Ask Slashdot: What To Do With Over 500 Used DIMMs? 291
An anonymous reader writes "My company is pursuing a RAM upgrade, resulting in 500+ used DDR3 4GB DIMMs. What could this be used for? Are there any cheap products on the market which can take a huge number of DIMMs? Is there a worthy cause we should donate the gear to?"
PCs for Kids (Score:5, Interesting)
Find out if there's a compters for kids or pcs for kids program in your area. They make computers available to low income kids at a very affordable price by recycling donated computers. They could definitely use ram donations.
Re:PCs for Kids (Score:5, Informative)
Donate to http://www.computersforclassrooms.org/ [computersf...srooms.org]
They would end up going to Computers used in classrooms.
Re:PCs for Kids (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:PCs for Kids (Score:4, Interesting)
I had a small pile of various DIMMs (and SIMMs though I doubt the buyer was really interested in them!) when I last cleared out all my old junk. Single auction on eBay for the whole lot (individually they aren't worth enough for the hassle of listing and dealing with idiots, but together they made a lot worth bothering with) and let someone else deal with finding uses for them (or splitting into smaller lots and reselling).
You'd be surprised how much you might make. Memory of older standards is often useful in printers (sometimes relatively new devices) and such which don't need the high falutin super sonic speeds of newer standards, not just for people looking to extend the life of very old kit on the cheap. And 4Gb DRR3 modules as mentioned here are definitely still worth something, especially in that sort of number. What my company tends to do when getting rid of old stuff like this is drop the money made into the social fund - the furniture sold on after our move to shiny new offices recently has paid for an upgraded Christmas dinner for us all this year!
Or like the guy above says: donate and someone else will deal with finding a use for them. Either way there is far less chance that it'll all just become toxic land-fill. From a company's PoV donating may provide a tax break.
Re:PCs for Kids (Score:5, Funny)
So... My 30 pin 16 meg SIMMs are not worth anything anymore? I just don't have a 30 MHz 68030 system anymore.
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Re:PCs for Kids (Score:5, Interesting)
IANAA (I am not an accountant), but AFAIK, in the US, as long as the company didn't depreciate the capital on the computer overall, they can write off the full cost of the RAM against their taxes if they donate it to a charitable organization. Added up, it can be a rather sizable chunk of money, and can even offset the cost of the upgrade by a considerable margin. Win-win situation.
Re:PCs for Kids (Score:4, Insightful)
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Re:PCs for Kids (Score:4, Funny)
Re:PCs for Kids (Score:5, Insightful)
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Let's not forget the very computers your local school rejected were being disposed of by your employer.
If you take a good look at your local school budget you'll likely see that about 70-75% goes towards teacher salaries and benefits (as it should), and as much as 1-2% goes towards technology per year - I seriously doubt that your district's technology policies are causing the taxes to rise.
Re:PCs for Kids (Score:4, Interesting)
Long ago I worked for a school district. We accepted computer donations, but it was usually disaster, and more expensive than buying a new one.
Every machine had a slightly different version of the OS, and a different set of applications. There was no consistency between machines, and nobody at the school could do real maintenance on them; it required a person from the district office to drive there (this was long ago, as I said) and fix the machine. Maintaining a hodge-podge of machines was a nightmare.
When we stopped taking random donations, it made everybody's job more efficient. We threw away a *huge* pile of "useful" computers (at least that's what the person dropping off old, useless shit called them).
Seriously, your school district is better off not accepting donations of one or two computers. It doesn't scale. At all.
If it was "a bunch" and they had a legal version of Windows or OSX (Linux if they have a full time Linux guy on staff), and they were identical and they could replace *everything* in an existing computer lab, then it may have been a bad decision.
Re:PCs for Kids (Score:4, Insightful)
lol.. no one but someone from the district office could "fix them" and you relegate them as "useless shit".
