Trying to figure how to price my old computer...

[Muz]

I've got something of a computer question for you guys. I'm going to be replacing my current computer, which I built in 2009(ish), and I'm likely to try to sell the old one on Craigslist or something. The trouble is that I'm not sure how to price it. Can anyone offer a ballpark figure for what might be a fair market price for my old machine?

I'm sure it won't be much, of course, but...

Specs:
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 (3.16GHz)
Memory: 4GB RAM
Hard Drives: 250GB (C: drive), 500GB (D: drive)
Windows Vista
DVD R/W (which I realize likely increases the value by $.25)
Graphics card: Sapphire Radeon HD4770

I'll likely also sell it with my 22" LCD monitor.

Thoughts?

[Starwulf]

I've got something of a computer question for you guys. I'm going to be replacing my current computer, which I built in 2009(ish), and I'm likely to try to sell the old one on Craigslist or something. The trouble is that I'm not sure how to price it. Can anyone offer a ballpark figure for what might be a fair market price for my old machine?

I'm sure it won't be much, of course, but...

Specs:
Processor: Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 (3.16GHz)
Memory: 4GB RAM
Hard Drives: 250GB (C: drive), 500GB (D: drive)
Windows Vista
DVD R/W (which I realize likely increases the value by $.25)
Graphics card: Sapphire Radeon HD4770

I'll likely also sell it with my 22" LCD monitor.

Thoughts?

Hmmm, I'd say $50 if you're lucky. Honestly the monitor is likely more valuable then the computer itself. The Harddrive is small, the Processor is ancient(not even an I3/I5/I7), graphics card is wickedly outdated, so old actually that newegg doesn't even carry it(I searched Sapphire Radeon HD4770 and it brung up 3 cards, all listed as out of stock). So yeah, I wouldn't expect much out of it at all. I went through this a while back, I tried to sell my old comp for $150(it was significantly newer then yours) and couldn't even get $100, I ended up selling it to a friend for $75, he just wanted it to cannabilize the parts for various projects.

[Muz]

Hmmm, I'd say $50 if you're lucky. Honestly the monitor is likely more valuable then the computer itself. The Harddrive is small, the Processor is ancient(not even an I3/I5/I7), graphics card is wickedly outdated, so old actually that newegg doesn't even carry it(I searched Sapphire Radeon HD4770 and it brung up 3 cards, all listed as out of stock). So yeah, I wouldn't expect much out of it at all. I went through this a while back, I tried to sell my old comp for $150(it was significantly newer then yours) and couldn't even get $100, I ended up selling it to a friend for $75, he just wanted it to cannabilize the parts for various projects.

Thanks. :) I figured it wouldn't be much. I might just donate it and skip the hassle. (I've already offered it to my friends and such for free, but no one wanted it.)

[Starwulf]

Thanks. :) I figured it wouldn't be much. I might just donate it and skip the hassle. (I've already offered it to my friends and such for free, but no one wanted it.)

No problem, and yeah, donating sounds like a great idea. I wish I had thought of that with my old computer :-(. Would have done some good in the world instead of going to my friends experimentations ><

[Muz]

Maybe your friend will invent something amazing, though, like a lightsaber!

[Feytalist]

Is there any reason why you can't reuse your hard drives and DVD reader? Unless you're buying a pre-assembled computer, you can just install those two components again without problem. Unless you want an SSD boot drive or something, but even then you can use the other two as internal storage.

Honestly, though, reselling an old computer to partially cover the cost of a new one is a losing game. Better to keep it (probably worth more to you that anyone else anyway) or donate it, like you said. Anyway, I like having an old computer around for scrap parts or an emergency backup if need be.

[FLHerne]

Hmmm, I'd say $50 if you're lucky.
Strange, something like that would probably go for about £80-100 around here, which qalc tells me is $135-170. The graphics card would swing it - that's a pretty good C2D, but all C2Ds are ancient now and show it; a 4770 is still not a bad light-gaming card despite its age.
Game producers having to keep their games playable on Intel's horrible IGPs helps - with the settings turned down a bit, a 4770 will run pretty much anything at 30-60fps.

