In my house, in my computer room, I have a closet that contains several PC cases, old power supplies, sound cards, video cards, old motherboards, ram… My closet has become a graveyard for old computer parts. Like I have said from the start of this blog, I love working on, building, repairing PCs. With that love comes a collection of old parts.

What do you do with those old computer parts?

Your not going to ever put them in a computer that you use anymore, they are old, which is why you replaced them. At the same time, they a in perfect working order, and you spent money on them, so you hate to throw them away. Here are a few ideas to keep that clutter down

Sell them on eBay, or Craigslist!

Put those old parts up for sale. How you do it depends on which method you decide to use to sell. If you use eBay, post the parts individually. Post the old CPU, post the ram as a set, post the old video card. People sometimes look to eBay when they need parts that they cant find anymore at other stores.

Craigslist on the other hand, people are looking for deals or good buys. On Craigslist is where you piece together packages to sell. Take the old motherboard, processor, video card and stick of ram, put it together as one package. Give it a good price

Create a media server.

Sometimes those old PC parts were replaced because they are old technology and just dont cut it for what you want to do anymore. Example: I once had a pentium 133 processor, the motherboard and ram that was used with it just sitting in my closet. I cant play Crysis or even run Vista with those components. I can however piece those together in an old PC case with a old 20 gig HDD and connect it to my network and store music on it. Now I have a music server that can be accessed from every computer in my house. Take those old parts and piece together a Music/Media server that everyone in your home can make use of.

Build a starter PC for a beginner or the less fortunate.

Do you know what I did with that Pentium 133 cpu and other parts I talked about above? I built a starter computer. This was many years ago, but at the time, my parents didn’t have a PC and had never used one. They had no interest in PC’s at all, but in this day and age, everyone should have some PC experience. I gathered all those parts, built a starter PC and gave it to them. It jump started their love for PC’s and gave them an easy cost effective way to get familiar with using a PC. Builting a PC like that out of old parts is also good for kids.

Donate your PC to your local schools?

A lot of schools now have classes that teach kids about PCs and working on PCs. Donate your old computers, or PC parts to your local school so the kids will have something to work with instead of just listing to a teacher talk about it. The best thing is (other than for the kids) many times, donating a PC to a school or some organization like that can be claimed on your taxes.

Trash it, but do it the right way

If you don’t want the hassle of anything Ive mentioned so far, you could just trash it. There is a correct way to trash your old PC components though. If you check around, many places like Office Depot will accept old PC parts so they can dispose of them properly. Check around.