Yet another computer breakdown breakdown

Purchased 6 pcs from one of my bird dogs. 4 @ $5 ea, 2 @ $4 ea.

He's a fellow scrapper, thinks it's great. Used to put his PCs in with shred.

So he folds up his cash, all happy, and says, "do you really make money on these?" And I said, "well sure, all the experienced people in-the-know on ScrapMetalForum.com use the same figures...so I must be making money."

Then I scratched my head. "am I really making a profit on this?"

So I put those six computers aside as a test. Here's how it panned out. Your numbers will vary of course, based on regional pricing:

Shred 88 lbs................................$6.60
Good Motherboards 2.5 lbs..............7.87
Not as good Motherboards 4.5 lbs.....8.77
Peripheral Boards 2 lb 13 oz..............8.58
CPUs (inc. 1 486!) 6 oz...................13.69
Wire 5.5 lbs...................................5.23
#2 Copper 10 oz............................1.50
Brass 5 oz..................................... 0.52
Hard Drives Complete 9.25 lbs...........8.33
Low Grade boards 2.25 lbs................0.23
Aluminium 5.75 lbs...........................2.88
Motors 4 lbs...................................1.00
Misc floppy drives 5.5 lbs..................1.65
Gold finger cards 2.3 lbs....................9.88
Rambus 5 oz.................................2.19
Simms 2 oz....................................1.75

Gross revenue................................80.67
Costs...........................................(2 8.00)
Net profit......................................52.67
Net profit per computer....................8.77

Revenue per hour (5).......................10.53
(inc. purchase, sell, & beer run)

A couple of notes...I could break down the HDD but it is easier for me to sell them intact. Motors is mostly the transformers from the power supplies, plus any easy ones from CD drives, etc. The aluminum got most of its weight from heatsinks off the motherboards, the heatsinks from the power supplies look good but don't weigh much. The copper is mostly from breaking apart ferrite windings.

My personal take-away from this is, based on $$ for copper, motors & low grade, is that I should not break down power supplies, because that added a huge amount of time and only gained about $4 (net of what I would've sold the power supplies for intact). I think without the time spent on power supplies I'd be more in the $30/hr range.



Take it for what it's worth; your results may vary wildly.

Do you take all the heat sinks off the m'board? your pulling weight off a 3.something a lb board. I only pull the CPU sink.
Check if it would pay better to pull the HD boards then sell both separately. HD boards are over 10. lb

Originally Posted by Pnutfarmer

Is that a typo, or let us know where to get over $10 per lb on gold finger cards. To me that means the modems, video, sound, etc.., or you could be meaning the RAM with gold fingers.

No typo, just stupido writing down numbers. Should be $9.88 in that column, yes modems sound cards etc. Will revise

Originally Posted by Pnutfarmer

Is that a typo, or let us know where to get over $10 per lb on gold finger cards. To me that means the modems, video, sound, etc.., or you could be meaning the RAM with gold fingers.

Pnut, that is 9.98 for 2.3 lbs of finger cards, not 1 lb.

No regular RAM in those computers? Just rambus?

Thanks for the break down. The more break downs the better. Always appreciated.