I think the problem is more to the effect of you not knowing what you had and an attitude by someone who didn't want to deal with it. Schools can put their bulk license of any windows version on the computers and send them home as loaners to the less fortunate students and forget to ask for them back. Would do a lot more for "education" then tossing donations into the trash.
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Oh, I'm sure there was students who could have done what you couldn't. You could have still gotten some use from them even without funding if you put your mind to it and didn't reject them for not being good enough for you.
Re:PCs for Kids (Score:4, Informative)
Re:PCs for Kids (Score:5, Funny)
Re:PCs for Kids (Score:5, Funny)
Dip them in chocolate, wrap them up in a colorful wrapper, and call them something like "Computer Memory dipped in chocolate" (include the quotes - the kids will think it's a joke name, then when they take a bite, the joke's on them!)
Re:PCs for Kids (Score:5, Funny)
Re:PCs for Kids (Score:4, Interesting)
Freegeek.org (Score:3)
http://freegeekorg/ [freegeekorg] is a 501(c)(3) which ethically repairs and recycles computers and components, benefitting schools and non-profits. The City of Portland and multiple non-profits donate equipment already.
eBay... (Score:5, Insightful)
Why not just sell them? Slashdot always has to find creative things to do with old stuff. Just sell it and use the money for something else.
Re:eBay... (Score:5, Interesting)
First: Hold onto them until they're actually worth something. Sometime in the middle of the DDR4 lifecycle, it will become nearly impossible to find new 4GB DDR3 sticks, so people will have to turn to used sticks if they want to upgrade their machines from 8GB (4x2GB or 2x4GB) to 16 GB (4x4GB).
History tells us that they will be valued at at least twice the original market rate. So sell now and get ~$7.5k, or wait 2-3 years and likely get $15-20k. I'd wait.
Re:eBay... (Score:4, Insightful)
That's a good point. I just had to RMA a module of extended-warranty DDR2 RAM. Ignoring for a moment the fact that they asked me to send the whole kit instead of just the faulty module, more importantly instead of replacing it, they refunded me the money instead. Which is just slightly less money than what new (and slower!) DDR2 memory costs. Oops.
In the end I managed to find the last few identical kits in some weird online store, but another year or two and I'd be completely fucked.
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Hmm. Perhaps we need a part swapper website. "Offering 2 sticks of Corsair DDR2 4 GB RAM, looking for a Nvidia / ATI PCIe video card."
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Re:eBay... (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:eBay... (Score:5, Funny)
At one point after a project failed to get off the ground I had about 100 new-in-box Supermicro ATX motherboards each with a couple of ISA slots. Turns out that after the death of ISA, those motherboards started gaining value until they were worth more than they cost new. So I sold them all and made thousands of dollars**.
**This is a partially a lie, I was lazy and just threw them away.
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uhm, did I just miss a romney joke in there?
whoosh, for me, perhaps?
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There are new motherboards available that have ISA slots and support the latest Ivy Bridge processors. I kid you not.
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Re:eBay... (Score:4, Interesting)
Capitalistically thinking, if nobody would pay thousands for it, then it's not worth thousands. The market is not really into fair pricing.
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fair market value is where the owner of something and someone who desires that something meat on a price point. the "worth" is just a guesstimate of what that number could/should be. If you can't sell something for what you think it's "worth" or what some expert told you it was "worth" then it is not worth that much your or the expert were wrong.
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Not exactly. The market value of something is the price point at which a supplier is willing to supply it, and buyer is willing to pay for it.
It may be that there is not price great enough to make anyone willing to supply, but low enough there is any demand to buy. In that case there is not market for that good or service.
I would suggest to the owner of the tubes he would be wise to list them on an auction site like ebay or something. Unless he is finding some joy in having a collection of tubes or has a
Re:eBay... (Score:5, Insightful)
Thousands of hours to sell those tubes? That's crazy talk. Even eBay itself offers a bulk listing service, where you can easily list hundreds of items. It'd be trivial to sell the tubes, and they may be worth a good chunk of money as the audiophools value some of them dearly. Their stupidity, your gain.
