Hardware collections... What do you use??

[phill]

And I mean by that, what do you use to keep it tidy, kept save and such?

I find myself with a few CPUs, lots of RAM just hanging around and since I've a new born coming in February, I'd like to try and get it a little more tidied than the mess I'm in at the moment..

Had a brief look around for different things to put hardware in, but just wondering if there's any place I could go in the UK that would sell CPU tray for example or memory trays or something? Sadly some of the hardware I do have is pretty old so I don't have it's retail boxes for it.. I was just curious what else others used and I'm sure that quite a few of us here have fair sized collections of hardware...

Thanks for your time and help!

 

[AlienIsGOD]

Tbh all the hardware I have leftover just goes into original boxes and in the closet. I'm not much for nostalgia and most of the extra stuff I have gets used by me or I sell it off

 

[jboydgolfer]

go buy a fishing tackle box, or tool box. it has tons of small spots for lures ,etc, and will fit things up to the size of HDD's.


for example

 

[DR4G00N]

I typically just store my hardware in cardboard boxes that I've gotten from the stuff I buy. Larger boxes to fit two or more mobo's and smaller ones for RAM and CPU's.

 

[TheoneandonlyMrK]

And I mean by that, what do you use to keep it tidy, kept save and such?

I find myself with a few CPUs, lots of RAM just hanging around and since I've a new born coming in February, I'd like to try and get it a little more tidied than the mess I'm in at the moment..

Had a brief look around for different things to put hardware in, but just wondering if there's any place I could go in the UK that would sell CPU tray for example or memory trays or something? Sadly some of the hardware I do have is pretty old so I don't have it's retail boxes for it.. I was just curious what else others used and I'm sure that quite a few of us here have fair sized collections of hardware...

Thanks for your time and help!

My last motherboard box.

 

[GreiverBlade]

muh? pretty much my whole living room is like that ...

 

[Bill_Bright]

"I might need it someday" rarely ends up to be a valid reason to hang on to old electronics. Why is it on the shelf, boxed, or stuffed in a drawer anyway? Most likely because it was replaced because it was too small, too slow, superseded, obsolete or otherwise no longer adequate. So why would you want to roll back to some inadequate legacy product?

Is it a museum piece? Not likely. Is it fun to get old stuff running again? Yes. But do it once or twice and ho-hum.

I had a store room in the basement full of old motherboards, graphics cards, sound cards, drives, RAM, CPUs, cases, PSUs, printers, CRT and 4:3 LCD monitors, VCRs, cassette players, audio receivers, amps, preamps, tuners, speakers, turntables, test equipment, cell phones, home phones, cables, cables and more cables, and more. If I had tried to sell any of these when they were first replaced, I might have found a buyer. But the longer they sat, the less sellable they became. Was I really going to be able re-use or sell that old DDR or DDR2 RAM? No. AGP graphics cards? No. EIDE (PATA) drives? Nope.

I ended up filling up my truck and taking it all to a local electronics recycling center. They paid me $80 for the precious metals in the RAM and CPUs, and the scrap value of the copper, steel and aluminum. Yes, that was cents on the dollar compared to the prices when new. But disposing of old electronics through a proper electronics recycling center keeps potentially hazardous materials out of the land fills. A very good thing!

They would not take the 6 old CRT monitors I had however. There is a drop of mercury inside cathode ray tubes and it costs too much to properly recover and dispose of mercury by EPA standards for the recycling centers to even break even. I would have had to pay them $10 each for them to take them. So I lugged them back home, printed up a ***FREE*** sign, taped it to a monitor and lugged it out to the curb. By the time I was taking the 3rd monitor out to the curb, some guy was loading the first two into his truck. He took the rest.

$40 for a new carpet remnant and fresh coat of paint and now I have spare guest bedroom in the basement.

If you will not be using old parts in the next 12 months, I say get rid of them before it gets too old and you get accused of being a hoarder.

 

[Readlight]

I need cheap ddr2/3 ram

 

[phill]

Thanks for all the ideas guys I'll take a look and see what I can do.. Maybe I should just get more rack mounted servers from work.. I wouldn't have this problem lol