Old School PCs going on sale for a bargain

[Archie_Altz]

Hello

my school is selling old c2d based desktops for 5-15$ a pop so I was wondering if i could do anything useful with them  . Could these core 2 duos (lga 775 socket IIRC) run any esports games, I kind of want to get into pc flipping but flipping these would really make me feel scummy though . Any suggestion is helpful  

[Levent]

Depending on the CPU and RAM they got, they might be able to make a decent home server to get started. I personally wouldnt get any Core2 CPU nowadays.

[whispous]

Core2 processors are at a barfe minimum 15 years old at this stage - You might just about get Windows 10 running at a barely usable speed on it, but no modern esports style games will run effectively.

 

They'll make a good machine for very basic old games, or for a hugely power-hungry NAS.

[Archie_Altz]

Just now, Levent said:

Depending on the CPU and RAM they got, they might be able to make a decent home server to get started. I personally wouldnt get any Core2 CPU nowadays.

If i remember they are all E8xxx series i dont remember specific model i just know they are socket 775s , and some have 4-8gb ram

[Tan3l6]

Yeah C2D platform is semi-retro. Not good for modern games, nor actual retro games.

But browsing the web it's generally perhaps useable. Good for 2000s games (and early 2010s) for sure though, depends what are RAM and GPU.

[Needfuldoer]

They're not going to run any modern esports games very well, if at all. 

 

However, if you wanted to make a LAN for games up through the mid 2000s on XP (Unreal Tournament 2004, Quake III Arena, etc), they'll run those no problem.

 

To me, Pentium 4s and Core 2s fall into a void where they're too "new" to be interesting but far too old to be useful. I'd pass.

 

27 minutes ago, Archie_Altz said:

If i remember they are all E8xxx series

Those are the refreshed "Wolfdale" dual core processors. 2 cores, 2 threads. 

[Archie_Altz]

2 minutes ago, Tan3l6 said:

Yeah C2D platform is semi-retro. Not good for modern games, nor actual retro games.

But browsing the web it's generally perhaps useable. good for 2000s games for sure though.

I honestly want to build and sell pcs so I kind of want to flip these , but Id honestly feel like an AH if i sold hardware as old as me xD.

[Archie_Altz]

Just now, Needfuldoer said:

They're not going to run any modern esports games very well, if at all. 

 

However, if you wanted to make a LAN for games up through the mid 2000s on XP (Unreal Tournament 2004, Quake III Arena, etc), they'll run those no problem.

 

To me, Pentium 4s and Core 2s fall into a void, where they're too "new" to be interesting but far too old to be useful. I'd pass.

 

Those are the refreshed "Wolfdale" dual core processors. 2 cores, 2 threads. 

That's a cool idea honestly but my folks would kill me if they saw the electric bill 

[Spotty]

Too old to be useful and too new and mass produced to be interesting from a retro standpoint. Unless you have a "smash room" where you charge people to go in to a room with a baseball bat and smash some junk and need some cheap computers for people to go office space on then I don't really see much use for those old systems.

[podkall]

35 minutes ago, Archie_Altz said:

Could these core 2 duos (lga 775 socket IIRC) run any esports games,

depends, not on competitive fps,

 

esports games like strong CPUs

[Average Nerd]

41 minutes ago, Archie_Altz said:

Could these core 2 duos (lga 775 socket IIRC) run any esports games

Probably not, but they make nice keychains.

[jaslion]

31 minutes ago, Archie_Altz said:

I honestly want to build and sell pcs so I kind of want to flip these , but Id honestly feel like an AH if i sold hardware as old as me xD.

Thing is nobody will want them. I have the option to have them for free but wouldnt know what to do with them as even webbrowsing is starting to suck on these.

 

They wont run any current esports games well or like at all. The investment in hardware to get them to launch a modern game would be astronimical compared to the value of these systems and they'd still suck badly at doing their job.

 

So I would skip or at most get 1 to tinker with and then toss later

[Somerandomtechyboi]

only thing worth salvaging off those pcs is high end/rare boards or rare parts otherwise theyre basically worthless

 

stuck to 8gb of ddr2 unless you wanna pay ludicrous prices for 4gb dimms and even then those will probs overclock like trash alongside alot of 1gbit ics

 

all the ddr3 boards are trash 41 or 43 boards walled at 400/440fsb and the 45 boards are pricey though there are some ddr3 p35 like the p5kc

 

issue with 775 is you need high end boards to oc properly alongside a ddr3 p35/p45 board and yeah not very cheap not to mention quads suck for oc afaik giga ep45 can oc them decently but those can be pricey esp ddr3 ones

 

 

better off jumping to 1156 with dirt cheap h55/p55 and even an i5 750/760 will demolish an oced c2q not to mention not needing fast rams not like thats a real issue when most ddr3 ics will do 2000+ and oc is just a hell of alot easier when its just set bclk to 200 set ddr3 to 1200-2000 save and exit compared to hours of tuning fsb 400+ then theres making sure the mobo and rams are actually stable and alot of fine tuning volts like nb vtt gtl references etc. 

