TLDR; Scrapping electronics isn’t a very lucrative hobby, but when you have a giant pile of hardware you need to get rid of it may be more cost effective than paying someone to take it away.
When I decided to buy a large lot of surplus computers online I had one part of my plan in place, as a small number of them were worth Crazy Xserve G5 valuations , but the rest of my plan was not. The first problem was moving this stuff, the machines were only a couple hours away but when doing the math on the total weight I needed a bigger vehicle. How much does a 1U server weigh? Well like 40 lbs. How much does a 2U server weight? Like 60 lbs. How much does a small moving box full of 3.5 hard drives weigh? About 90lbs. How much does all this weigh? like 5000 lbs. One U-Haul van later, a lot of lifting and I had most of it moved, one more trip with our minivan and I got the rest of the hard drives. 12 boxes of 3.5″ hard drives was near the weight capacity of the minivan, this stuff adds up fast.
The 3,000 hard drives were the first problem, the original listing said they were scrap and some random testing revealed that was in fact true, they didn’t work and I was not looking to fix or eBay 3,000 20 year old hard drives. Hours of googling later I found Northeast Precious Metals and verified that I could in fact just bring in one or a thousand hard drives and they’d pay me for them. If I had a better plan I would have gone straight to Northeast Precious Metals from the server pickup and got rid of the drives that day, but moving them twice was a small learning experience in logistics. $395 in hand I had unloaded half a ton of hard drives. I was paid 30 cents a lb as scrap for precious metal reclamation.
I was hoping the Dell, HP and Cisco servers would be worth something on eBay, but as I researched the exact models and saw that the condition of many of them was pretty bad due to dust I had to develop another plan. I could have brought all of the servers whole to Northeast Precious Metals, it would have taken several trips in my van or I’d be paying for another U-Haul, and it’d be mostly moving a lot of low value steel. I decided that disassembling the machines would be more fun and easier to fit into my schedule. I didn’t have to allocate multiple 4 hour round trips, I could unload most of the steel nearby and do one run with all the CPUs, memory, boards and remaining hard drives. I could also get everything into less heavy individual pieces. The steel isn’t worth much but I can get rid of it free very close at a recycling center or get paid a little further. I tried the paid place once but the time and extra distance were not worth the little amount you get, I got about $30 for several hundred lbs of steel (“light iron”).
The HP servers were definitely the worst to disassemble, a lot of screwed in layers, a few cordless drills setup with the different bits definitely made this easier. The Dells were the most fun to take apart, they had a lot of quick release fasteners so I could pop them apart very fast. The Cisco stuff was half and half, some of it came apart fast with a few screws but the front of the machine was a lot of wiring all threaded through and held on with plastic glued in fasteners.
With all the steel gone and everything sorted into boxes, I made one last trip to get rid of it all. For about 70 servers 20 years old, about 20 2U and 50 1U, broken down:
- 7lbs of CPUs @ $5/lb = $35
- 11lbs of RAM @ $12/lb = $132
- 28lbs of gold fingered daughter cards @ $2/lb= $56
- 34lbs of CD drives @ $.10 = $3.40
- 20lbs of cards without gold fingers @ $0.45/lb = $9
- 31lbs of all cabling w/ connectors @$0.50/lb = $16
- 352lbs of power supplies @ $0.15/lb= $53
- 140lbs of motherboards @ $1.50/lb = $210
The remaining hard drives from my initial haul minus the half a ton or so plus the disassembled servers was:
- 841lbs of hard drives (2.5 and 3.5) @ $0.30/lb = $252.30
The hard drives from the servers was maybe 150lbs, a lot of servers don’t have all drive bays full and a lot of the Cisco servers had 2.5″ drives.
In the end, if you’re looking to scrap rack mount computers many with 2 cpus, you’re looking to get less than $10 a machine from components. If I had sold them whole I’d be looking at like $4-5 a machine plus a lot transportation time and money.
Would I do this again? Probably not, it’s not worth the time, but if you have spare time and the inclination it’s a low key way to turn old computers into cash. The Xserve G5s made the whole lot worth the hassle and I suspect I’ll never run across a cheap pile of those again.