I know UK computer prices are higher across the board, but 18 30* quid for something like that?! I'd happily pay twice that, keep the GPU, and then break even flogging the rest of it anyway. :smallconfused:

*EDIT: Weird, must have mistyped something, not sure what. Doesn't actually change much.

[Muz]

Is there any reason why you can't reuse your hard drives and DVD reader? Unless you're buying a pre-assembled computer, you can just install those two components again without problem. Unless you want an SSD boot drive or something, but even then you can use the other two as internal storage.

Honestly, though, reselling an old computer to partially cover the cost of a new one is a losing game. Better to keep it (probably worth more to you that anyone else anyway) or donate it, like you said. Anyway, I like having an old computer around for scrap parts or an emergency backup if need be.

Mostly I'm just loath to render a working computer inoperable by taking away the hard drives, I think. I'm not really reselling it to recoup some of the cost so much as I am looking to just get rid of it and pass it on to someone else who can use it - but if I can pocket a few bucks in doing so, I figure I may as well.


Strange, something like that would probably go for about £80-100 around here, which qalc tells me is $135-170. The graphics card would swing it - that's a pretty good C2D, but all C2Ds are ancient now and show it; a 4770 is still not a bad light-gaming card despite its age.
Game producers having to keep their games playable on Intel's horrible IGPs helps - with the settings turned down a bit, a 4770 will run pretty much anything at 30-60fps.

Hmmm... :smallsmile:

[Erloas]

There is no good way of pricing used computers, but I'll at least give you something to go on.

Note that very few people build their own computer, so in order to get a *new* computer that will play games as well as your *old* computer they are going to be paying $600 or more.

To an enthusiast your computer isn't worth anything, and to your average user it is more than enough but what it has as a bit of an advantage isn't something they are going to use, but it will be as good or better than most budget big box computers they'll find for $200-300, but they won't know that, they'll just know that the new computer is "new" and the old computer is "old" and not know what that actually means for use.

Who your old computer is best for is someone that wants to play games but can't afford a good computer. Someone like a high school student most likely.

The other part of selling anything used is the competing market. What there is for used computer shops, if anyone would even be using Craiglist for finding a used computer, etc. I would say it is worth anywhere between $150 and $50 depending if you can find the right person.

I would actually say your best bet for selling for a reasonable amount is finding your local game store, the type usually frequented by younger people that like playing games and don't have that much money. You're much more likely to find your ideal target consumer there then Craiglist.

[Aedilred]

It also has Vista, which is probably going to knock a few tens at least off the price of anything these days. Not that you can do anything about it now, but of all the OSs it could have, that's... not one anyone wants.

[Erloas]

It also has Vista, which is probably going to knock a few tens at least off the price of anything these days. Not that you can do anything about it now, but of all the OSs it could have, that's... not one anyone wants.

Is that really still a thing? I thought Vista bashing went out of style 5 years ago. The first year or two wasn't great but there wasn't any problems with it after that. Not to mention many of those earlier problems had to do with sticking it on computers that weren't capable of handling it, which isn't an issue here.
If it had XP at this point I would really have to wonder what they were thinking. I still use XP at work and it isn't the holy grail of OSes that nostalgia likes to claim.

[Aedilred]

Is that really still a thing? I thought Vista bashing went out of style 5 years ago. The first year or two wasn't great but there wasn't any problems with it after that. Not to mention many of those earlier problems had to do with sticking it on computers that weren't capable of handling it, which isn't an issue here.
If it had XP at this point I would really have to wonder what they were thinking. I still use XP at work and it isn't the holy grail of OSes that nostalgia likes to claim.

Well, from my perspective at least, I used Vista until 2010, on a computer that should have been well capable of handling it, and never stopped hating it. Eventually that computer stopped working, I went back to using XP, and managed perfectly happily until a few weeks ago, when I eventually replaced it.

