Some E Waste FYI

I was going to put this in the computer section but the subject has become so pointed that I think everyone should at least be aware of it. To my fellow buyers, I am not suggesting a chicken little the sky is falling scenario.

First, I've been making LARGE lot purchases throughout the year of more than scrap value computer components and I am noticing the time of dual cores is coming to a close. Let me enlighten you guys to what I am seeing.

1. So many people are selling even SUB 70 dollar windows 7 dual core systems on craigslist, local adverts and even computer shops are doing systems with keyboards and mice, monitors and win 7 that someone like myself has to focus on the next stage and leave dual cores alone.

2. Prices are falling to sub $5 each for even 8400/8500 core 2 duo chips. We knew this would happen, as core 2 quads started hitting the scrap stream along with early H1 (first gen) i series that core 2 would falter...after all, why buy a chip for 10 bucks if your board can take a core 2 quad for $20?

3. Good news is that vintage machine sales are growing. I am watching this, compiling a list and hopefully a FAQ for the forum of what to be looking for and why it's such a hit with enthusiasts. I am an active overclocking competitor where every few months a group is given a particular series of processor to use in overclocking to the limits...it's fun, it's electronics engineering at it's finest in some cases...and I generate some sales from this now and then.

4. Optiplex 745/755/760 and in some markets 780 machines are as good as dead. I've tried selling bulk lots with ram and hard drives for as low as $15 each...to no avail, there are just too many of them in my area.

5. Cell phones, tablets, e readers, video game systems. Guess what? this is next on my list. As you can imagine the e waste market runs about 5 to 8 years behind the retail electronics market...this doesn't have alot of merit to video game system resale BUT tablets and cell phones are disposed of at the frequency of contract renewel...almost every two years. Older android phones are an absolute hit for enthusiasts who pride themselves in jailbreaking and modding their phones. Keep this in mind before you toss a bulk lot of cell phones in a box.

6. Screens, LCD vs, monitors, laptops and more. I've been told doom and gloom is on the horizon for screens of all kinds...with the chinese no longer buying them. Well...if you can't retail screens for a couple bucks a piece your doing it wrong anyways. I recap screens I think are worth the time and/or sell systems with a free screen.

7. Motherboards: Stop throwing away high value boards. If your about to chuck a i series 1155/1156 board and you didn't at least check it for blown caps...you might be losing money. AM3 boards? Same thing...and gaming boards with TWO PCIe x16 slots...you really have to pay attention to your scrap loads and know what you are taking in.

I just have to say this. Train yourself to know what you are looking at. It's safe to say we throw away money here every day without realizing it but we are doing our best to close the margins.

Sad but true....high end dual core machines work well but they are becoming a hard sell

I always enjoy reading these threads. I do not understand it, but I have numerous computers that fill two gaylords. A third one is about 1/4 full. Someday I want to tackle this part of scrapping. Most of these computers are least 15 years old. Live and learn.

I've been watching the market in my area for the last couple of months and things don't seem to be moving. Anything with a tower is all but dead. Laptops are sluggish and the market is saturated.

Your average consumer seems to be looking for smaller and smaller devices. Laptops are phasing out and things like I phones are in. There seems to be some interest in the " all in ones " if they're running DDR 3 memory.

I've been watching the businesses and they seem to be replacing their towers & desktops with things that have a smaller form factor. I'm even seeing some "task specific" equipment that barely resembles a computer.

Folks appear to be wanting to buy the newest tech as a status symbol. They seem to know little or nothing about the specs and how a machine performs so they mindlessly follow the trends of what's currently the kool thing. Others go by the bigger is better theory so they buy a machine with 16 gb of ram and a 3 tb hard drive to browse the web & check their email.

A well tuned optiplex with 4 gb ddr-2 & 3+ ghz dual core will perform most tasks really well. After the upgrade at the end of this month they may perform even better because the new os may turn out to be even lighter on system resources than the last version.

It's a hard thing because your average consumer just doesn't seem to be open to that idea. It's not what they're looking for.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by armygreywolf

7. Motherboards: Stop throwing away high value boards. If your about to chuck a i series 1155/1156 board and you didn't at least check it for blown caps...you might be losing money. AM3 boards? Same thing...and gaming boards with TWO PCIe x16 slots...you really have to pay attention to your scrap loads and know what you are taking in.

