# My first e-scrap motherlode!



## kuma (Sep 27, 2011)

Hi all , how are tricks ?
Hope all is well!
Just thought that I'd share some pictures of some p.c.'s that I picked up last week.
I recieved a phone call at about 8:30a.m. last monday in response to one of my adverts requesting old computer equipment for ''an ongoing project''.
The guy on the phone said that he only had a few towers , but that he had some other stuff that I might want to take a look at.
When he told me where to meet him I was a bit taken aback , he was the I.T. guy for a local builders merchant called Normans LTD.
This is quiet a big company with offices , warehouses and outlets almost island wide so I knew that it could be a good thing.
When he lead me into the first room with a stack of computers for me , ''if I wanted'' , I was chuffed to bit's.
When he lead me into the second room with more stacks of computers my jaw almost hit the deck! 
I did good though , on the inside I was possitivley buzzing my t*t's off trying desperatly to keep it cool , but on the outside I was all calm as a daisy and just said to him all laid back like ''yeah , that's no worries chief , gimme an hour or two and I'll shift it all out your way''. 8) 
He seemed pretty chuffed with the whole deal too , he saved a small fortune , and there's sunlight in his office again! 
It turned out that when he said 'towers' he was talking about 'servers' , of which there were three.
The rest , 93 or so I think , were smaller p.c.'s.
All in all a nice little haul , and it should keep me out of trouble for quiet a while!
All the best and kind regards ,
Chris










(Edited for clarity)


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## seawolf (Sep 27, 2011)

Looks like a good haul. Be sure to invite that caller out to lunch so he will remember you next time. have fun finding all the gold you can.
Mark


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## zenophryk (Sep 27, 2011)

So being a Dell Tech, and dealing with these types of machines every day. the ram you had on the top of your stack was a 4400, which would make the dell you took it out of (based on the color and chassis styles) probably a optiplex GX280. if the processor speed isn't too bad, these still have some resale value, I usually spend 40 bucks each for the 280's and if there are any gx 270's (usually use pc 3200 or sometimes pc 2700 ram and have IDE hard drives) and the processor isn't too bad (2.8 or higher) then I usually spend around 25 each for those. anything under 2.8ghz on the processor I scrap. anything under a GX270 (like GX260, 240, 110, 150) I scrap.

so checke'm out a little before scrapping them. May be worth more as reselable. I can help you out with any dell questions.

-Zenophryk


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## Anonymous (Sep 27, 2011)

zenophryk said:


> so checke'm out a little before scrapping them. May be worth more as reselable.


Very good advice,and nice haul Kuma.
If you decide you want to part them out,I'd be interested in the components.Let me know the details of the cpu's ,HDD's ,and ram,and I can give you a price.
That big comp in the front may be a workstation.It is definitely a server.I saw a stick of pc133 in the batch of ram,so I assume that is where it came from.


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## zenophryk (Sep 27, 2011)

The one in front is a standard fullsize dell tower. Not server. The Server chassis from that erra look way cooler. Just scrapped about 10 of them.


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## Anonymous (Sep 27, 2011)

I beg to differ.Reguardless of whether you are a dell tech or not,my home computer is an 04' Precision 650 server,and it's the same style case.And in case you don't believe me,my code is cg7wm41. Also you can see the exact same servers on ebay ,in the "server" catagory http://www.ebay.com/sch/Servers-/11211/i.html?LH_BIN=1&_nkw=precision+650&_catref=1&_sop=10&_trksid=p3286.c0.m1538


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## zenophryk (Sep 27, 2011)

Sorry, I wasn't trying to get confrontational. 
The original post shows an Optiplex line case. Your Precision line case looks totally different. Sure, they are both black and say dell on them, but they are totally different.
The Precision line is also a Workstation, not a server. It's a high end performance workstation, but a workstation none the less. you may have loaded a Server OS on it, but then you can load a server OS on any workstation just about. So with that in mind, the term Server and Workstation can be a little ambiguous. Yours is Physically a Workstation, but you may be using it Functionally as a Server. At home my computer is a Dell Poweredge 2900 like this one http://www.ebay.com/itm/Dell-POWEREDGE-2900-Server-Used-/170701204326?pt=COMP_EN_Servers&hash=item27be95ab66
But I have windows 7 pro 64 installed on it. So it is Physically a Server, but Functionally a Workstation. It kicks but as a workstation, but my electric bill hates me


