What it means to take apart a desktop

There were recently some posts discussing how fast one could completely take apart desktops. It occurred to me that what it means to do it completely might be different for different people. So here's my checklist:
1. Clean out the tower:
- take out the motherboard with everything on it
- take out any drives (floppy, CD, HDD)
- take out any PCI cards, the power supply, all wires, any fans
2. Clean the motherboard:
- take out RAM
- take out the CPU and its heatsink
- remove the battery and anything that is big and made of steel (like those brackets some MBs have on the bottom)
3. Separate wires:
- cut off any gold connectors
- cut off the wires from the power supply
4. HDD
- remove its board and whack the drive with a hammer a few times



I used to take apart CD-ROMS and floppy drives but I don't do it anymore, not worth the time for me.

Cd rom drive boards are bringing $4 pound, so those defiantly worth getting there also a couple small motors in there at 30 cents pound while you have it open. Floppy drives break the connector off and send them to me =) , i break them down for gold pins. On the finger cards remove the brackets first, then sort by size since your going to get $3-$4 pound for them whether they have fingers or not it is worth it to trim the fingers off the small cards that weigh 3 ounces or less. Leave the fingers on the big cards. You can sell the hard drives if good to a used hard drive buyer or you can sell them as scrap, if they work they are usually worth sending to a buyer.

most the buyers i see still say leave the brackets, only one i know of said remove, and one guy got charged .25 each, but that's with a company that doesn't have a very good report on anything atm

Originally Posted by Bear

most the buyers i see still say leave the brackets, only one i know of said remove, and one guy got charged .25 each, but that's with a company that doesn't have a very good report on anything atm

Which brackets are you referring to? I don't remove those at the side of a board that hold ports etc. I only remove those that sometimes sit underneath the CPU on the back side of the board. Plus those large board-size brackets that MBs sit on in some of those Dell clam shells. Or should i keep those too? Thx

Originally Posted by jghilino

Cd rom drive boards are bringing $4 pound,

Hmm, I thought those were rated lower than your typical "green" motherboard. Maybe I should reconsider. Thx

Remove brackets off finger cards or you will be paid less, it one of these deals you need to check with your buyer on, in general all posted prices are for clean boards unless noted otherwise. Do not remove any heatsinks other than the one on the cpu. Remove cmos batteries from motherboards.

Do you gusy remove the heat sinks on the north and south bridge? I just sent out a box to on of the buyers here that stated remove excess Al. I've always considered the CPU heat sink to be excess.

Originally Posted by jghilino

sounds like you are dealing with the wrong buyer if they want heatsinks removed, especially if theyre paying less than $4 per pound after the board is stripped clean, i know im not going to jump thru that many hoops to sell my boards lol

arcoa says: "Motherboards $4.40 (Batteries must be removed)"

I did notice this: some buyers require all heatsinks off, others don't, so I guess you could leave the main heatsink on too although it's probably kind of hard to reattach it once you remove the CPU.