When is a board beyond economic repair?

[Orpheous]

When does a motherboard, graphics card, sound card or other component become too old or expensive to repair?

What do you do with your old parts whose services are no longer required?

I have a stack (20+) of old desktops in my garage, just waiting for me to show them some TLC, but they're mostly s478's and some s370's! that are probably only worth around $50 - $100 in GC, but I find it so hard to just bin them!
My dilemna is, do I spend a few hours on each to rebuild and repair them?, or do I strip them for parts and sell the rest on flea bay?

Just interested to see what you're opinions are relating to the economic viability of repairing motherboards and other computer components. I'm also hoping that your responses might help me to figure out what to do!

[pfrcom]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

I have the same dilemma - spending money on new capacitors to fix something worthless, or soon worthless (aka obsolete), is not worth it, without even thinking of the time involved

There used to be a reasonable demand for used parts a few years ago, but now it's not worth the effort of testing and selling them

I think there's a Cargo Cult mentality out there in computer user land - people want something for nothing, or think law of economics doesn't apply, that you can pay very little but expect high quality

Sorry, I can't help you figure out what to do

[c_hegge]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

I usually say if it uses SDRAM, bin it. If it uses DDR RAM, it's a keeper. It also depends on what the problem is. If it's fairly simple like bad caps, then re-cap it, but anything more serious than that and it goes in the bin.

[willawake]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

beyond economic repair : when repairs exceed the market value

I usually say if it uses SDRAM, bin it. If it uses DDR RAM, it's a keeper.

i would agree with that.
in the office anything s478 and with sata is interesting to me. but i think there is better market for server boards, server parts, office machine parts.

I think there's a Cargo Cult mentality out there in computer user land - people want something for nothing, or think law of economics doesn't apply, that you can pay very little but expect high quality

this extends much further than computer land. even big clients who did not ask for quotation before (expecting it to be market rates) now ask for quotation. we are arguing sometimes over $100 on a $1000 bill. hello thats part of my fucking profit

[kc8adu]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

if i can sell it for enough to be worth my time or build something useful/saleable with it it gets fixed.or if it is commonly used in industrial stuff.
anything else goes to the recycling guy.
stuff with holes burned in it is a goner.
i have fixed some very rough boards for industrial customers where they were next to impossible to replace.
so the point where it is scrap is mainly set by the customer.

[goodpsusearch]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

I don't think I am suitable to answer about the market value, because I don't sell pc parts.

But for me, any mobo that is 1GHZ and up capable is a keeper, especially if it uses ddr or ddr2.

I have to say though that I would recap only ddr333 mobos and above, because of shipping cost of the replacement caps.

I also collect and keep any cpu I find as long it is not a slot one and any ram whatever the size. I do the same with hdd of 15GB and more.


Finally there are some parts that I keep and repair because they have some special value for me, like a good pentium 3 board or old ATI All In Wonder cards.

[StevieC]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

For me, some old parts have value as retrocomputing gear. A friend of mine re-capped the mobo on an old Mac SE/30 (one of the most expandable black-and-white all-in-one Macs). Replaced the PSU with a new aftermarket one that's rated for 3 times as many watts, uses a quieter cooling fan, and he's dismantled it and checked: it uses nothing but GENUINE Rubycon caps, he's recapped the mainboard (including replacing some axial 'lytics with tantalum caps, and all the others with polymer caps) and given it the royal treatment. Did a hack to increase the built-in screen's pixel count from 512x342 to 640x480 and has installed a graphics card that improves the screen's bitdepth from one-bit monochrome to 8-bit grayscale. He's upgraded the stock 16 MHz 68030 CPU with synchronous 68882 FPU to a 50 MHz 68030 CPU with a 50 MHz 68882 FPU (it's one of the FEW Mac SE/30s to have a socketed CPU and he had the upgrade that was made to go in that socket so the CPU upgrade wouldn't occupy the machine's one and only expansion slot) and a Stratos TwinSpark that acts as a riser to let the user install TWO expansion cards (one is the above-mentioned graphics card, the other is an EtherNet card). He's a writer by trade and says that his use of that vintage machine actually IMPROVES his productivity by forcing him to stay focused on the task at hand (it helps that he's using WriteNow, a word processing app written entirely in Motorola 68k ASSEMBLY code, making it hyper-efficient and low on CPU cycle consumption.