Re:eBay... (Score:5, Interesting)
Translation: I'm pretty sure they're worth money, lots of money. But I actually don't have any evidence this is so, and can't be bothered to do the work and find out.
I saw lots of people just like you and your Grandpa when I ran a used and rare bookstore that thought the same thing... invariably, they were wrong.
Re:eBay... (Score:5, Interesting)
When you get into obsolete parts, they generally fall into 3 categories. With the example of radio and TV tubes, there is a large percentage of the stock that is essentially worthless, everybody has them and nobody wants them. Compactron tubes in 1960s TVs are all over the place, but few people collect old TVs, and most have been junked. Second category is tubes which have a steady demand, but were made in large numbers, such as some of the tubes in the "All American Five" radios, and vintage ham and audio gear. The third category is tubes and parts for highly collectible gear, especially where specialized tubes were made for only a few models of equipment for a few years and are classified as Unobtainium. Some of the tubes in my Zenith Transoceanic radio fall into this category, a good used 1L6 goes for about $50 on Ebay, while I have a half a dozen perfectly good 5U4 rectifier tubes in my junk box. After a while, if a certain model of audio or radio gear has lasting appeal, the supply will eventually dry up. 6146 tubes are starting to fall into this category, commonly used as final amplifier tubes in many popular ham rigs, despite wide use in many applications.
This phenomenon happens with all types of vintage collectibles, because most examples of a particular item will have the same part that tends to fail or deteriorate.
Re:eBay... (Score:5, Insightful)
Sometime in the middle of the DDR4 lifecycle machines using DDR3 will be about as popular as ones using SDRAM right now.
Donate it to the kids projects mentioned above. Besides, if you sell it, your going to be fielding support calls from people with crappy systems who think your "bad used ram" is to blame.
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By then people looking to upgrade aging hardware will most likely be wanting to replace 4GB modules with 8GB modules.
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Usually that requires some overhead and isn't cheap/easy. Donations are often easier, and less hassle, with tax deductions.
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Re:eBay... (Score:5, Funny)
So the next /. story would be "Hey, I just bought 500 DIMMS on eBay, what should I do with them?"
Re:eBay... (Score:4, Funny)
Re:eBay... (Score:4, Interesting)
Yum (Score:2, Funny)
EAT THEM!
Re:Yum (Score:4, Funny)
EAT THEM!
Not a good idea- I tried eating one and it took me an eternity. At a guess, I'd say it had around four billion bites' worth.
Worthy Cause: Education (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know where OP is from, but in BC, Canada, there is a group called Computers For Schools BC, who are in the (government-funded) business of taking old computers and buffing them up for use in the school system. I suspect they would be pleased to receive something as close to current as 4GB DDR3... and they do enough volume that 500 of them would likely be used up in a month.
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They could sit on them until DDR3 supporting devices get "old".
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What sort of MB are you using that's loaded with DDR4?
Dance Dance what? (Score:5, Funny)
What sort of MB are you using that's loaded with DDR4?
Original PlayStation, model SCPH-5500-something if I remember correctly. It runs Dance Dance Revolution Konamix, the U.S. version of Dance Dance Revolution 4th Mix.
Oh, you meant that DDR4, the kind that can hold every Dance Dance Revolution song in one stick of RAM at once.
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Who says computers donated to this place are "old"?
Typically, these people get computers that have been in the school system for a couple years and are physically abused. School kids don't treat school computers very well. Electronically they are still sound, and recent in enough cases that DDR3 is a serious option. Granted, they also get rafts of (relatively) ancient computers from businesses, but the update / recycle of school machines that have only suffered physical damage is, as far as I understand it,
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Donate through National Cristina Foundation (Score:5, Informative)
ECC? (Score:2, Insightful)
Desktop or Server ram? Because server ram is generally ECC and cannot be used in desktops.
