prices of used parts

[VJ]

I'm thinking of getting rid of my old server mainboard (Supermicro x5da8, 2x Xeon Prestiona 2.4GHz) and for laughs I checked prices of those boards on ebay.

Shockingly, it seems that, somehow, there are quite some offers for these used boards at anywhere between 200-600 euro, while the cpus go for around 10-15 euro and the memory around 20 euro.

What is the deal here?
I mean, it was a high-end server board, but let's be honest: it is a 20 year old board.
Ok, it supports some obsolete standards (u320 scsi, PCI-X) that may be hard to come by on new systems, but surely those prices cannot be realistic?

Can anyone shed light on this?

[dZeus]

I'm thinking of getting rid of my old server mainboard (Supermicro x5da8, 2x Xeon Prestiona 2.4GHz) and for laughs I checked prices of those boards on ebay.

Shockingly, it seems that, somehow, there are quite some offers for these used boards at anywhere between 200-600 euro, while the cpus go for around 10-15 euro and the memory around 20 euro.

What is the deal here?
I mean, it was a high-end server board, but let's be honest: it is a 20 year old board.
Ok, it supports some obsolete standards (u320 scsi, PCI-X) that may be hard to come by on new systems, but surely those prices cannot be realistic?

Can anyone shed light on this?

I bet replacement parts for these are in short supply and are needed by large enterprise who have these in use somewhere for some mission critical tasks.

[VJ]

Could be... just surprised by the prices... but it was a popular socket at the time. I'm not using it as it is loud and not running a recent Windows (mainly lack of license), but it is installed and running. A shame I don't have the packaging (well, I do but it is in my parents basement in Belgium ).

Any thoughts on what the easiest way is to get rid of it (in Europe)?

I haven't sold anything online (ebay or so), and would like the least hassle.
I've found the company Techbuyer.com, which buys used server equipment and am thinking of just writing to them.

The list of equipment is:
Supermicro X5da8
2x Xeon Prestonia 2.4 GHz
ECC DDR (I think 2x1 GB, but am not sure)
Promise SX4300 (PCI-X 4-channel Sata raid card)
Firewire 800 PCI-X card (4 separate channels).

There also is a Parhelia (which would have no purpose anymore as it is AGP) - although I could contact SteveC to see if he wants it

Any thoughts?

[UtwigMU]

Some guy who became phone app millionaire here opened up computer museum. Bought old motorcycle shop and he's now curating old hardware collection.

I've kept my Matrox and my Thinkpad collections. But I have piles of Ikea boxes of old parts such as hard drives (need to also wipe them before getting rid of them). I just don't have the time to sell everything. But if you're persistent you can sell any part. I remember once selling Celeron CPU for 2 EUR - had to deliver it in person and help guy install it. I also got a cake and a coffee in return.

I've found some guys who purchase used equipment and I'll contact them. 5 years ago I had 3 non-working Core 2 Duo boxes. Spend around 100 EUR fixing them and then sold them for 240 EUR. One company offered me 150 EUR for all of them but taking time to sell them was profitable.

This is a game of time and money. The more time you can put in fixing and selling, the more return you can get. I'm thinking of building an old school AGP rig for Parhelia, Vodoo 3000 and G400 I have. I also have the Chieftec LBX case in my living room waiting for me to have time to dust off the fans and take photo.

I also have some Promise 4x SATA card

[VJ]

I lack the time and the space to maintain an old pc park. The dual xeon sees no use as it just is too noisy and not that fast anymore, my 23 year old PII-450 has been sitting in my parents basement for >10 years (I'm still exited about it having a SoundBlaster AWE32 - which is an ISA card...).
The Arduino's and raspberry I got for fun while in Spain 3 years ago sit unused since then; one of the Arduino's was never even unpacked. And my 3d printer is also doing less than it could - it took me almost 1.5 years just to get it to print.
And I want to spend less time behind a computer and would love to go flying more and get back to diving.
So time to get rid of the old hardware and move on.

