I'm curious to see what this community does, at large, with their spare parts. A lot of the time I see people essentially hoard them and eventually have video cards piling up in bins. Others take the more philanthropic route and simply give them away to others that need/want them. Lastly are the more capitalistically inclined, who resell their used parts to make up some of the money that they spent.
So, I'm curious, Tek Community. What do you do with your spare parts? Are you a...
Pack Rat? How big is your stash?
Cyber-Philanthropist? Where/How do you give them out?
Hardware Capitalist? Where do you resell your parts?
Other?
Feel free to elaborate and tell relevant stories if you have them.
50/50 Hoarder Philanthropist split, I've given away 3 complete systems to mates who needed new rigs, but I like to also make sure I have sufficient components in my stash bin in case one fails
A little bit of everything. With cheaper stuff like case fans or some really poorly worn stuff like a laptop HDD with bad sectors, I hoard in my big box of awesome tech stuff. I've sold some stuff, most of which I regret. Like my old 1TB HDD. It was in mint condition and storage space is always useful. But I sold my friend most of his current rig (he didn't accept stuff for free). I've given away old peripherals to friends and family. Currently I plan to keep my motherboard as an heirloom as it is the only original from my very first build from almost 3 years ago. Everything else has been upgraded. So this is kind of "the one that started it all". I'll probably hoard more for spares and sell less in the future. And give stuff away, cause I dislike capitalism and greedyness. :P
Generally speaking when I build a pc I am aiming to use it til I run it into the ground. That is the intention always. I really do not plan to do upgrades. However there have been a few times where I have done an upgrade or two. The most recent pc I built for my son got an upgrade. I felt bad that he had an AMD card, 7850, which meant no PhysX for him and so I decided to get my son a GTX 760. The good news is I found a buyer for the card which got me back all I paid for the card plus more because I sold the game(s) that came with the 7850. Now right now I do have some heatsinks and they are mostly just stock and I have tried to sell them but it is hard. I think I sold one stock heatsink. I ended up with a few after recent heatsink upgrades. I do have other parts laying around like small capacity IDE hard drives and a 1000 watt psu but they were not pulled from any pc to upgrade to something better.
I have always been very disappointed by how much cash you get when selling used parts. So I tend to give away any useful parts to friends and family. Currently my wife is playing Farmville on an 8 core CPU gaming rig :)
Because I'm a broke-ass, I will consider re-selling them first. If I can't sell, then I just keep things unless I think I won't ever have any use for it.
I [often] sell on the bay of fleas. Had a WD green 1TB which sold. That enabled me to get an Antec VSK-3000E case and some Red Vines! I love American candy! ;O)
I horde them xD But i did make my step dad a pc out of old parts last year.
FX 6100 (underclocked to 3ghz) used 4gbs of cheapo ram (new) cooler master cpu tower (used) old gameing pc case i found in a skip i buffed up (used) Gigabyte 78LMT-USB3 (new) 250gb WD black HDD (removed it from a old sky box) (used) some reused cooler master fans (used) CX 430 Psu (new) DVD/CDR (used)
Anything over 20 bucks in value gets sold anything less than that gets hoarded or tossed. With exception of my 7950 on my shelf, I really wanted a display piece. So for example I hoard fans but I'll sell an all in one cooler etc.
When I upgrade a PC I tend to move the spare hardware down to the next PC in my fleet. For example when I upgraded the RAM in my main rig the old RAM was put into my side PC and the RAM it replaced was put into my fathers PC. Similarly I just upgraded my graphics card and I'm now planning to put the old GPU into my side PC.
When components go "off the end" I tend to hoard them (or throw them away if they are broken or really old). Having multiple computers helps to justify upgrades in that I can effectively upgrade several PCs with a single purchase.
I keep GPUs, CPUs, RAM and fans. Coolers often go to friends because I can not stand jet engine coolers. Old gaming GPUs get put back into their boxes, special stuff like my VooDoo3 and my AMD 486 are in showcases. If one of my friends has a problem, I have a part to help out with.
We have 3 primary workstations and 4 lesser machines that do other tasks (not counting servers) most all equipment from the workstations gets handed down to the lesser machines at upgrade time, the equipment coming out of those machines either finds it's way into storage (for failures) or is assembled into working boxes that we sale or donate.
Over the years we have donated older equipment to missionaries, Boy Scouts, or just people in need that don't have the funds to repair a failed computer, dead & defective parts are junked with the exception of dead hard drives which we use for target practice which leaves little chance of any sort of data recovery...lol