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I believe ECC can be used in (some?) AMD desktop mobos.
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I believe ECC can be used in (some?) AMD desktop mobos.
At least up to the Phenom II (don't know about the new stuff), and it requires motherboard support as well. In my very limited experience, 100 % of cheap AMD motherboards support ECC (1 of 1). It has helped me ID a bad DIMM that had a few errors every couple of months.
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Can't it be used, just without the ECC features?
Re:ECC? (Score:4, Informative)
Re:ECC? (Score:4, Informative)
Err, I am afraid sir, that you are incorrect.
Many boards without ECC support will fail to post. If it is also registered memory, EVERY board without ECC support will fail to boot.
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Consider local public universities (Score:3)
They're more likely to get more bang out of 2nd hand hardware. Additionally, there's always a need to upgrade hardware. Note, make sure you contact an administrator rather than a student employee in their IT departments. Odds are better the hardware will get put to use inside university machines rather than repurposed to supe up some undergrads private servers.
The obvious answer (Score:3, Insightful)
Few people are going to need 500+ DIMMs.
If your company really wants to help a worthy cause, why not put the work in, sell them all individually on eBay, and then donate the revenue to a charity of your choice?
Probably just recycle, but check value first (Score:4, Interesting)
RAM has a history of starting expensive for cutting-edge, getting dirt cheap as it becomes mainstream, then the old stuff gets expensive again when the market moves-on and it's in limited use. If an EBay search doesn't offer good value then most parts can be recycled these days, check with your local recycling center to see if they have a program to reclaim component materials.
Or, if you're looking for a laugh, ehow says you should consider making a sculpture [ehow.com]. With the amount of RAM coming out of companies I bet you could do something person-sized :)
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I live in a first world country, where lots of us are still using Core 2 Duos as primary/sole machines.
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Please don't. I live in a 3rd world country where lots of us are still using C2D as primary/sole machines
Wow, talk about luxury. I live in a first world country and I'm still using a K8 machine as my primary/sole machine. And I'm quite happy with it. (I only wish for an ARM-like power consumption profile, that's all I need to be happy.)
On this topic (Score:5, Funny)
I've got a load of car stereos I want to shift fast because..uh..I've upgraded to in-car mp3 players or something. Anyway, if you want a load of car stereos quick and aren't going to ask too many questions then get in touch.
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I've got a load of car stereos I want to shift fast because..uh..I've upgraded to in-car mp3 players or something. Anyway, if you want a load of car stereos quick and aren't going to ask too many questions then get in touch.
It does sound dodgy since 4GB modules shouldn't be anything to sneeze at. But image a poorly spec'ed corporate purchase that got PCs with one 4GB module of 667Hz memory when the chipset supports 1066 - if they want to upgrade to 8GB the proper way to do it is to toss the individual slow ones and get a pair of 1066 4GB for each computer.
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Not really, we had 180 DIMM's left over after an upgrade a few years ago. We upgraded all our VMWare hosts from 72GB to 144GB, 18 DIMM's times 10 hosts equals 180 DIMM's. The cost of 8GB DIMM's when we purchases the server, ~$1800, 20 months later when we did the upgrade $400. The cost to upgrade all ten hosts was down to the point where it was about equal to buying two new host with licensing but it gave us an additional ten hosts worth of capacity. We ended up using some of the leftover DIMM's for upgradi
Donate to FreeGeek! (Score:2, Informative)
http://www.freegeek.org
Goodwill (Score:2)
Re:Goodwill (Score:5, Insightful)
Goodwill repairs and recycles computers.
We have something called The Grey Bears, which recovers and recycles working computers for low prices. Might be something like that in your community.
One cautionary word, though. Make absolutely certain your employer is completly cool with you gathering these up and sending them off to worthy causes, get it in writing lest some stuffed shirt bureaucrat or bean counter come around and claim you took company property - some employers have very bizarre ways of handling disposal of assets, even stuff like old, broken printers or CRT monitors, which you and I would think are largely worthless, they have numbers on books which state otherwise.