---

I totally agree with this. This is an extreme example, but I pulled a motherboard from an XPS 8100 from a load of scrap boards awhile back. This thing was just floating around loose with all the other boards in a gaylord. Bent pins, scratches, etc. I straightened the pins, and hooked it up and it worked fine. I sold that motherboard for $50 and the i7 that was in it for $90. Funny thing, I don't have thermal paste so I had to scrape a bunch of it off of scrap CPUs and plop it on the i7 so it would contact the heatsink better when I was testing ;)

I even have good luck selling older boards such as Socket 7, Slot 1, etc ASUS motherboards. They're worth checking out.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Patriot76

I always enjoy reading these threads. I do not understand it, but I have numerous computers that fill two gaylords. A third one is about 1/4 full. Someday I want to tackle this part of scrapping. Most of these computers are least 15 years old. Live and learn.

---

Awesome ! Something to do inside during the winter when it's ten below zero and blowing a 40 mph wind. Just put your feet up by the woodstove and hide out in the shop till spring. :)

I ran technical preview on several standard optiplexes, G35/G41 chipset nobilis rigs and a few other things...I'm of the camp what with the additional user friendly features people have come to expect from windows and android that a dual core machine will NOT be sufficient in any respect. Microsoft SAYS the minimum specifications for Windows 10 wil be 1Ghz proc, 2GB ram, 16GB hard drive space etc...the preview was still directX 9, requiring many features to be disabled. This minimum spec is to accomodate tablets, phones and other devices. The PC specification is expected to be a multithreaded dual core of 2Ghz or higher (four threads total of 8Ghz) and 3GB ram minimum, 48GB of HDD space and possibility of disabled features if the machine is not DX10 capable, which, most optiplex 755/760/780 and like machines of other brands are not. Point is, upgrading to 10 may not be feasible for many currently operating machines. Many people will do the upgrade, realize the machine is not cutting the mustard and our market is FURTHER saturated. I guess what I am saying to you all is plan to phase out your core 2 duo machines fairly soon, I expect the windows 10 push to crush whats left of the dual core market.

Ohh and I wanted to touch on one subject. Retail sales. Tablet sales over the 2013 and 2014 holidays were beat by PCs (laptops and desktops) two years in a row according to new egg and best buy. New egg says theyve sold more desktops in the last two years than theyve sold the five years prior. Dell claims their business sales on smaller machines (SFF) are up over all other form factors. Dell also says Latitude and Inspiron sales are up. Best buy claims the surface pro is outselling the ipad and that lenovos and dells are the hottest selling laptops. Do I think our future is bleak? Nope, not at all. Desktops will always have a place and quite frankly, all in one sales are a good thing, Most are aluminum cases (due to thermal and rigidity reasons) most use laptop type motherboards (also good) and most use either an on board power supply with a nice large aluminum heatsink or a large all copper heatsink. Reselling the standalone 150W power bricks HP uses is always a winner, people trip over, fray and break them all the time.

Other things I am noticing is the LARGE form factor tablets, that is tablets larger than 12 inches. AKA laptops without a keyboard. These are the trend, tablets with horsepower. As for desktops, enthusiast market is millions strong, if anything it will make the scrap market for desktops even better years from now because more and more machines will be gaming oriented.

For CD: As i understand it there was a growth in computer technology. At first there were the single core processors and the pressure was on the manufacturers to keep coming out with faster and faster processors. The main problem was that the faster the processor the more heat it generated and the more energy it required to run it. There came a point where they hit a brick wall. They had to go to extreme lengths to keep the darn things cool.

The solution to the problem was to slow them back down and build two processors (dual core) into one unit.

My best guess from the scrap computers that i'm seeing is that dual core became the standard processor they used in towers sometime around 2005 ?

For AGW: I appreciate the insight into what's going on. I'm a dyed in the wool tower guy simply because i feel they are so much better & more durable than things that come in little packages. < gentle laughter > I'm still using a large socket e-machines circa y2k for some of the work in my shop on a regular basis.

