what to do with 200 computers

[Anonymous]

Good Morning Gents,

I have been reading and studying this site for a couple of months, and have found a wealth of information. I have the opportunity to receive 200 old towers, and wanted to know what those of you who have experience would do with these in order to turn over a profit quickly. My thoughts are to strip the computers of the fingers and cpu's and flatpacks, aluminum, and steel and send the PM containing parts to a refiner for cash.
would you who have the greatest experience be willing to offer their esteemed thoughts?

Thank You,

Chris

 

[jimdoc]

Your best bet money wise would be sell the boards and cpu's on Ebay.You don't say your location, that may help people give you an idea of a local buyer for your boards. 200 computers won't give you enough to deal with a refiner, you should probably just sell to a "middle man".

Jim

 

[rfd298]

200 puters is a good start. These are the volumes I work on occasion. Here is what I do. Gut them of proc, motherboard, memory, any cards and risers, HD, IDE cables, and pull the power supply. That leaves you with pretty much a case with a floppy and cd/rom. (I find those 2 to be a pain in the butt, they yield minimal and the steel pile works just fine for them.)

Scrap yard the cases, cut the wiring off the power supplies with a sawzaw. Don't sit there and try and cut them by hand too long. Power supplys then go into the steel pile. (yes you could crack them and get maybe 10-30 #'s of AL but what is your time worth) You're in the ballpark of 4000# worth of steel and @ 8 cents a pound you've already got $320.00

The motherboards are worth $2 through a middle man pound. You have around 300 pounds of MB. Thats $600

Memory I'd guestimate you have 20lb of memory which will equate to Fingers=10% of weight, So that leaves 2 lb which = 907g , So that would ball park to 3-4g refined ( edited from 9g) of gold + $90 for the fingerless memory or...... close to $200 or more if the right sucka is buying on ebay for complete gold edged memory.

The PCI etc cards are worth around $2.00 a pound and that can vary but you have between 30 and 60 # You could cut the fingers off again and get maybe 1-2 g plus $1. a pound for fingerless scrap. Again you can always E-bay them. So lets' call it $50

Procs, If you're not going to process them yourself you'd be crazy not to e-bay them Can be any where from a few dollars for an all fiber group to a few hundred dollars for an all ceramic batch.

Hard Drives, pull the boards, and the cases are AL

Power Supply Wiring, cut the connectors off, Strip if possible, get #2 copper, if not get coated wire price.
IDE cables, cut the ends off a get what you can for them at the scrap yard.

Since you are looking for a quick buck, be aware that it will take you around 12-36 hours to gut the machines, depending on how good you are. In addition the space required once you start ripping things apart is double to triple the space that the machines take up compared to a complete PCs.

SO to sum it up,
Broker / Middle man for the MB, (fingerless memory), HD controller, and any other circuit card, I use Thrifty Bits, he is fair, and if your in the NE he may be able to do business with you, if not there are others throughout the country who do the same thing.

Ebay- Procs, fingered memory, (you can also sell gold fingers for 20-40 a #)

Scrap yard- Steel case+floppy+CD, power Supply wiring, IDE cables, HD chasis

Anyway that's what I would do. Have fun and enjoy, and wear gloves.

 

[glorycloud]

Good post rfd298. 8)

 

[goldsilverpro]

Good post rfd298

I agree. Very good post.

 

[shyknee]

rf298
ya nice post but

Memory I'd guestimate you have 20lb of memory which will equate to 9 g of gold + $90 for the fingerless memory or...... close to $200 or more if the right sucka is buying on ebay for complete gold edged memory.

this is a little off 20lb = 9g to my experience over and over average for fine cut fingers in 14 lb batches I get 3g gold

 

[rfd298]

Shyknee,

I normally do 600 g batches which yield ball park 2-3 grams, in addition I cut fingers as soon as I get batches of memory so that is why I guestimated.

Wow I just did the math for 20 lb of memory. Fingers=10% of weight, So that leaves 2 lb which = 907g , So that would ball park to 3-4g refined. I will correct my earlier post. Thanks for pointing this out.
Memory is still going for $10+ a pound with gold edges on a good day at fleabay, and for the original poster, he would get his most bang for the buck that way, but I sure do like that pretty little Gold button instead.

