What to do with old gaming pc

November 21, 2021 4:24 PM

Should I part out, try to sell, or try to give away my old gaming computer? It has some good parts. But, it's also showing it's age. It can run modern games. But... at low settings. Stats below. Is anything worth keeping for a new build? It all seems... old.

CPU: Intel Core i5-2500K 3.3GHz Quad-Core Processor
Motherboard: ASRock Z68 Extreme3 Gen3 ATX LGA1155 Motherboard
Memory: G.Skill Sniper 8GB (2 x 4GB) DDR3-1600 Memory
Hard Drive: Plextor PX-M2 Series 256GB 2.5" Solid State Disk
Video Card: GTX 970
Case: Cooler Master Storm Sniper ATX Mid Tower Case
Power Supply: Rosewill 750W ATX12V / EPS12V Power Supply
Optical Drive: Samsung SH-B123L/RSBP Blu-Ray Reader, DVD/CD Writer

I don't need-need the money, but I'm just not sure how to find it into good hands. I don't have friends/family that want it in the boston area. I think I can sell the system for a few hundred bucks just for the graphics card, but is anything else worth it?

Would crypto mining be worth it on her? Probably not, right?

posted by bbqturtle to Technology (7 answers total)

Power supply would probably be fine to reuse. SSD would probably do as a game storage HD for a new computer. If you like the case it’ll still do. And if you want to build a new pc anytime soon, you’ll probably want to keep that graphics card because you’re not getting another at msrp.

If for some reason you don’t want to reuse them, I know I’d pay $150 or so for everything besides the gpu, which of course is worth my firstborn. Others may pay more.
posted by Pacrand at 5:37 PM on November 21, 2021 [2 favorites]

Like Pacrand, I'd suggest keeping the GPU or selling it separately.

If you don't have a new build planned in the near/mid-term, maybe donate the PC to a local nonprofit that would make good use of it as a doing-boring-things computer?
posted by holgate at 6:42 PM on November 21, 2021

I'd just do a placeholder cheap refresh with a low end new mb/cpu/ram. Or find somebody who bought a cheap gaming PC and stripped the graphics card out of it, and put your card in. The other components are usable but pretty much worth nothing as far as I know.
posted by wotsac at 8:14 PM on November 21, 2021

I will also say that a couple years ago I recycled parts of a similar vein. Later, I wanted to build a basic gaming pc for a friend’s kid. Just something basic. Wish I’d kept the parts in the garage. It wasn’t very expensive to get a dell business pc and throw in a basic gpu, but I could have given a better system if I hadn’t been so eager to get rid of the parts.
posted by Pacrand at 10:50 PM on November 21, 2021 [1 favorite]

Could make a media server out of it. Thinking about doing that myself, at the moment.
posted by msbrauer at 6:43 AM on November 22, 2021

If you've already replaced it with an upgrade, I'd at least keep the graphics card. They're still impossible to find, and I'd feel better about having some sort of backup on hand, at least until supply and prices stabilize.
posted by xedrik at 7:25 AM on November 22, 2021

I have a very similar PC to yours which I built six years ago with the same graphics card. Earlier this year I bought and played Cyberpunk 2077, a AAA game with fabulous graphics. Performance was fine and it looked great on a WQHD monitor (2550 x 1440). I just let the game installer choose the settings. There may be a lot of miles left on your PC. You could even improve performance by switching to an M.2 nvme ssd for the OS and apps. Increasing RAM to 16GB might help too.
posted by conrad53 at 8:46 PM on November 27, 2021