[shovenose]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

Lol! Thats cool.

Ok so i am one of those people that feels the obsessive to have stuff stuff stuff! Whether i get it at my workplace or newegg.com or its buying p3 kotherboards here doesnt matter. But it seems for every box of stuff i bring to recycle i get two boxes to take home!
For example today im getting rid of a power mac g4 case and a 1u server case along with a bag of misc crap. And im taking home 2 boxes of broken power supplies.
My rule for getting rid of stuff:
-is it something i can use? Yes: keep no: go to next question
-does anyone i know want it/want to buy? Yes: give it to them no: next question.
-can i sell it? Yes: sell no: next question
-does it deserve space in my house? Yes or no. But usually at this point i add it to the "bring to renew computers for recycle" pile...

Problem is this method isnt very effective and i end up keeping alot!

[StevieC]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

Well I'm trying to figure out what the most precise matches are for a mainboard of mine that needs to be recapped. Might just send it to get the few MUST REPLACE NOW caps taken care of and then get the others that can wait replaced when I've got the money to pay for the more...thorough procedure. It's an nVidia nForce2 Ultra 400 board on which I plan to use an AMD Athlon XP 3200+

[Orpheous]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

I started digging through my garage the other day, and grabbed the oldest looking desktop case I could find, thinking "how bad could it be?" (this thing was yellow with age)
It was an old 486 SX!... it's probably worth more for it's gold content than as a working machine right?

[bigbeark]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

For me, when I wouldn't enjoy using it.

I recapped a couple of TUSCL-2C Asus boards a while ago. I enjoy using the board because I find it quite responsive for surfing and it's cool-running and quiet. It can use P3 Tualatin up to 1400Mhz.

Performance is similar to Athlon K7 boards with SDRAM, but it runs cooler and quieter.

Video performance is not great because it takes 512MB Ram tops. Runs fine using Ubuntu Linux.

I like Socket A(462) with DDR ram and Socket 478 Hyper Thread 800FSB
machines for everyday use. These are suitable for all-round browsing use.

I recapped a couple of CUR-DLS Server boards. I use them because I recapped them, but the video performance is marginal. Recapped a 64MB PCI
video card for these, video OK.

I recapped a bunch of sound cards last winter, it was easy, cheap and I'd have had to order new replacements from afar.

I have a lot of standard 1000, 1500 and 2200 caps on hand. If I had to buy a bunch of new caps and the cost exceeded $30, I would probably pass.

Also depends on how accessible the caps on the board are, and how many.
I've got an ABIT KR7-A that has over 40 caps on it, maybe too time-consuming. Plus those early socket A boards are really copper-loaded so heat, time and patience are really needed.

[Orpheous]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

I replaced 3 caps in the power circuit of a HP vs17 17" LCD and it been working fine now for over a week solid as a second monitor on my workhorse setup.

I've set it up as a baby monitor screen so I can watch and listen to my 3 month old late at night while I work using a Foscam IP/IR camera. The monitor was salvaged from a dumpster at work and only really cost me a bit of time, but it's value for me is in being able to watch over my boy. For the amount of time that it took me to take it a part and reassemble it though, it's probably not something that I could charge for, until I get a bit more efficient and confident with it.

[mockingbird]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

Everything is subjective. One man's trash is anothers treasure. If you find old Optiplex motherboards, you can sell them to an IT guy of someone who administers a building with thousands of them, because there are always boards with caps failing, but they don't want to replace them because the computers are basically like dumb terminals.