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## RESET (Sep 27, 2011)

Around here those GX280s go for about $90 each with 80GB hard drive, 2GB memory and no operating system. Sell them on ebay and buy a gold bar.


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## kuma (Sep 27, 2011)

Hi all , how are tricks ?
All good I hope!
Looking back , I do feel that maybe it would have been worth while trying to sell at least some of these units complete , but as I had promised the guy that I was going to completley destroy and recycle them , I felt that tearing into them was the right thing to do! :mrgreen: 
I did promise to completley destroy the hard drive's first and foremost , but he quickly told me that not one hard drive was to leave the building.
I did actualy find 18 hard drives that he had somehow missed , so I plan on returning these to him tommorow , although it should have been today! 
I feel that this will help build trust and therefore perhaps he might be more inclined to phone me again. 8) 
Within a couple of days I had pulled out all of the cable , heatsinks , cpu's , ram , and 'daughter boards' , as it were.
I sold the cable and the heatsinks (the heatsinks were aluminium , aluminium and copper , and stainless steel and copper) to a local scrap merchant and have made about £25.00 so far , with another big bag of cable to take down still.
I know that it's peanuts compared to what I could have made selling them , but Jersey is a small island and it probably wouldn't look great if the guy saw them for sale after me promising to destroy them.
I will choose my words more carefully in future , after all , surely selling them on for re-use is a form of recycling ?
I have left one of the motherboards with the scrap guy's so that they can send it to their buyers in the u.k. for an assay.
Interesting maybe to note that these have nice looking gold fingers on one side , these were removed from the one sent for assay as I plan on keeping these and processing them myself at some point.
They said that getting the board assayed could take up to a month as they plan to send it out with their next scrap shipment to the U.K.
If I feel that if the money offered for these outweighs my desire to strip and process them , I will sell and maybe finaly start my silver round collection!
Otherwise , these could keep me going for months picking and sorting the components , and I would (hopefully) have a nice little button or two at the end for all of my efforts!  
The psu's have very little copper which would be a massive pain in the proverbial to recover , although they do have a couple of aluminium heat sinks which I might pull one day.
As there is no one that will buy the steel I will just have to 'donate' it to the only scrap yard over here that is equiped for steel.
Plastics will be going to the local commercial dump , regrettably I fear , for incineration. :evil: 
The cpu's , ram , and daughter boards have made their way into my collection for later processing.
(I now have 10.25lb total of ram sticks and 4.8lb's total of cpu's saved up already , look at me go! lol :mrgreen: )
Any way guy's , many thanks for the replies!
All the best for now and kind regards ,
Chris


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## jimdoc (Sep 27, 2011)

Those look to be in the 2004, 2005 time frame when Dell had the bad capacitor problems.
It would be smart to look over all the caps before you try to sell any Dells from those years.
You can be sure they are bad with blown out caps. They may even be bad without the tops blown out.

Jim


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## Anonymous (Sep 27, 2011)

zenophryk said:


> Sorry, I wasn't trying to get confrontational.
> ........... It kicks but as a workstation, but my electric bill hates me


Sorry I didn't mean that to come across as confrontational either.One of our mods,always says that he doesn't like typing online because it is so hard to know exactly how the writer meant what they said.

As far as the electric bill....mine is rediculously high for our home,do you think it could be my comp?It's on 24/7.I have a newer D.C. amd here that should be as fast(if not faster).


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## acpeacemaker (Sep 27, 2011)

(Looking at Mic's pic) Sporting the goggles while browsing online? I like your style safety first. :lol:


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## Anonymous (Sep 27, 2011)

acpeacemaker said:


> (Looking at Mic's pic) Sporting the goggles while browsing online? I like your style safety first.