It's really going to be a total crap shoot with win 10. It might turn out to be a total dud like Vista or win 8 -or- it might be an XP or Win 7. Microsoft's performance has been uneven. Then there's the whole question of it becoming a subscription service and if that's going to fly.

On the one hand the buying public is fascinated with bright and shiny new features but on the other hand at what point does it become so complicated that people become helplessly confused by it all. Something as simple as removing the start feature on win 8 really annoyed folks. ( Supposedly it's back for 10 ? )

I dunno. :&

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by Scrappah

On the one hand the buying public is fascinated with bright and shiny new features but on the other hand at what point does it become so complicated that people become helplessly confused by it all. Something as simple as removing the start feature on win 8 really annoyed folks. ( Supposedly it's back for 10 ? )

I dunno. :&

---

On that note a little side story.
I have a cheapo work phone (straighttalk by Walmart) that I turn off at night and whenever I don't feel like answering because some tweeker needs a desperate fix and wants me to buy his stuff for a few bucks at 10.30 saturday nights or 6.30 sunday morning, which both has happened).

Anyway.... My old one wasn't even a smart phone, so I went to Wallyworld thinking of upgrading to the cheapest Droid.... Expected to spend $80 was hoping for 60 and ended up getting one for $30!!!!
Works like a charm. Everything I need for my biz for $45 a month and a one time cost of $30.
My buddy who needs to 'upgrade' too and was thinking of a iPhone saw it today and was impressed.
Unless you run some super fancy apps or browse the web all day long on it this thing does everything he wants and needs.
Hardly anybody 'needs' the new shiny and fancy stuff. It's all a gimmick!
But let's hope people keep buying into it, so we get their discards a few years later :)

I have some 745s in, still. With Windows 7 on them, I can't break the $100 mark. Once mine are gone, I'm done with them.

As for CPUs, I finally took the plunge and am building a nicer office system. I went AMD, because of Intel motherboard costs. Don't scrap the LGA 1155 motherboards- the CPUs are relatively cheap, but the motherboards are over $75 minimum.

The lowest CPU that I pay decently for is the Q6600. If it's below that, it's not going to be too hot.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ChildhoodDream

I'm not real knowledgeable on computer things, but I do have a idea of many areas of that concept from bits of information that I read and such.

I wanted to ask if those duel core computers are what the gamers use for arcade builds and such.

If I'm way off base,
then as Miss Emily Latella would say:

never mind...

---

In a word..NO. Enthusiast machines are quad core with large cache per core...this if it as the engine...and to run high end gaming systems it needs to be a Ferrari.

2015 Gaming system would be the following (gets you in the game pretty well)

i5 "devils canyon edition" - quad core 3.5 ghz ....or even an i7 quad core
32GB gaming high speed ram
SSD drive and a regular data drive
750-1K watt certified power supply
high end motherboard with all USB 3.0
Geforce GTX 980 (ie one bad ass video card)

most people would par this with a dual or triple monitor setup
trust me, this is a GODZILLA stomping monstrosity...and can be had for about $1600 retail

I have been running a quad core with a pared down version of the above for about 2 yrs...but then again I build mine from scratch....and when I build them they will last because of the quality of components I put into them...I also do some graphic design and a number of other things, so it is money well spent for me....the average user (non gamer) need no where near even what I have.

And yes, I know that might sound like alot of Greek...but it isn't too hard once someone shows you what components are what and really what they do...the rest is just a small learning curve.

I'm not a gamer, but my system would be a basic gaming rig.

AMD FX-4300 (High end Quad Core)
8GB RAM (Many Core 2 Duos won't run this)

Throw in a GTX660, and you have a basic rig that could play GTA V or similar games.

A Core 2 Duo would be at more at home with GTA IV, which was released around 2008 if I remember correctly. Core 2 Duos are available on eBay for less than $100. They're a good machine to check E-Mails and do the basics- a student or home office PC if you will. But, the prices are getting to the point where there isn't much profit in them. I'll sell off what I have, as I'll still do well on them. But, they'll be the last batch. An early i5 or even i7 isn't much pricier, and is a much, much nicer machine.