 

then theres 1155 also dirt cheap with a 2nd/3rd gen i5 and an h61 or even a p67/z68/z77 if you wish to oc

 

1366 also exists for dirt cheap 6 core xeons >4.2ghz and it has depreciated quite abit mobos wise though an oced 2nd gen/3rd gen will beat it in singlecore, unless i7 k cpus are overpriced not really a good platform choice though it is fun to oc especially if you have a gigabyte board where you can run 3000+ ddr3 on air with bloomfields or ~3600 with gulftown i7 / xeon w

 

and for more developed countries or countries with good used ryzen deals all of the platforms above are irrelevant when theres a 30$ 3100/3300x/3500(x) or 50$ 3600(x) and a used ~50$ midranger b3/450 like the tomahawk or equivalent which will blow them all away in performance and power efficiency + upgrade path to a used 5800x3d or new 5700x3d

[Archie_Altz]

1 hour ago, jaslion said:

Thing is nobody will want them. I have the option to have them for free but wouldnt know what to do with them as even webbrowsing is starting to suck on these.

Yeah i understand that so I think ill rather start flipping intel  core i pcs since everybody seems to be getting rid of c2d systems

[jaslion]

4 minutes ago, Archie_Altz said:

Yeah i understand that so I think ill rather start flipping intel  core i pcs since everybody seems to be getting rid of c2d systems

I mean even for those most people don't even bother looking at anything before 8th gen at all. Hell any pure 6 core I5's are being a rough sell as of late too

 

[Tan3l6]

What GPUs though? 

[Archie_Altz]

2 minutes ago, Tan3l6 said:

What GPUs though? 

iGPU

 

[Archie_Altz]

Honestly people dont care here , if it plays a game at 30-60fps they dont give a f...

29 minutes ago, jaslion said:

I mean even for those most people don't even bother looking at anything before 8th gen at all. Hell any pure 6 core I5's are being a rough sell as of late too

 

 

[Tan3l6]

3 minutes ago, Archie_Altz said:

iGPU

 

Then they are not really useful anything else than browsing the web

Getting some very cheap or free dedicated GPUs might be the only way to make em useful even for mid to late 2000s games.

 

But early 2000s perhaps. Very niche market though.

[Archie_Altz]

Just now, Tan3l6 said:

Then they are not really useful anything else than browsing the web

Getting some very cheap or free dedicated GPUs might be the only way to make em useful even for mid to late 2000s games.

I dont know i think i could put in a core 2 quad and some cheap gtx 500/600 series nvidia gpu , amd cards in bosnia are really hit or miss 

[freeagent]

If you end up finding an E8600 or E8700 shoot me a PM and I will be happy to take the CPU from you

[Somerandomtechyboi]

13 minutes ago, freeagent said:

E8700

do these exist in the wild though?

 

i have an e7700 pretty mid sample (4ghz ~1.3v) and theres some guy selling e7800s bundled with an hp board but i have never seen an e8700 though there is a xeon version of it (x5270) just horrifically overpriced though i might buy an x5260 if i can get a good bin since it is just an e8600 but xeon with hopefully better bin cause i dont think many of these were overclocked and less pricey, i did have an e8600 at one point but it was only as good as my e8400 (4.32ghz 1.34v)

 

as much as im focusing on 1366 ddr3 oc shenanigans (3400 so far on a w3503) i do wanna bin some 775 cpus see if i can get anything better than my e8400 as my previous attempts (buying an e3110, buying a lot of cpus with 5 e8500, buying a bunch of e5000 pentiums) have failed miserably but now i have abit of cash and someone has a bunch of pentium e6700s i can buy for cheap so im considering picking those up as the 2 e6700 i have can hit the 4ghz mark at around 1.3v so maybe with abit better binning i can get something to beat my e8400

[freeagent]

17 minutes ago, Somerandomtechyboi said:

do these exist in the wild though?

Yessir they do, but no many. I have only seen a handful of screenshots of them throughout the years. I had an E8600ES that I won my class in Forum Warz with, but it was stolen from me.

[mariushm]

If you get them at 5$ a pop,  you could put the CPUs and RAM sticks for sale on eBay, then mail the motherboards at a place like boardsort for gold and other metal recovery  and then pull all the cabling out and go to a scrap place and sell the cases as scrap steel and the wire as insulated copper wire... and you just may make a bit more than 5$.

 

Otherwise they'll be too old to build useful systems out of them - you'll have a hard time installing windows 10 on them, the integrated graphics will suck, they'll probably have low wattage power supplies (like 210-300w range) so you'll have limited choice when it comes to adding dedicated video cards.  They may be proprietary Dell or HP designs where the cooler is screwed to the case instead of motherboard, or designs where the cooler of the power supply also cools the cpu.

 

 

[thevictor390]

You might make a small profit by parting them out. Sometimes people need those old motherboards or power supplies for repairs on some old business appliance. You can check on eBay or similar if they are selling at all.

 

As for actually using the PCs, you want 8 GB of RAM and an SSD. The Core 2 will barely get by for light general use tasks. My parents are still using my old E7300 and it gets by. The problem is actually making any money off of them... you'd put $20 of parts in and end up with a PC worth $20.