RAM Find - Worth doing anything with?

ChilliBob

Hey everyone,

I'm having a clear out and coming across shed loads of old bits I forgot I had (HP Stream anyone? My beloved Sansa Clip MP3 player!).. One of the things is a few 2gb sticks of RAM (and one 4gb, which surprised me, they've been in there for about 5 years!) 

I don't need or can make any use of this myself with my current setup, so wondering if I bin it or if it's useful/worth anything to anyone else really..

IvanOpinion

You could try selling it on eBay, or similar, but probably not worth much money, or the effort.

ChilliBob

I thought that. I wondered if I had held on to it long enough to be 'rare' and in demand lol

forgotmyname

I have a basket full of RAM, simms from my first PC and RAM from many PCs taken apart to upgrade.

It gets to a point where it's totally worthless and then you get some demand for some for of it but often it's

not what your have.  I have some old Laptop memory that works really well in Synology boxes and it's

a tiny fraction of the synology price.

ChilliBob

It just feels bad to bin it! I come from the generation where you always wanted more ram and heck, 2gb was tonnes!! Used to pay a lot for say 128!

MattMattMattUK

Old RAM is not worth anything, until someone needs it, then it can be worth a lot, the same with hard drives. If it was stuff that was used in production equipment then it can be worth a lot when someone needs it, I have sold stuff in the MB size range for upwards of £50 in the last few years. The same can happen with hard drives, data recovery companies need exact make, model, revision and sometimes even firmware to be able to cannibalise one for data recovery of another drive. I have about 60 old hard drives listed on eBay, all with full information, drive numbers, firmware numbers, batch codes, picture of all that info etc. They are on there as buy it now and I will sell one or two a year at £60-90 each, always to data recovery companies.

In 2014 I sold a full set of Windows 3.1 on floppy for £200. In 2019 I sold an old (from memory I think 1998) Dell SATA card for £150 and the buyer sent a man in a car to pick it up. In lockdown I sold two Intel 10/100 networking cards from the early 00s for £120 for the pair and the buyer paid extra for next day delivery. Generally it is not worth much, but every so often, someone needs an exact replacement or some bit of production equipment will not work, some legacy system will not operate properly, etc. and then they will pay quite a lot, because the best case alternative is lost days of production and in a worst case is weeks of lost production and thousands of pounds on new systems and software. I know someone in IT and because their employer operates a bunch of legacy systems they have a large store room full of defunct kit which they buy whenever it comes up online and they continually cannibalise to keep things running, the cost of buying an entirely new system, having software coded, having the whole system validated etc. is several orders of magnitude larger than the cost of buying other people's old junk at inflated prices to keep things going. 

SurferDan

I've just given away a load of old computer parts to someone who does up / repairs old PC's.
Put the items on Freecycle / Freeloved or similar. Someone will want them.

ChilliBob

MattMattMattUK said:

Old RAM is not worth anything, until someone needs it, then it can be worth a lot, the same with hard drives. If it was stuff that was used in production equipment then it can be worth a lot when someone needs it, I have sold stuff in the MB size range for upwards of £50 in the last few years. The same can happen with hard drives, data recovery companies need exact make, model, revision and sometimes even firmware to be able to cannibalise one for data recovery of another drive. I have about 60 old hard drives listed on eBay, all with full information, drive numbers, firmware numbers, batch codes, picture of all that info etc. They are on there as buy it now and I will sell one or two a year at £60-90 each, always to data recovery companies.

In 2014 I sold a full set of Windows 3.1 on floppy for £200. In 2019 I sold an old (from memory I think 1998) Dell SATA card for £150 and the buyer sent a man in a car to pick it up. In lockdown I sold two Intel 10/100 networking cards from the early 00s for £120 for the pair and the buyer paid extra for next day delivery. Generally it is not worth much, but every so often, someone needs an exact replacement or some bit of production equipment will not work, some legacy system will not operate properly, etc. and then they will pay quite a lot, because the best case alternative is lost days of production and in a worst case is weeks of lost production and thousands of pounds on new systems and software. I know someone in IT and because their employer operates a bunch of legacy systems they have a large store room full of defunct kit which they buy whenever it comes up online and they continually cannibalise to keep things running, the cost of buying an entirely new system, having software coded, having the whole system validated etc. is several orders of magnitude larger than the cost of buying other people's old junk at inflated prices to keep things going. 

That makes a lot of sense, having worked in that area before for quite some time. I remember scrounging around for a hdd and ram for a creaking server, big enough to be a coffee table, only running with the side off and a fan in summer lol. 

For old banks to change legacy systems I hear it's horrific - not just old kit but looking for devs for old languages and stuff too.

I distinctly remember the 'sticking plasters' applied to some ancient undocumented code, which of course was business critical lol. 

Neil_Jones

ChilliBob said:

I thought that. I wondered if I had held on to it long enough to be 'rare' and in demand lol

Considering its DDR3, for it to be "rare" would probably take best part of a couple of decades at least... if ever.

ChilliBob

Perhaps I'll use it with my son, and the dozen of so old us mini cables, old he'd etc I found and try to build some 'tech man' superhero robot thingy.. Or perhaps just bin it and shake my head! 

borse2008

You can visit your nearest CEX store they will take in old memory and provide your a credit voucher for the store or cash.  It wont be much but its something.