I don't need to get top price (I don't need to get 600 euro for a 20 year old mainboard, or 250 euro for the raid controller - these are offers I've found!), but if such offers are out there, then it would be nice to get something help towards a new pc.
I just don't know the channels to do this easily: never sold anything on ebay or other platforms, and being in Poland makes this even more difficult.

[UtwigMU]

In Slovenia we have local site for selling. This one works great for the most part at least in regard to computer parts. You often meet in person since it's a small country. There is also Facebook and let go. I haven't tried ebay but I have some SAS drives that would be best sold on ebay.

Since I have the eatx case with powered by Matrox sticker and two VGA 17" LCDs (for parts fixing) I could rebuild Parhealia AGP rig. Do you have any decent coolers for those Zeons?

I used to have Thermalright SK7 on my dual Bartons. Half a kilo copper heatsinks with 80mm Zalman F1 fans (still have those)

2cpu forum is no more.

[VJ]

Yeah, I will try some things, but I doubt many consumers are interested in such systems. I will contact some companies I've found, see what they reply.

The coolers on the Xeon came with the motherboard (Supermicro FAN-050CFT) but they are quite small, esp. to current standards, probably because 1. the cpus on those mainboards are close together and 2. those systems would be commonly used in racks (I also have the coolers that came with the Xeons, but they really use this air-tunnel effect to benefit from the front-back case airflow - those coolers are in my parents' basement though; I don't think they fit on this mainboard).

I just opened the case and am working on getting it to boot. There were some disk issues, so I may have to reinstall the OS (I want to test it first and be able to supply full detailed information). I forgot how big the firewire card is: it is an Indigita PCI-X quad-firewire 800 card, which measures 13" (as long as the EATX mainboard is wide).

[VJ]

Still trying to get it to boot, but I suspect my boot disk failed. A bit of an issue, but I should manage to reinstall the OS on a different disk. I want to have a running system and be able to provide the result of self tests, diagnostic and benchmaking software before contacting and offering it.

I also checked ebay for my Pentium-II and it looks like that one is also in high demand: it is a Shuttle Spacewalker Hot661 mainboard, which has the Intel 440BX chipset, with a Pentium II-450 MHz. That is usually the chipset preferred for retro-gaming due to its high compatibility. CPU seems to be in the sweet spot between fast enough to run all games; not too fast that it causes issues in some games. And it supports ISA... Not to mention the AWE32 that it hosts. But I would actually keep that system and bring it to Warsaw when I can. Somehow retro games appeal to me. And such an old system in operation has some nice touch to me. If I remember well it has a G550, but it may benefit from the Parhelia.....

[UtwigMU]

I used to run Parhelia on BX with overclocked PII350@466 and then Tualatin Celeron 1.1@1.4. Parhelia is OK with overclocked AGP bus.
I would keep the PII at this point.

BX can run anything from DOS to WIndows XP

I'm tempted to buy your dual Xeons because of the ATX case I have. The story of that case is: I had tall Chieftec dragon for my Tyan dual Bartons Parhelia rig. Then Tyan board died, sold off one Athlon XP 2500+ Barton and bought Abit NF7. Then I built a server so I got this EATX case for workstation with a plan to build dual Opteron or maybe Xeon (they were expensive) with long ass GPU.

Since my life changed and I did lots of consulting and I moved to a room I started using T42p (1.8GHz Centrino, Radeon 9600 equivalent Firegl). That laptop was fast and had nice IPS 1600x1200 screen and I noticed I'm not using my workstation anymore. So I transplanted server from Dragon to LBX EATX case - server was a mATX Sempron and then HP desktop C2D. I sold Dragon and my nForce2/Barton. My plan was to get smaller case for server and do a workstation of doom in the LBX. So for most of it's life that EATX case had puny mATX board.

The prices on ebay are what people are not willing to pay yet as stuff that gets sold is no longer listed. Example: Logitech G9X ebays for 100-150 but I got a used one for 35 EUR from a local guy. It's equivalent of stockmarket ask price.