test bench. Takes another 5 to 10 minutes to list them on ebay using my templates. Takes another 5 minutes to package them up and ship them out once they sell. All in all I would say I mess with one machine a total of 30 minutes. Your not going to get a machine reinstalled and updated in 30 minutes even if everything works perfect. Lets say you get $50 for that p4 machine. Just in parts I got out of that machine ill get $10 for the DVDRW drive, $15 for the 2gb of ram, $12 for the 160gb hard drive. So thats $37 for the 3 good parts sell the rest as scrap for about $6 to $8 depending on how many finger cards were in it. After ebay fees and shipping for the scrap parts your looking at a total sale of $40. Paid 5 bucks for the box so total profit of this example would be $35. Now worst case you would get $10 to $15 in scrap value as it has been discussed 1 million times before.

I would put total time to get a machine up and running from scratch to resellable at about an hour. Granted you can start an install and walk away. Or you can run an image after you have done the first one that will make the others go faster. But once its installed I would want to run a burnin process on it to make sure none of the parts are going to fail after I sold it.

Here is a couple break downs for you GEO hope this will help you figure out if its worth it or not. In your investment business how do you determine if its worth it or not?

Originally Posted by GeorgeB

What are the motors in the floppies worth?

$2 to $4/lb for the Gold Connectors isn't to bed. You are referring to the ribbon like wire that connects to the boards?

motors are 30 cents pound

cleaned cd rom drive boards look an awfull lot like 5" hard drive boards to me

$3.75 is what i am seeing for cd rom brive boards in the buyers section

I pay $4 pound for the floppy drive connectors.

Originally Posted by jghilino

I pay $4 pound for the floppy drive connectors.

Thanks for all the information, and I just realized what you all mean by the connectors. Where power cords plug into to make the floppy drive work. Have so much on my mind, it is unreal.

Thanks for the information. Will keep that in mind. FYI to me, the motors is the 7 or 8 things that have the small amount of copper wrapped around them, correct?

Originally Posted by jghilino

Dont remove the plastic on motherboard slots unless you are preparing them for a refiner that you are doing prep work for.

on the cases you need to ebay each model number and determine that yourself, maybe check completed listings

desktops worth reselling need to be pentium d or newer, celerons and p4s are not worth the time in my opinion. What you need to do is if you find a pentium d machine, you can put a 960 or a 965 in it for about $50, then drop a power supply and a modern gaming vid card it and you can have a solid gaming machine for about $200 all together. The pentium d 960 runs at 3.6ghz or over 4ghz with a mild overclock on air cooling, they can do 5ghz on watercooling and a good motherboard. Factory motherboards dont overclock though.

Yeah, those slots where finger cards go into, I would be harvesting them for the PM recovery. That is why I was asking, if it would devalue the motherboards if removed.

I appreciate the other information. Unfortunately, I still have learning to do, when it comes to knowing what computer is what as far as p3, p4 etc. I know all of you can look at one and know, but to me, it is all greek.

There is silver mylar/ribbion cable inside the drives, also sometimes the reading heads will be gold plated. Its up to you how far your gonna tear them down though.

If I have any computers that power up I try to sell them to computer shops for "shelf filler" for about 25.00 ea. That's about double of scrap price.
And 40.-50. out of parting out computers,,, ha someone's smokin' something.

Originally Posted by Mechanic688

If I have any computers that power up I try to sell them to computer shops for "shelf filler" for about 25.00 ea. That's about double of scrap price.
And 40.-50. out of parting out computers,,, ha someone's smokin' something.

you dont think you can make $50 parting out a core 2 machine?