I'm running an AMD FX 9590 (8 cores) and the office computer (the one I am on now) is an all scrap build. Q9550, 8GB DDR3, Q41 Intel board, Nvidia 560Ti, HP 545W workstation power supply shoehorned in (they are in my opinion the best most stable power supplies you can get in your scrap stream). I ran technical preview in dual boot on this particular machine...it's snappy, thanks in no small part to the gigantic 500GB SSD (250GBx2 Array). I think the last generation of Core2duos will be alright at the onset, when loaded up with 8GB and the fastest hard drive you can get (Most cases an SSD).

Anyways, the point is the dual cores look to be going dodo soon, plan for it.

My old office PC is just a 2.66 GHz Core 2 Duo on 8.1. It does the job, but I agree that they're on the way out.

If I had that graphics card and 8GB of RAM in my work computer, I'd never get anything done! :D

I'd also say that the 775 Xeons are on the way out, too. I'm not knowledgeable enough on the AMD Opterons to know much there.

Army - Good post, thanks for reminding how much I need to learn about e-waste still.

Interesting thread ! E-waste is challenging because the landscape keeps changing every few months. Today's "better than scrap" item will be obsolete in a few months so you have to keep the stuff moving through the shop.

There might be a pattern here. You might say that there's a market for the latest generation of a thing.There's a market for the second most recent generation. Beyond that .... the tech is obsolete and goes straight to scrap.

If the pattern holds:

The debut of the second generation of i-cores rendered the core 2 duo's obsolete.

The debut of SSD's rendered all SATA 2's (3GB/sec.) obsolete.

The debut of Win 10 will render all win 7 operating systems obsolete.

The most recent DDR3 memory renders all DDR2 memory obsolete.

As 4 gb memory chips become the standard all 1 gb chips will become obsolete.

Bottom line ...if you're focus is on "better than scrap" value you don't want to get too heavily invested in stock because you might get stuck holding the bag.

Exactly, though technically we're on the Third generation of the i-Series CPU. I think SATA hard drives will stay relevant, though- at least the larger ones. They don't make many 1TB or larger SSDs.... yet.

I'm interested in seeing how Windows 10 does. It'll either go over very well, or 7 will still be king.

As well as the core 2 market. DDR2 is drying up fast as well. Great post and I totally agree with it all.

I sold 30-40 units last year Optiplex 620 with XP. 2G Ram 80G HDD for $40 and 4G Ram 160 HDD for $70. Plus extra for monitor/keyboard/mouse. This year? Bubbkis... I only have 10-15 units left, will try to sell at a low price, maybe double scrap value. Try to squeeze a few more dollars out of my stash. Sold 110 monitors, they go quick if you price them right.

More nerve racking is that I just bought 18 Apple Mac Pro towers, came with 13 20" monitors and 54 keyboards/mice. I sold 43 keyboards in one day for around $7 each which was awesome. But no bites on systems or towers... I know I invested way too much in these and at this point hope to break even. My dream of doubling investment is fading fast. However, looking at eBay I can part out the towers for a bit more money, but may take a while to sell things off that way. Have to do what I have to do, I will be much more cautious moving forward.

The Mac Pros are hard to ship. That's the biggest issue. I have two, and I'm not quite sure what to do with them for that reason.

SSD drives will not replace regular drives for some time. The ISSUE with an SSD drive (yes it is an issue somewhat) is that SSD drives only have so many read/write cycles before the cell goes bad (think sectors on a regular HD)...I had discussed this in a previous thread. Once too many cells go bad, then the drive essentially cannot relocate info and is dead. This sounds fine until you start saving and deleting alot of small files, browser cache, etc etc. Whereas, a mechanical drive can last an extraordinary amount of time if it is taken care of (not overheated, banged around etc).