Old junky cases are scrap, old 478 boards I throw away, anything 865G/P I keep, these boards still have great potential, as long as you can find a decent power supply for them. Old PSUs, I've started a small collection, I hope to start recapping some in the near future.

I have some old Socket462 boards, I honestly don't know why I keep them. Maybe because I could never afford them when they were new, and now I can look down upon them with satisfaction with their G-LUXON caps. Anyone want an old Abit KT7A?

[everell]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

[QUOTE=mockingbird; Anyone want an old Abit KT7A?[/QUOTE]

I have some old P3/socket a class boards which I use when I am testing reliability of repaired/modified power supplies. Just this week I bought a $20 case on sale from Tiger Direct and put an old Abit KT7A in it. But it sure is noisy (the northbridge fan). It does fine with Ubuntu 10.10, can do email and basic surfing of the web. It is great for testing my Bestec ATX-250 12E with DM311 mod. Video looks great with a VooDoo3 card. I think the cpu is only 900 Meg.

If you want to get rid of that KT7A, it might be better than the old junker I have, so if you live in the states, pm me and we can talk turkey.

[mockingbird]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

I'm in Canada. What did you do about those "Jackson" caps on the KT7A.

The board was thrown away with an old Geforce 2 GTS. I always wanted one of those back in the day. I cleaned it up and gave it a new fan. It's a keeper. Sometimes people need something with basic 3D capability to play flash games on old computers and its great for it.

[everell]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

What did you do about those "Jackson" caps on the KT7A.

It has been a while since I seriously looked at this board. Apparently I changed three bulging capacitors with Nichicon PW(M) caps. It works, so I didn't change anything else. Now I am noticing that IDE slot #2 does not work with cdrom. So perhaps more capacitors are bad. So now that I look again, there are numerous Jackson capacitors on this board. So tell me about your experience with Jackson capacitors.

[kc8adu]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

you mean jackcon (junkcon)

[mockingbird]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

Yea, JackCon. I also have a few of them on a Sceptre LCD logic board. I believe they're another GSC (Now defunct) incarnation.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

Yea, JackCon. I also have a few of them on a Sceptre LCD logic board. I believe they're another GSC (Now defunct) incarnation.

Nope.
Jackcon manages to make crap without any help.
http://www.jackcon.com.tw/products.html

[BigTroll]

Re: When is a board beyond economic repair?

For me, some old parts have value as retrocomputing gear. A friend of mine re-capped the mobo on an old Mac SE/30 (one of the most expandable black-and-white all-in-one Macs). Replaced the PSU with a new aftermarket one that's rated for 3 times as many watts, uses a quieter cooling fan, and he's dismantled it and checked: it uses nothing but GENUINE Rubycon caps, he's recapped the mainboard (including replacing some axial 'lytics with tantalum caps, and all the others with polymer caps) and given it the royal treatment. Did a hack to increase the built-in screen's pixel count from 512x342 to 640x480 and has installed a graphics card that improves the screen's bitdepth from one-bit monochrome to 8-bit grayscale. He's upgraded the stock 16 MHz 68030 CPU with synchronous 68882 FPU to a 50 MHz 68030 CPU with a 50 MHz 68882 FPU (it's one of the FEW Mac SE/30s to have a socketed CPU and he had the upgrade that was made to go in that socket so the CPU upgrade wouldn't occupy the machine's one and only expansion slot) and a Stratos TwinSpark that acts as a riser to let the user install TWO expansion cards (one is the above-mentioned graphics card, the other is an EtherNet card). He's a writer by trade and says that his use of that vintage machine actually IMPROVES his productivity by forcing him to stay focused on the task at hand (it helps that he's using WriteNow, a word processing app written entirely in Motorola 68k ASSEMBLY code, making it hyper-efficient and low on CPU cycle consumption.

okay that just REALLY turned me on, My mac SE/30 is sad, its got leaking dying caps, it turns on but sound is gone, caps, and now it wont recognize the hard drive, probably caps again, mine has the socketed cpu, i just need to find a cap kit and opener for it so i can fix it.