I know very little about hardware... But I have a few broken computers laying around The House, and I've been wondering how much those would be worth for parts. How could I identify the parts and their selling value? Have you ever done this?
I have never really done that because I tend to upgrade my computer piece by piece when the need arises. But I can tell you that it all depends on what part we are talking about, how old, and how broken. You see, if for example you have a very old graphics card, there will be very few potential buyers because no one builds a computer buying a 6 year old used graphics card. How old your computer parts are is probably the biggest factor to consider. After a certain amount of time, the only people who would buy them from you are those who have a very old system they don't mean to change, incompatible with newer components. You can imagine there isn't a great number of them. Technology progresses at a very fast pace, and a four year old piece of hardware will be exponentially less powerful than today's low-end components. Even if you set your prices ridiculously low now one would prefer them. So if they're pretty old it's better to save the effort. In that case the best next thing could be trying to sell them to an electronics reprocessor company, they don't care about their functionality because they extract materials from them. But I wouldn't know how hard it is to find sch a company. Now, if they're not that old it's worth a try. What do you mean exactly by identifying the parts? Identifying which is the CPU, which is the graphics card, and so on? Or identifying the product name? I'll assume you mean the product name. Physically: Most parts have a serial number inscribed upon them. For example AMD graphics card have the name on the barcode sticker. If you can't see any name on the component it might be a little harder. Through a working computer: If you know how to install computer parts and you have a working computer, you can try them one by one, using a program like Cpu-Z or System Information for Windows to find out the names.
You can go on eBay and search for completed auctions to see what prices the parts you are selling have sold for in the past. I once sent in a used old computer to a trade in program and got some store credit to use towards new electronics, so that's another route that you can go.