I use a SSD drive for my programs (they do not overwrite info often) and have a regular mechanical drive (also for sheer size...up to 4 TB per drive on those these days) for all of my data. My machine is SCREAMING fast because of the setup.

just thought I would give that nugget of info out there for people thinking about SSD drives etc. If you set them up correctly, they are screaming fast...just have a regular mechanical drive for all the files you save and delete. :)

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by armygreywolf

I ran technical preview on several standard optiplexes, G35/G41 chipset nobilis rigs and a few other things...I'm of the camp what with the additional user friendly features people have come to expect from windows and android that a dual core machine will NOT be sufficient in any respect. Microsoft SAYS the minimum specifications for Windows 10 wil be 1Ghz proc, 2GB ram, 16GB hard drive space etc...the preview was still directX 9, requiring many features to be disabled. This minimum spec is to accomodate tablets, phones and other devices. The PC specification is expected to be a multithreaded dual core of 2Ghz or higher (four threads total of 8Ghz) and 3GB ram minimum, 48GB of HDD space and possibility of disabled features if the machine is not DX10 capable, which, most optiplex 755/760/780 and like machines of other brands are not. Point is, upgrading to 10 may not be feasible for many currently operating machines. Many people will do the upgrade, realize the machine is not cutting the mustard and our market is FURTHER saturated. I guess what I am saying to you all is plan to phase out your core 2 duo machines fairly soon, I expect the windows 10 push to crush whats left of the dual core market.

Ohh and I wanted to touch on one subject. Retail sales. Tablet sales over the 2013 and 2014 holidays were beat by PCs (laptops and desktops) two years in a row according to new egg and best buy. New egg says theyve sold more desktops in the last two years than theyve sold the five years prior. Dell claims their business sales on smaller machines (SFF) are up over all other form factors. Dell also says Latitude and Inspiron sales are up. Best buy claims the surface pro is outselling the ipad and that lenovos and dells are the hottest selling laptops. Do I think our future is bleak? Nope, not at all. Desktops will always have a place and quite frankly, all in one sales are a good thing, Most are aluminum cases (due to thermal and rigidity reasons) most use laptop type motherboards (also good) and most use either an on board power supply with a nice large aluminum heatsink or a large all copper heatsink. Reselling the standalone 150W power bricks HP uses is always a winner, people trip over, fray and break them all the time.

Other things I am noticing is the LARGE form factor tablets, that is tablets larger than 12 inches. AKA laptops without a keyboard. These are the trend, tablets with horsepower. As for desktops, enthusiast market is millions strong, if anything it will make the scrap market for desktops even better years from now because more and more machines will be gaming oriented.

---

Army,

You mention SFF's getting more popular. Do you know of a buyer for DVD+RW for these? They are the smaller, thinner ones.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by matador

Exactly, though technically we're on the Third generation of the i-Series CPU. I think SATA hard drives will stay relevant, though- at least the larger ones. They don't make many 1TB or larger SSDs.... yet.

I'm interested in seeing how Windows 10 does. It'll either go over very well, or 7 will still be king.

---

It's hard to say with the 3 gb/sec SATA's. For me: It's always about trying to identify what my customer wants and then finding a way to meet that need. I think i spent an hour and a half this morning over coffee with a new customer just getting to know her & building a friendly rapport. This particular one is middle class. It's unpaid time, but in the future i'll know just the right balance of quality in workmanship & cost to best meet her requirements.

You kinda have to do the same thing with hard drives & figure out what the market is looking for. That's a toughie because your average consumer has little or no idea of what they're buying.

Somebody who is really into the whole computer thing is likely to want the latest and the best that's available. It's a relatively small niche market though. It's so easy to say that what you want is what everybody should have or should want.

One of the most difficult things that i've run into as a Master tradesman is how to communicate with my customers. I have to stop and say to myself ... what if i was a person that had never driven a nail in the wall ? Would i be able to understand what this guy is trying to get across to me ? You kinda have to dumb it down and make it easier for them to understand. Once they understand the basics they can make an informed choice about what they want.

I'm rambling here but the debut of Windows 10 is likely to have a big impact on things. It may go down like AGW said and render everything but the most recent generation of tech obsolete.

I suspect it may go the opposite direction completely. Bear in mind .... this is supposed to be the last & final version of an operating system that Microsoft ever releases. If Microsoft is smart, they will have designed this OS to run well on just about any machine large or small. That way it's on as many machines as possible and they can hog up so much space that it shuts out the competition.

It would be like any other yearly subscription service like an anti-virus program. If you're selling a subscription you want to make sure that it has a universal appeal to the broadest market possible. (If you focus just meeting the needs of a niche market you're limiting yourself.)

