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What do you do with your old parts?

AshleyAshes

Today I bought a 390X on impulse (I just finished a 68hr week and I'll be working 60-70hr weeks till mid dec, so I have the OT pay to cover it. @_@) and this leaves me doing my 'Hand-Me-Down' process that I've gotten into so I thought I'd chat about what I do and ask what others do.

 

In my case, I have three machines, my workstation, my living room HTPC, and my bedroom HTPC that doubles as the media storage server.  The workstation is always new parts, it started as a 2500k and it's been upgraded to a 3770K, and now an i7 4930K.  Funny store, three mobos and three CPUs have been in this thing, but it's the same install of Windows. :D  I built a dedicated HTPC/Server a few years ago.  It was original an AMD A8-3870K machine for Kodi and light Steam gaming and when my workstation's HD 6850 got replaced with an HD 7950, it made sense to put the 6850 in the HTPC/Server because it would be about 3x as powerful as the APU in it.

 

Moving along, when I rebuilt my workstation into an i7 4930K, I had a lot of spare parts.  A lot.  Like, i7 3770K CPU, Asus mobo, 500w Corsair PSU, and the case, basically an entire freaking computer minus RAM and HDD.  So I pulled a 2TB from my server when that drive was being upgraded and found some RAM.  I contacted a friend about her HD 6950 that she decommissioned and got that for $40 + All You Can Eat Sushi Dinner.  An entire 3770K/HD 6950 system built out of used or spare parts.  It's now my living room HTPC and Steam Machine.  Now I'm again upgrading the workstation graphics with this R9 390X, meaning it's time to juggle and hand me down a few GPUs.

 

I like this though, it means I can upgrade a graphics cards every couple of years but the old GPU doesn't go into the trash or a shelf, it gets put into use.  For 1080p gaming on my living room TV, that HD 7950 it will get later today will still do a great job on a wide range of games.  It's all spare and used parts except for a couple of odds and ends, but it's also basically a PS4/Xbone killer so I'm pretty pleased with this.  It's also nice to know that between three machines, any graphics card will rack up six years of service, which does a lot to feel like I got much more for my dollar.

 

So what do you guys do with old parts being decommissioned from your main systems?

 

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Put them on my shelf, I love the look of PC parts :P

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-SNIP-

tl;dr

 

Response to title

If its REALLY old stuff i just throw it away

graphics cards can be placed on shelves and hard drives gets re-used

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tldr

 

I still haven't built my first PC. but if i had extra parts laying around I would put them on a shelf. :P\

or sell and be on scrap yard wars

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Haven't had any spare parts yet, but I would sell them, and invest that money into new parts

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Put them on display or sell them.

"It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brain falls out." - Carl Sagan.

"I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you" - Edward I. Koch

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I ended up making a folding@home rig/garage heater/air filter

My 660 Ti is staying pretty chill at the moment while running folding@home. 55C at the moment.

"It pays to keep an open mind, but not so open your brain falls out." - Carl Sagan.

"I can explain it to you, but I can't understand it for you" - Edward I. Koch

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I use my parts till they die, after which I recycle them.

Or if they get so old, I recycle them....

As a matter of fact between dad and I, we put about a 50 gal (151.4 Liter for you metric peeps) tub of old electronics to recycle not to long ago.

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Keep them.

But if they were worth anything still I would sell them

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My 660 Ti is staying pretty chill at the moment while running folding@home. 55C at the moment.

My 6950 is colder, 50 degrees. The machine is drawing from the wall, less than the TDP of the GPU, so something is not taxing the card hard enough. 200W is not enough to heat a garage.

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