Chuckles.A couple of things to point out,
A couple of years ago,I self-appointed myself as the safety nut of the forum,but ironically I got badly hurt while just looking up some stuff online.You see I have played drums my whole life,and while listening to some music(online),I was banging my feet on the floor to the beat of the bass drums,when a huge metal rack(on a shelf above my head) crashed down, hitting me in the head,bounced off,went into the monitor,and tore a nice little chunk out of the screen.Look at the center of the monitor in the pic.So yeh the comment about the goggles was funny.


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## kuma (Sep 27, 2011)

mic said:


> acpeacemaker said:
> 
> 
> > (Looking at Mic's pic) Sporting the goggles while browsing online? I like your style safety first.
> ...



:lol: :lol:


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## acpeacemaker (Sep 27, 2011)

kuma said:


> mic said:
> 
> 
> > acpeacemaker said:
> ...


I am envious, you must have one of those new 3D monitors. Almost so real, you can feel it! :shock:


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## Smack (Dec 1, 2011)

Snagged this up yesterday.


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## Geo (Dec 1, 2011)

:mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen: :mrgreen:


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## amayer1025 (Dec 1, 2011)

I'm curious, I know obviously its hard to answer this question but as far as the load of scrap the author of this post showed, (PCs and RAM Etc) how much money could one expect to get out of that scrap as far as PMs go? I'm talking strictly PMs and assuming one is refining it himself. Anyone got a ballpark answer? I know that they are obviously alot of variables, but Im just looking for a general idea. Thanks guys, Adam


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## kuma (Dec 2, 2011)

Hi Adam , how are tricks ?
Welcome to the forum! :mrgreen: 



amayer1025 said:


> I'm curious, I know obviously its hard to answer this question but as far as the load of scrap the author of this post showed, (PCs and RAM Etc) how much money could one expect to get out of that scrap as far as PMs go? I'm talking strictly PMs and assuming one is refining it himself. Anyone got a ballpark answer? I know that they are obviously alot of variables, but Im just looking for a general idea. Thanks guys, Adam



I believe that *Geo* stated recently it takes around a hundred computers to make up an ounce of gold (there was about a hundred computers in the load mentioned in this post).
On top of that , you will also find some silver and some platinum group metals (PGM's) , although I am unaware of quantity here.
If your end goal is to just make some money , it would probably be more proffitable to try and re-sell working parts , and I hear that RAM and CPU's go for a premium on feebay , just mark them as being for "gold recovery" ( :evil: )
All the best with and kind regards ,
Chris


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## kuma (Dec 2, 2011)

Smack said:


> Snagged this up yesterday.



Very cool! 8) :mrgreen: 
My mates dad has a friend that's closing down his office over here soon and apparently theres some servers about 5ft tall need removing.
Needless to say my mates getting a bit peeved with me reminding him everyday to keep me posted! :lol: 
On top of that , the U.K. government has just pulled the plug on the islands fullfillment industry , lots of offices closing down over here in the next couple of months , watch this space ,... 8) 
All the best and kind regards , again , lol's (I should probably just add that line to my sig. :lol: )
Chris


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## Smack (Dec 2, 2011)

Probably Kuma, good luck with the motherload.

All the best to you Sir. 8)


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## kuma (Dec 3, 2011)

Hello all!
How are tricks? 
I hope that all is well and good! :mrgreen: 



Smack said:


> Probably Kuma, good luck with the motherload.
> 
> All the best to you Sir. 8)



Many thanks! :mrgreen: 
Smack , I don't think that I have done a single thing in my life to warrant , or even deserve , being adressed as Sir. 
Even on the rare occasion that I am a paying customer in a restaurant and I'm adressed as Sir , I feel a little funny about it!
I am but a humble peasant!  :lol: 
All the very best and kind regards to you chief ,
Chris

(Edited spelling)


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