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Ask Slashdot: What To Do With Over 500 Used DIMMs?

An anonymous reader writes "My company is pursuing a RAM upgrade, resulting in 500+ used DDR3 4GB DIMMs. What could this be used for? Are there any cheap products on the market which can take a huge number of DIMMs? Is there a worthy cause we should donate the gear to?"

31 of 291 comments (clear)

  1. PCs for Kids by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Find out if there's a compters for kids or pcs for kids program in your area. They make computers available to low income kids at a very affordable price by recycling donated computers. They could definitely use ram donations.

    1. Re:PCs for Kids by Archangel+Michael · · Score: 5, Informative

      Donate to http://www.computersforclassrooms.org/

      They would end up going to Computers used in classrooms.

      --
      Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
    2. Re:PCs for Kids by Kenja · · Score: 5, Funny

      Better yet! Give them out as halloween "treats".

      --

      "Have you ever thought about just turning off the TV, sitting down with your kids, and hitting them?"
    3. Re:PCs for Kids by Sponge+Bath · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Listen to this guy, do not futz around trying to think up uses or store them expecting to have a use in the future. Give it away now and be done with it. Soon it will be obsolete and no use to anyone. (says the man who recently trashed a bag of dusty, obsolete and now useless RAM)

    4. Re:PCs for Kids by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      IANAA (I am not an accountant), but AFAIK, in the US, as long as the company didn't depreciate the capital on the computer overall, they can write off the full cost of the RAM against their taxes if they donate it to a charitable organization. Added up, it can be a rather sizable chunk of money, and can even offset the cost of the upgrade by a considerable margin. Win-win situation.

    5. Re:PCs for Kids by eyrieowl · · Score: 5, Insightful

      So..."I had it rough, the school district should continue to suck and give future generations the shaft"? Were they supposed to chug along with Apple II's until you came riding to the rescue? Also, are they never supposed to buy any new computers? Bear in mind that if they ever do, any older computers someone tries to donate shortly afterward would, likely, be "too old".

    6. Re:PCs for Kids by kenh · · Score: 5, Funny

      Dip them in chocolate, wrap them up in a colorful wrapper, and call them something like "Computer Memory dipped in chocolate" (include the quotes - the kids will think it's a joke name, then when they take a bite, the joke's on them!)

      --
      Ken
    7. Re:PCs for Kids by __aawbkb6799 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      This. My first thought was http://freegeek.org/ if there's one near your locale.

    8. Re:PCs for Kids by loganljb · · Score: 5, Funny

      Wouldn't that be 'take a byte'? Sorry, couldn't resist.

    9. Re:PCs for Kids by Gilmoure · · Score: 5, Funny

      So... My 30 pin 16 meg SIMMs are not worth anything anymore? I just don't have a 30 MHz 68030 system anymore.

      --
      I drank what? -- Socrates
  2. eBay... by kevin_j_morse · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Why not just sell them? Slashdot always has to find creative things to do with old stuff. Just sell it and use the money for something else.

    1. Re:eBay... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      First: Hold onto them until they're actually worth something. Sometime in the middle of the DDR4 lifecycle, it will become nearly impossible to find new 4GB DDR3 sticks, so people will have to turn to used sticks if they want to upgrade their machines from 8GB (4x2GB or 2x4GB) to 16 GB (4x4GB).

      History tells us that they will be valued at at least twice the original market rate. So sell now and get ~$7.5k, or wait 2-3 years and likely get $15-20k. I'd wait.

    2. Re:eBay... by caffiend666 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Just because something is worth a certain amount, does not mean it can be sold for that amount or that it is worth the time to sell something or warehouse it for years. Grandpa still has his tubes from his tv repair days. They are doubtlessly worth thousands. But, no one will pay fair value for them in bulk and it would take hundreds if not thousands of hours to sell them individually on ebay. It would have been better for him to sell them when he retired, even at a loss, and invest the money.

      --
      Here's to losing my Karma Bonus again....
    3. Re:eBay... by rot26 · · Score: 5, Funny

      And yet putting them on eBay costs next to nothing and you'll never know until you try.

      At one point after a project failed to get off the ground I had about 100 new-in-box Supermicro ATX motherboards each with a couple of ISA slots. Turns out that after the death of ISA, those motherboards started gaining value until they were worth more than they cost new. So I sold them all and made thousands of dollars**.


      **This is a partially a lie, I was lazy and just threw them away.

      --



      To ensure perfect aim, shoot first and call whatever you hit the target
    4. Re:eBay... by ArcadeNut · · Score: 5, Funny

      So the next /. story would be "Hey, I just bought 500 DIMMS on eBay, what should I do with them?"

      --
      Visit the Arcade Restoration Workshop @ http://www.arcaderestoration.com
    5. Re:eBay... by sl4shd0rk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Sometime in the middle of the DDR4 lifecycle machines using DDR3 will be about as popular as ones using SDRAM right now.

      Donate it to the kids projects mentioned above. Besides, if you sell it, your going to be fielding support calls from people with crappy systems who think your "bad used ram" is to blame.

      --
      Join the Slashcott! Feb 10 thru Feb 17!
    6. Re:eBay... by thorbsd · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Assuming you could get $20 per DIMM, you're looking at $10,000. Not to make it sound that isn't a lot of money, but when you consider that a company has 500 4GB sticks of RAM they can't use, you have to assume that this is (likely) a pretty big company, and $10,000 is probably not all that much in their total IT budget. Even if you forget about the potential benefit a donation like this could bring to the community that they currently operate in, think about how much more value they could get from the PR of donating to a good cause.