 

[shyknee]

ya the button still beats all. I think its the satisfaction of refining

 

[Anonymous]

Thanks for the replies and solid gold advice. I am in the N. Alabama area just fyi. A man could fool around and get a P.h.D. here if he was not careful

rfd298, I would like to have a gold button as well, but I am not quite through with my education on this forum, and do not have the storage space besides.
BTW, I have a minor in Chemistry, but am still digesting the information here before attempting any procedures.

Chris

 

[Chumbawamba]

RFD298's breakdown is reasonable. I'd have guessed more for the motherboards and PC cards (in terms of poundage and price per pound) but being that boogfhu is in Alabama the pricing may well be closer to what he may find at home. I would get about $2.50/lbs (nominal) here in California. I'd also estimate that with 200 computers you should be able to yield anywhere from 600-1000lbs, assuming 3-5lbs of PCBs per computer (motherboard and peripheral cards).

The CD-ROM and floppy drives can be extracted and sold for much better than scrap, at least here. Something around a dime a pound.

You could also do much better than scrap on the power supplies. The last time I sold some I got something like $.18/lbs.

I don't think there's as much steel as you guessed. I'm thinking it's closer to 2000 pounds. Depends on the case. The steel from mid-1990s machines is garbage, almost like thick foil.

If you can find a local buyer, you may be able to get something for your plastic. Look around.

Around here, the ribbon cables don't need to have their connectors cut off; they will sell just fine along with the other #2 computer wire (currently about a buck ten where I'm at). However, most (all?) of the older ribbon cable connectors have gold plated pins, and a ball mill would do quick work of the brittle plastic. It depends on how much work you're willing to do.

If these are truly "old" towers, like early 1990s old, then most of your gold will come from the processors, which should primarily be 486s and early (ceramic) Pentiums. The gold fingers might also have more gold than modern ones.

My suggestion:

Find (if you can) a local buyer for the following:

1) Steel
2) Plastic
3) Power supplies
4) CD-ROM/floppy drives
5) Hard drives
6) Motherboards and cards
7) Processors
8) RAM
9) #1 wire (from power supply and internal connections)
10) #2 wire (from data connection wire, ribbon cables, etc.)

Once buyers have been found (or not), focus on the highest yield/price stuff first (PCBs and hard drives probably): strip it all out, remove the easy gold (fingers, etc.) and fill up bins. Repeat for all the materials. Then sell it off bin by bin to the highest bidder. Give away the stuff you can't sell or take it to the dump (last resort).

I can strip about 10 computers an hour on average. 200 computers will probably take you about a solid week of work with a power drill.

Or you could just sell everything for $.20/lbs and net an easy $1,200 or so. If you put in the labor you can expect an equivalent return of about 5-6 times that. What's your labor worth?

 

[philddreamer]

Gentlemen!

Thank you for sharing the info. I started with 12 pc's & now I'm buy'n scrap
gold & silver. My space is limited, so for now the scrap PM's is more the thing, but if pc's came my way, I would grab them. Some one said: "The mighty Amazon River started with single drops of rain". :lol:

Have a good one!

philddreamer

 

[Richard TJ]

Hi All,

Just to but in with my (as you put it on that side of the pond) 2 cents worth: Seperate out the hard drives and then strip them down for cash. Minus the board, top cover, platter, motor assembly you'll get 300 grams Alu per drive. You'll be able to shift these as clean cast aluminium. Metals market puts this at £850 per ton on the UK LMSE.

 

[Chumbawamba]

My god, man, do you know how much screw turning would be required to generate a ton of aluminum from hard drive chasses?

 

[gold4mike]

With hard drives - at the very least you should remove the circuit boards from them. I've been selling them for a premium over the motherboard price. It is indeed very time consuming to completely disassemble them.

 

[glorycloud]

What are you averaging for the hdd boards? I always try and
see if the time to take off the boards is worth the difference
in the price for the board plus the seperate AL case vs. just
selling them intact.

 

[gold4mike]

I got $4.00 per pound for them the last time.