In any case, though, even if Vista isn't as bad as is sometimes claimed (I found it every bit as bad as that, but ymmv) it is still probably the least desirable Microsoft OS since ME, which to all intents and purposes means it's the least desirable Microsoft OS you're at all likely to encounter these days. Realistically if I were looking at buying a computer with Vista preinstalled that I was actually planning to use, I'd be factoring into what I was prepared to pay the hassle/cost of replacing it with something else, even if that something else was Ubuntu.

[Muz]

Thanks for all of the feedback, everyone! :smallsmile:

I found someone through my work who's looking for something for his mother-in-law (insert jokes here) and we agreed on a reasonable price. He's mostly paying for the monitor at this point, I think, but it works for me.

It'll help me cover some of the cost of the unexpected car repairs I ran into today. (Oh BOY!) On the plus side, now I know what a vtec solonoid is!

[Don Julio Anejo]

Well, from my perspective at least, I used Vista until 2010, on a computer that should have been well capable of handling it, and never stopped hating it. Eventually that computer stopped working, I went back to using XP, and managed perfectly happily until a few weeks ago, when I eventually replaced it.

In any case, though, even if Vista isn't as bad as is sometimes claimed (I found it every bit as bad as that, but ymmv) it is still probably the least desirable Microsoft OS since ME, which to all intents and purposes means it's the least desirable Microsoft OS you're at all likely to encounter these days. Realistically if I were looking at buying a computer with Vista preinstalled that I was actually planning to use, I'd be factoring into what I was prepared to pay the hassle/cost of replacing it with something else, even if that something else was Ubuntu.
I would still use Vista over Windows 8. At least you knew where everything is in Vista.

[Aedilred]

I would still use Vista over Windows 8. At least you knew where everything is in Vista.

Having gone from XP to Vista, then back to XP and straight from XP to 8 again, I don't find 8 significantly worse than Vista in that respect, and have found it better in every other.

There's one major design flaw with 8, especially for non-touch users, yes, but once I twigged on that (and installed 8.1) it's pretty straightforward to use and works well. Three years of patches and I still always hated Vista.

I'm sure it's largely a personal thing, of course.

[Don Julio Anejo]

Having gone from XP to Vista, then back to XP and straight from XP to 8 again, I don't find 8 significantly worse than Vista in that respect, and have found it better in every other.

There's one major design flaw with 8, especially for non-touch users, yes, but once I twigged on that (and installed 8.1) it's pretty straightforward to use and works well. Three years of patches and I still always hated Vista.

I'm sure it's largely a personal thing, of course.
I haven't used much Vista considering I deleted it off the only computer I had that came with it (it was barely able to run the OS), and installed XP, so I won't dispute it. However, I'm more tolerant of performance issues (at least I can turn off everything) than I am about really poor interface design that makes me move my hand from keyboard to mouse and back way more than anyone ever should.

[Feytalist]

Since we're already off-topic: I used Vista for over six years, and I never had any trouble with it. Not when restoring from previous saved states, not when connecting to networks or internet, and not in running any of the programs I installed on it. I had more issues getting used to Windows 7 than I did getting used to Vista.

I will acknowledge that I might be in the minority in this, of course. But Vista has always worked perfectly for me.

[factotum]

Works perfectly for me too--been using it for around 5 years on my home PC. Don't have the money to upgrade so likely to be staying on it until it's within an inch of its end-of-life support date, too!

[Don Julio Anejo]

Oh, it was never an issue of Vista not working. It was an issue of Vista lagging even on high-end computers of the day, despite them having specs 3x or more over the minimum requirements. And it was nearly impossible to use on computers that just barely passed the requirements.

It's ironic that Windows 7, an OS that came out 3 years after Vista, ran better on low-end computers from Vista's day than Vista itself. Irregardless of whether you enabled bells and whistles.