People thought the used GPU market was bad...

[pipnina]

In a relatively recent WAN show Linus was talking about how unusually well even 3 year old graphics cards were retaining value due to nvidia's dominance and just bumping the price up with the 20 series and 20s series. But I was in a minecraft server the other night and someone with a 3000 series Intel CPU (Ivy Bridge 3340s) was trying to find a replacement for under $250. I said "Well you're gonna need new RAM, Mobo, AND CPU because after 2016 DDR4 took over', but I also said he might have luck going to a used i7 from the same generation, so I looked it up and...

 

Used i7-3770ks... On Ebay... For 120GBP????? WHAT? It's a 7 YEAR old chip and it has only depreciated in value to only just below half it's MSRP. Sure, he'd possibly (?) still be quite well off making that switch since compared to his 3340s it has FAR better clock speeds, hyperthreading and presumably some leeway with light overclocking on the stock cooler too. Certainly a lot cheaper than having to buy all new kit, but still, how can such an ancient chip be worth so much? I got my brother a 6GB GTX 1060 (aftermarket OC one) for a similar price to what those i7s are going for.

I knew the CPU market had stagnated somewhat, but damn, I remember my brother needing a new PC back in 2012 because he was using the 3.00GHz 775 socket Pentium 4, and he could have gotten a pretty decent Core 2 Duo as an upgrade on that same socket for like 75GBP, a far better perf/pound than what this guy on minecraft is faced with whatever he does.

[dizmo]

Performance with CPUs doesn't take as much of a hit as GPUs. It wasn't until the last couple of years that that CPU wouldn't be within spitting distance of the newest offerings, plus some people don't want to/can't afford to upgrade their entire kit to run new stuff so buying an older, top tier CPU makes more sense.

[Helpful Tech Witch]

You are so naive. 7700ks can be over 2x the msrp.

[SolarNova]

Its because anything sandybridge and newer can still hold up well when overclocked.

 

There is ofc still a significant boost in performance vs the newest CPU's, but for those on a budget, such used CPU's are the ideal target, as such the used market in them is still very much afloat.

 

Those like the guy u mentioned who want to upgrade have a choice, spend £120 on a old CPU, or many hundreds more on a whole new system. In that respect £120 aint much.

[SuperCloneRanger]

The overclocking K variants almost always have inflated prices, the i7 3770(none k) goes for £60-70. Unless your minecraft guy has an overclocking z chipset board the extra letter is useless anyway.

[Kilrah]

17 minutes ago, pipnina said:

"Well you're gonna need new RAM, Mobo, AND CPU because after 2016 DDR4 took over'

For this reason. You're by far not the only one to want to avoid replacing everything and instead try to go with an old top end chip.

[Sakkura]

People with LGA1155 motherboards are all competing with each other for the same limited pool of CPU upgrades on that platform, so the price goes up. Core i5s from that era are probably a lot cheaper, and Core i3s nearly worthless.

[SupaKomputa]

Go for this instead. Ivy bridge xeons are dirt cheap.

[Teddy07]

35 minutes ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

You are so naive. 7700ks can be over 2x the msrp.

Maybe but there are many on eBay in the 200-300 € range when I bought mine