    7. Re:eBay... by tibit · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Thousands of hours to sell those tubes? That's crazy talk. Even eBay itself offers a bulk listing service, where you can easily list hundreds of items. It'd be trivial to sell the tubes, and they may be worth a good chunk of money as the audiophools value some of them dearly. Their stupidity, your gain.

      --
      A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.
    8. Re:eBay... by DerekLyons · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Grandpa still has his tubes from his tv repair days. They are doubtlessly worth thousands. But, no one will pay fair value for them in bulk

      Translation: I'm pretty sure they're worth money, lots of money. But I actually don't have any evidence this is so, and can't be bothered to do the work and find out.

      I saw lots of people just like you and your Grandpa when I ran a used and rare bookstore that thought the same thing... invariably, they were wrong.

    9. Re:eBay... by N3Bruce · · Score: 4, Interesting

      When you get into obsolete parts, they generally fall into 3 categories. With the example of radio and TV tubes, there is a large percentage of the stock that is essentially worthless, everybody has them and nobody wants them. Compactron tubes in 1960s TVs are all over the place, but few people collect old TVs, and most have been junked. Second category is tubes which have a steady demand, but were made in large numbers, such as some of the tubes in the "All American Five" radios, and vintage ham and audio gear. The third category is tubes and parts for highly collectible gear, especially where specialized tubes were made for only a few models of equipment for a few years and are classified as Unobtainium. Some of the tubes in my Zenith Transoceanic radio fall into this category, a good used 1L6 goes for about $50 on Ebay, while I have a half a dozen perfectly good 5U4 rectifier tubes in my junk box. After a while, if a certain model of audio or radio gear has lasting appeal, the supply will eventually dry up. 6146 tubes are starting to fall into this category, commonly used as final amplifier tubes in many popular ham rigs, despite wide use in many applications.

      This phenomenon happens with all types of vintage collectibles, because most examples of a particular item will have the same part that tends to fail or deteriorate.

  3. Worthy Cause: Education by BabaChazz · · Score: 5, Informative

    I don't know where OP is from, but in BC, Canada, there is a group called Computers For Schools BC, who are in the (government-funded) business of taking old computers and buffing them up for use in the school system. I suspect they would be pleased to receive something as close to current as 4GB DDR3... and they do enough volume that 500 of them would likely be used up in a month.

  4. Donate through National Cristina Foundation by Andy+Prough · · Score: 4, Informative

    They'll help your used chips find good homes in school computers and so forth: http://www.cristina.org/aboutus.html

  5. On this topic by Threni · · Score: 5, Funny

    I've got a load of car stereos I want to shift fast because..uh..I've upgraded to in-car mp3 players or something. Anyway, if you want a load of car stereos quick and aren't going to ask too many questions then get in touch.

  6. Armor by Microlith · · Score: 5, Funny

    Put holes in the corners and connect them via metal rings. Create yourself a suit of nerd armor the likes of which has never been seen. With 500 DIMMs you should be able to get a chest piece or pair of gauntlets...

  7. I work at a school... by theedgeofoblivious · · Score: 4, Informative

    I work at a school for special-needs teenagers, and we could probably use about 200 of them if they were available.

  8. Check with accounting by whoda · · Score: 4, Interesting

    You may find donating company assets is harder than you think.

  9. DDR3 Donation by hardburlyboogerman · · Score: 4, Informative

    You can always donate them to a local Computers For Kids project.Believe me,any and all kinds of hardware is always needed.I ought to know.I've run such a program for a good 20 years

    --
    Geek Hillbilly
  10. Re:Goodwill by ackthpt · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Goodwill repairs and recycles computers.

    We have something called The Grey Bears, which recovers and recycles working computers for low prices. Might be something like that in your community.

    One cautionary word, though. Make absolutely certain your employer is completly cool with you gathering these up and sending them off to worthy causes, get it in writing lest some stuffed shirt bureaucrat or bean counter come around and claim you took company property - some employers have very bizarre ways of handling disposal of assets, even stuff like old, broken printers or CRT monitors, which you and I would think are largely worthless, they have numbers on books which state otherwise.

    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  11. Donate them!! by EmagGeek · · Score: 5, Informative

    Here's a charity local to me that builds PCs for the disadvantaged:

    https://sites.google.com/site/carolinafreepc/

    Purpose
            To provide PCs with educational programs to low income
            families and children at no cost.

    Goals

            To help kids become knowledgeable about computers

            To interest kids in engineering and technology

            To encourage kids to stay in school and graduate

  12. Dance Dance what? by tepples · · Score: 4, Funny

    What sort of MB are you using that's loaded with DDR4?

    Original PlayStation, model SCPH-5500-something if I remember correctly. It runs Dance Dance Revolution Konamix, the U.S. version of Dance Dance Revolution 4th Mix.

    Oh, you meant that DDR4, the kind that can hold every Dance Dance Revolution song in one stick of RAM at once.

  13. give them to employees by XaXXon · · Score: 4, Informative

    let the employees take home a few if they have a use for them. Make people happy and it won't cost anything or at least not much depending on what you would otherwise do with them.