price per server?

I've seen a few threads here discussing a good purchase price for a typical desktop tower. The consensus seems to be around $5.

What about servers? I guess servers come in various shapes and sizes but it seems that you can roughly classify them into
1. Smaller "tower" servers that are essentially large desktops
2. Newer rack servers
3. Older servers that look like metal boxes on wheels.

This is based on what I've seen so far so it's entirely possible that there are other common types. In any case, assuming they are mostly intact, i.e. they have their main boards, processors, power supplies, RAM, fans, but no harddrives, how much would you pay for those?

thx

servers are a little difficult if your buying a whole system , different purpose servers contain different goodies.then there are the spreaders, and the info storage platforms. and the racks and iron on most servers is much heavier then a tower.

the last system we bought was 400,000 lbs ( a competitor got the other half.)

the bids ranged from the customer paying $500,000 to have then hauled off (30 semi loads) to a bid of .41 cents per lb. We won the bid based on a perticular security clearence I have that was necessary to get access to them.

so the answer comes down to the same answer you get when someone asks "how much is a car worth".

there is a lot more involved in buying large quanity server systems then just price.

the buyer norm on the forum seems to be between .20 and .25 per lb.

Yea. Assigning a price for them is difficult unless you have been into one and then again it could be totally different on the inside. I base what I pay off of the size and also if it is included in a lot I try to adjust my pricing on the whole lot to account for the unknown value of the server.

What are you looking to do with it. Tear it all down or turn in whole. The reason I ask is that I have a good relationship with a buyer I use locally. He said that server equiptment to him was worth .70# and that he would pay .42# if I wanted to turn it in to him whole. That is for any type of equiptment, large desk top, blade,cabinet type whatever. Now knowing that, I can set a price in the range that Olddude stated above, between .20-.25#. I also have the option with this buyer that I get better pricing on the parts if I come in with certain weight. So there are a lot of variables to consider. The biggest one for me is time and space. Servers are not the easiest things to take apart. Tons of screws of all types,Phillips,flatheads,star,security etc. so they are time consuming . Also remember that most of the boards and backplanes are going to be twice the size of a regular mobo, so space is an issue.
Right now I take them apart since my pricing from him is in line with the buyers here which is better than anywhere else in my area. I haven't done any big cabinet units yet but I know that if I do, those are going right to the yard since I don't have the space to store those right now.
The one thing you should do is talk to whoever you are plan to sell to. Whether its a buyer here or someone local to you and ask them what options you have. I can tell you there is a lot of money in server equiptment and there is a lot of it out there sitting around. Unlike laptops and desk tops I don't believe there is a big market for used server equiptment especially the larger type. Hope this helped , good luck.

Correction.....some server equiptment does have a used market. Cisco seems to be the top one that people look for even used.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BRASSCATCHER

What are you looking to do with it.

---

I just got about a dozen servers, together with some laptops and desktops, for free from a small IT firm that was moving into a new office. Up until now, I've always taken apart all the hardware I got and then sold the boards etc to an out of state buyer. Now I am extremely busy with my day job, kids' activities etc etc. So I am considering selling the whole stash to another local escrap guy. I've never sold whole computers for scrap like that so I am trying to determine a good price without having to open up each box and catalog what's in it. Also, even though the guy who gave me all the hardware told me that one or two servers might be new enough to be sold as working units, i don't think I want to invest the time to research, post, etc. So I am looking at the whole pile as simply scrap and want to figure out if it's better to take apart myself or sell whole.

If you never opened up server equiptment I recommend you sell the laptops and desk tops and keep the servers. Even if you only do one every other day I think you will be happy with what comes out of them.

I happen to love servers. I'd haul them all day, every day for the goodies that are inside them! A little research will quickly tell you whether you have something you can re-market, or something to scrap out. After a while you will have a very good base of knowledge for any future server finds; it just takes a little time.

I would pay $10 for a loaded full tower sized server. I just parted one out and it yielded alot more that a typical desktop. More ram, more cards, larger motherboard, larger power supplies, more hard drives and dual cpus with copper heatsinks. All around it was the same yield or better than 2 desktops and had the same teardown time involved or less involved due to most of the parts being hot swap.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by BRASSCATCHER

If you never opened up server equiptment I recommend you sell the laptops and desk tops and keep the servers. Even if you only do one every other day I think you will be happy with what comes out of them.

---

I tore down quite a few of them, but never recorded how much stuff I got from them to figure out how much each server was worth. So I was hoping to cheat a little and see if the more experienced members of this forum already did this :)

If I am patient enough, I might do it with this stash and then report my findings here...

The one i mentioned above yielded $40 plus in scrap. The motherboard alone is 6 pounds at $4 per pound. Then the 12 sticks of silver ram for another $8. And so on. Got 1+ pound of number 1 copper from the 2 heatsinks.

Unopened, I will give $10 for a desktop sized server. Easy double on the money. However, the last batch I got of over 100 I paid just $4 each for and each one had 2 solid copper heat sinks for a total of 3 and 3/4 pound number 1 bare bright copper. Then there were the 2 pound motherboards, 8 sticks of 1 gig DDR server RAM, made a ton off that mess.

With servers there are way too many variables to give a standard price, but like I said above, a tower sized server I will give $10 regular.

Servers are a lot more varied than the desktops. I scrapped quite a few of them, and generally I like them. I advertise as paying $5-25 each depending on size and how complete. For a tower type sever I pay $5-10 each, for a smaller rack mount unit (1U-2U) I pay $7.50-15 each, and pay more for the bigger ones. I just picked up 18 large servers yesterday, each one weight about 80 pounds or so. Paid $25 each, was a little more then I planned to pay, but they are all complete, have 2 to 8 CPU's in each, etc, I should do OK with them.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by aurum

(1U-2U)

---

What's "1U-2U"?

1u,2u etc refers to the size of the server. Usually the widths are pretty much the same but the height an depths vary. Google what is a 1u server and you get a good description of what they are.

I either pay 2$ a tower or .20 5cents lb covers gas if i gotta drive distance