QOTD: What Do You Do With Your Old PCs?

My old computer was such a piece of junk that I took it with me to an outdoor rifle range and everyone got to shoot it. It was glorious.

I use them to teach hardware classes.
assembling it, formating it, the most common issues with hardware, etc.

sell 'em.

and if i can't sell 'em, blow 'em up so nobody else gets anything for free.

lol. no, i do try to sell high end stuff that isn't high end enough anymore for me, but other things (old monitors, printers, etc) go to the local schools (South Africa) where they are SERIOUSLY appreciated.

Mainly just keep them around as web browsing terminals.

First?

Mainly just use them as web browsing terminals.

First?

Old hardware for me gets reused as new hardware for family for the most part. I've never thrown anything away, I still have a few 56k modems and a 4mb PCI video card in my desk drawer for some reason I can't explain.

I throw out all the ones that are too slow. Right now I'm getting ready to retire my Pentium 3, which is a very stable file server and going to move my P4 into it. And may end up getting a dual core board/cpu soon after and taking the P4 out. I also have a P233mmx system for legacy gaming with a 4mb monster 3d 3dfx video card in it, but I rarely ever use it. The games are too outdated in graphics to play and leave very little nostalgic value. I also built up one of my P4 with 6600GT agp and monster 3d II voodoo2 video card in it but it is just sitting idle without a hard drive.

Realistically anything that isn't core2duo or above is pretty crummy for gaming on, all of my friends wonder why I have more than my two core2duo computers. Playing battlefield 2 for example on a pentium 4 HT is sad, very sad.. my biggest complaint about high priced video cards too. I had a ti4600 in that system for a while and although 6600gt is faster, it is pretty pathetic.

.. and point is I remember spending $300 on that ti4600 card when it came out.

Old computers...let me see I have some somewhere in the basement in some boxes, mostly pieces ...

In order: harvest parts for less-old systems, jury-rigged HTPCs, backup systems, test parts, sale, donation, recycling.

After reading the last few remarks, I think this question needs to be rephrased. Maybe "What SHOULD WE do with our old computers and electronics, for the sake of preserving the environment?"

Right now, stacked behind the bathroom door

i passed on my old semprom 2400 build with 1gb of ddr and a geforce 5500 to my sisters. to them going from a 300 or 400 mhz pentium 3 to that setup has been like going from an nvidia riva to a gtx 295 to the kind of people that like to visit this website. good enough to surf online, download music, barely manage photoshop cs3, watch a few movies and play the sims 3 at the lowest possible settings. but they're happy with that, not a very demanding pair....the old gateway tower with that P3 chip, 96 mb of ram and some 64mb nvidia card was abandoned in a garage in what used to be my house! and my current build will probably end up with my fiancee after i upgrade to a core i7 or phenom II build (if amd steps up their game some).

I sell them or give them, all depending on what is in it.

Oh, I just put Crucial RAM in and pretend it is no longer obsolete.

Trickle down theory. I use my family to justify new hardware. "Well little brother your video card is struggling with that game." So I buy me a faster card and give him mine. Everybody wins!! Old, outdated PC's usually become toys to play with. Overclocking to breaking point.

there is a lot of thing i would do , but they die before i change pc

Usually old PC get put to use playing old games, or just using the web. No sense wasting it.

Still using some of those old parts. Just gave a buddy a Pentium 3 500 Mhz gateway tower, he didn't have squat so he's thankful for it. I think I picked it up for spare parts for $15 at goodwill 2 years ago.

Built a server box for the family from old parts and a new hard drive. It worked fine for about a year, but then we've had some power issues that led to system death. Hoping to get the new parts on Tues or weds.

Do I get $3500-$4500 for a machine that only gets 17 FPS in CRYSIS for one that gets 27 FPS or higher?

Don't have a old computer yet cuz i still use the old in fact a i am using it right now, it is a 2001 machine,and boy is it slow, 512 megs of SDRAM with a 1.2 ghz tualatin celeron which is actually supposed to be an OCed P3 and 8 mb of VRAM so it sucks for me. luckily i do have a C2D laptop with a 9600 GT

But when this guy gets old enough i will have to take it apart and study evry box in it which means destroying beyond fixing, and then just dumping it in the trash

Donate them if they still work, salvage parts if they're partially okay, throw them out if they're completely dead.

I got two younger brothers a father and a mom.

Basically thats it !!! Things only go to the trash can when they just don't work.

I have my main computer, and older one made out of old parts as a work/backup computer, and the backup/experimental computer. The rest gets freecycled. I use to have more, but having 7 working machines when you really only use two, and sometimes the third, was a bit much .

Scrapped for parts, and left lying around if not used as a secondarys for friends to play LAN at my house...they eventually lie around for long enough they get thrown out, but usually with RAM and HDD's missing =D

Like Megaman, I did at one time have 6-8 computers that could play COD2 anywhere from maxed out (my top 2) all the way to bare minimum. Fun times with friends, but overall not very feasible and most ended up scrapped for parts and thrown out eventually.

I have my main gaming rig and my newest laptop that I use regularly. My previous main rig I still have and used to mess with Linux on it. Now it's back to XP and I let my roommate use it to play WoW. I had an older Compaq that I used years ago in my bedroom when I lived with my parents. I gave that to my parents for my mom to use. I've given even older systems away to friends. An even older main rig of mine, I fried the mobo. I reused many of it's parts in the next build. However, I offered the parts (as well as some other spares I had lying around) to my church. Preacher gave me a motherboard, I built another system of it and now it sits in that Church's computer lab. If it still works, I don't throw it away.

I've had various laptops. One I had 3 years ago (15" HP, Sempron 2800), bought it used off eBay and the motherboard fried in a year of owning it so I took it to Hazardous Waste Collection but kept the CPU and RAM. The next one (15" Compaq, Celeron 440M) I bought used from a friend, I had it for 2 years, broke it's monitor and bought a new Compaq (15", Athlon X2 QL-62). Something was wonky with it and it couldn't do things up to my standards so I sold it to a regular customer at the restaurant I worked (was perfect for them). I actually replaced the busted monitor in my old laptop and kept using it. Then my dad bought me a new Toshiba (16", Core 2 Duo of some sort) but it overheated and died within 30 minutes of using it. Returned and swapped it for a new HP (17", Turion X2 RM-74) and gave my old Celeron laptop to my dad. He still uses it.

If it still works, I either find a use for it, or give it to someone who could use it. If something on it breaks, I remove what's usable, and take the useless bits to Hazardous Waste Collection.

Set them up as servers, firewall/routers, or give them to the needy. With Xubuntu my scrap-out cutoff is a K6-2/500MHz with 256MB of memory and a 10GB hard drive.

So far I've handed the ones I got as a kid to my siblings (my dad had built those out of spare parts found here and there).

My last one was the first one I bought myself and I sold that to a friend in addition to the TV card and graphics card upgrades I got for it.

My current one I'll probably incrementally upgrade and keep some stuff for spare parts.

Recycle them into new PCs. Use any possible component that can be reused and put it in the new one. Makes for super cheap PCs. Made two decently fast ones for under $200.

I usually turn them into workstations. My last system was an AMD 3500 with 3GB DDR2, which is more then enough to run even Windows 7 with the software I need.

In fact, I'm counting on the money I save from turning them into workstations to buy a new rig