General Question What boards are worth Recapping?

[ComputerGeek]

Hello guys, I just had a Generalized Question, I was wondering what boards are worth saving? I mean isn't there a point when the board Value Drops that it isn't worth Recapping? Or is there a demand for these boards because of their age? Where is the Point were it's not worth fixing? P4 era Board? Just Wondering Thanks!

[bigbeark]

Re: General Question What boards are worth Recapping?

Are you talking about recapping a board and selling it on Ebay? Or are you talking about starting a business to recap boards?

In general, the most saleable boards would be late model laptop boards for name brand computers like HP Compaq Lenovo or Dell.

Valuable Desktop boards would again be name-brand boards no older than Socket 939 (AMD) or Core 2(Intel).

Some businesses are holding on to Socket 775 P4s. From reading this forum, a lot of people are recapping Dell socket 775 boards, especially SFF models, because they fail because P4 Prescotts run hot. I suspect they are doing large volumes of these boards on a contract basis. Don't bother recapping non brandname boards unless it's for your own use.

I recap boards for my own enjoyment. Trying to make money selling recapped boards on Ebay is problematic. Most buyers aren't going to give you a premium for a recapped board, and used boards are pretty cheap.

[ComputerGeek]

Re: General Question What boards are worth Recapping?

Thanks for the response, I think I would be doing mostly eBay, So you would only recommend doing 775 boards and newer.

Do Caps Usually fail on Laptops? I never thought that was an Issue what are the signs of this?

[bigbeark]

Re: General Question What boards are worth Recapping?

Good point re laptops, they would likely use surface mount solid caps.

Lots of small operators are reflowing laptop boards for more money than recapped desktop boards will bring.

I can buy working socket 775 HT Intel and Asus desktop boards with fan and CPU for $25 locally, so there can't be much money in recapping these boards.

I can also buy complete P4 socket 775 HP, Dell or IBM towers locally for $50 - $75. I think to make any money recapping these you would need to have a contract to handle large volumes, say 200 or so at a time. Not Ebay stuff.

It all depends on your local computer market. It could be more lucrative if you are in a remote area.

I see more people recapping/repairing flatscreen monitors and boards.
More money to be made there. Remember you can buy a complete desktop tower unit for under $300, so how much can you charge for a recapped
older board?

On the other hand there are lots of late model name-brand mainboards with crap caps that can and do fail. Think AM2 boards with TK caps used in HP
Compaq.

[PCBONEZ]

Re: General Question What boards are worth Recapping?

Hello guys, I just had a Generalized Question, I was wondering what boards are worth saving? I mean isn't there a point when the board Value Drops that it isn't worth Recapping? Or is there a demand for these boards because of their age? Where is the Point were it's not worth fixing? P4 era Board? Just Wondering Thanks!

There is no 'pat answer' - have to research the value of each board.
-
.Some boards have a cult like following and go for more than they should be worth.
.There are also boards that, by what they are, should go for big bucks but were low production so no one knows what they 'are' or searches for them and they end up being hard to sell. [So write good ads that say something about them.]
.Sometimes P-1 or even 486 boards are worth hundreds of dollars because they were used in some kind of industrial equipment.
-
Boards that are hard sellers are better put up on eCRATER than eBay.
- No fees. - And it's a classifieds format, not an auction style.
You can run the ad and wait for someone wants that -exact- board for whatever reason and is willing to pay what you want.
- It costs you nothing to list -or- sell it, so if it takes several months - so what.
.

[ratdude747]

Re: General Question What boards are worth Recapping?

Boards that are hard sellers are better put up on eCRATER than eBay.
- No fees. - And it's a classifieds format, not an auction style.
You can run the ad and wait for someone wants that -exact- board for whatever reason and is willing to pay what you want.
- It costs you nothing to list -or- sell it, so if it takes several months - so what.
.

OT:

thanks for the advice, I have a board or two I may have to list... an EATX dual slot 1 coppermine board made by AMI (AMI megadual) that is collecting dust and works great...

[ComputerGeek]

Re: General Question What boards are worth Recapping?

Ok, Thanks for the tips guys!

From what I gather a good reflow Machine cost ~1500 Right. I mean you can do the Hack type job with the heatsink but that's doesn't work well. So doing Laptop work might be out too.

For motherboards, so You have to get them for cheap or next to nothing to make it worth it? Thanks for the recomendation on eCRATER.

Would anyone happen to have a list or know of a list of older boards that are worth something?

Thanks!