There's just no telling .... it could revitalize the core 2 duo market if it's lighter on system resources. A lot of folks haven't even upgraded from XP yet and that will be four operating systems back when 10 makes it's debut.

About all we can do is wait and see. I was going to wait on my core 2's that are running win 7 pro genuine and upgrade them to win 10 at the end of the month. That might give them a whole new market appeal ?

See ... your average customer knows little or nothing about the specs. They might be vaguely aware that Win 10 is the latest & greatest thing to have because they see it advertised as new in the stores.

If you can offer a quality refurb at 1/3 the cost of new they might bite. :)

To add insight as an east coast buyer I would echo everything AGW, Matador and PTS are seeing as well. DDR2 is depreciating much faster in relation to DDR1 and the viewpoint of the average customer has changed. They don't know much about what the specs mean but they are not thinking in units of Gigabytes for the HDDs anymore, it is in clean units of Terabytes (i.e. 0.5 TB, 1TB, 1.5TB). Knowing know what kind of sales the SFF markets are doing in desktops it explains why anything less than 2GB per module in RAM is almost not economical anymore, motherboards only have so many RAM slots and they don't want to waste the space on a single Gigabyte. And without beating a dead horse I won't go into dual core CPUs/systems. It is a great learning experience to strike when the iron is hot as good prices go away faster nowadays. If you are sitting on resellable material it could take a decade a two to fall back into notoriety as far as the vintage market seems to work so no reason to wait any longer to take the time to learn what you have! Best of luck to the fellow buyers on the forum, I know we are feeling some pressure these days.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by ChildhoodDream

I'm using a Dell gaming computer with Vista. It does well on dial up with the modem it came with. In the past I had to use external modems with the older machines I was using.

Most of the salvage computers I have are from the first computers put out for small business up to computers from about 10 to 15 years ago. I don't have a lot of computers compared to what others around here deal with. Maybe a hundred of them or so. I keep finding out that I have far more of things then I can remember from all the years of hauling it home and storing it away for later. I have computers up to those using Windows Pro.

I have been having a blast from the past going through areas around the yard that I haven't been in for years. Gives me interesting and entertaining things to do to keep busy and try and keep making a go at Life with the economy factor that requires all the more thought and energy to keep on top of.

---

You have Dial Up?!?

I also have been having that "I forgot I had this" issue every time I look for something in the garage.

< smiles > It's amazing that they've gone to rating HDD's in terabytes these days. It really doesn't seem all that long ago that they transitioned from rating them in megabytes to gigabytes. Things are in a constant state of change so you just have to roll with it & adapt accordingly.

As much as anything it's probably trial & error to find something that works. With the core 2 duo's on the way out a processor change to a quad might sell. Perhaps upgrade the memory or throw in an SSD as the primary drive with a large capacity traditional drive for storage.

You probably learn more from your failures than your successes. No harm in intentionally going out there and making your mistake as long as you aren't too heavily invested in it.

Worse case ... you can always scrap em' out.

Childhood, I was just kidding anyway.

In my experience of escrap and computers (and I have absolutely no idea of what 1/2 of the info above means, except 1gb and DDR..) and plugging in found computers to see whats on them.

1. Most people buy a computer and use it for a few things, download some rap and bubblegum music, store some camera pics on it and thats it. From there on it just sits there untill they get sick of looking at the $1200 they blew 3 years ago. And then dump it. Not even try and sell it, just chuck it onto a big pile of scrapmetal and rubbish.

2. Once the batterys dead. That takes 2 or 3 years. Either buy a new battery for it. Which hardly ever happens.
Or buy abrand new peice of future escrap with a brand new battery, warrantee and the fact they know that whatever they brought is the latest and greatest thing invented. For the next 6 months.....

I cannot find a 4.8 volt rechargable battery for my Ericsson T18s. Now I LOVE that cellphone. I paid $300 for it in 1997
. I have brought every one of them I could find on the secondhand market. So I have about 15 of them.....
and every one of them has a bad battery by now. I can't even find a battery pack with 4 AAA NiCads in it to repack my old battery cases. But if I could I would and I would carry it with me everywhere.

But instead, I buy a brandnew Android tablet/cellphone for NZ$70 (US$50) new battery and all and 2 week standby. And it sits where I left it.