Armor (Score:5, Funny)
Put holes in the corners and connect them via metal rings. Create yourself a suit of nerd armor the likes of which has never been seen. With 500 DIMMs you should be able to get a chest piece or pair of gauntlets...
HardOCP (Score:2)
Snark... (Score:3)
Find a nonprofit... (Score:4, Informative)
I once worked at a nonprofit that redistributed bulk PCs donations from large donors to many small nonprofits. We would get a hundred computers at a time and they almost always 1: had minimal RAM and 2: no hard drives. Any donations of RAM would be appreciated. If you have a similar charity in your area consider old hard drives (that are still working OK) as well.
I work at a school... (Score:5, Informative)
I work at a school for special-needs teenagers, and we could probably use about 200 of them if they were available.
Check with accounting (Score:5, Interesting)
You may find donating company assets is harder than you think.
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A little mortar... (Score:3)
And you could build the absolutely coolest clubhouse, ever!
Also, I see geocachers attach these to Travel Bug dog-tags, and give them names like "I've lost my memory" and send them traveling.
Sell them. (Score:2)
Either sell them all as one big batch, or in lots of 100. There are businesses and nonprofits that will buy them.
DDR3 Donation (Score:5, Informative)
You can always donate them to a local Computers For Kids project.Believe me,any and all kinds of hardware is always needed.I ought to know.I've run such a program for a good 20 years
Donate them!! (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a charity local to me that builds PCs for the disadvantaged:
https://sites.google.com/site/carolinafreepc/ [google.com]
Purpose
To provide PCs with educational programs to low income
families and children at no cost.
Goals
To help kids become knowledgeable about computers
To interest kids in engineering and technology
To encourage kids to stay in school and graduate
I'd buy a couple of them off you (Score:2)
I most of my computers have 2 GB of RAM. I wouldn't mind to upgrade to, say, 8 GB
Obvious answer (Score:2)
Sell them, they are worth money.
Or does your company not use money?
Imagine... (Score:3)
...a Beowulf cluster of these...
I miss Amigas (Score:2)
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RAM expansion is limited so severely because the speed of light has a huge impact on performance these days. The bus latency is a huge factor.
Windows 7 lets you add slow RAM with ReadyBoost. Not sure if Linux lets you do anything like that. But it's just not as fast as RAM that's only an inch away from the CPU.
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IBM PCs of the era had a similar option: attach the RAM to the ISA bus via an add-on card. Like the Amiga (and most computers of that era), the expansion bus was the processor bus (with a bit of buffering and maybe a tad bit of glue logic, but not much more).
As processor speeds increased, this became a problem. Many peripherals just weren't designed for the increased speed, so they divorced the bus speed from the processor speed by making it a fraction of the processor speed [wikipedia.org] (ISA) or going asynchronous [wikipedia.org] (A
give them to employees (Score:5, Informative)
let the employees take home a few if they have a use for them. Make people happy and it won't cost anything or at least not much depending on what you would otherwise do with them.
Real old school (Score:3)
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Shiny things swaying in your field of vision while you are responsible for controlling a 3000 pound vehicle without hitting people. Brilliant.
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Someone really screwed up, and didn't RTFA.
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Ram drives are great performance wise.
Yeah I think that was the point of "Are there any cheap products on the market which can take a huge number of DIMMs?". So, are there?
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$3? You're looking at active listings to gauge final selling price. Most bids these days come in the last hour or the last minute of the auction on auction-style listings. Either look at Buy-it-now prices, or select "Completed Listings" on the lefthand side of a search.
I'm seeing roughly $15 each average. Search settings.
1,081 results found for 4gb ddr3 -2x -1gb -2gb desktop
Preferences: Buy It Now, Completed listings
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