Expensive old cpus

[omar80747326]

Why a lot of old cpus are so expensive like the core 2 extreme qx6850, i7 4790k or any other processors we ith prices in the $400s, $500s or even in the $900s?

 

[rgd1101]

because of supply and demand. they don't make them anymore.

 

[Barty1884]

Depends where you're looking. There's a few potential causes.

1. Sellers are out of their mind, asking ridiculous prices
2. Buyers are actually buying at that price, and sellers are simply pricing accordingly.
3. Collector value (not likely, but a possibility).

Where are you looking specifically? Sites like Amazon or eBay (third party sellers) list things for crazy prices. I'm not sure why, but surely nobody is buying at those prices.

Regardless of the asking price, a chip like a 4790K sells frequently for around $200.
https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_from=R40&_sacat=0&_nkw=i7-4790k&LH_Complete=1&LH_Sold=1&rt=nc&_trksid=p2045573.m1684

A pretty fair price, consider it's performance is still really good for the money. A nice upgrade for an older platform (did it myself).

 

[zyh1987]

Because they are the top of the line chip for their generation, if you don’t want to change motherboard and ram, cpu swap is the only way in improving performance. Hence there is a high demand for those, and if you to weight in if you want $600 on a cpu plus mobo plus ram or 100-200 cpu upgrade.

Also they can just sell you those cpu at or higher than Msrp if brand new/ unopened

 

[Eximo]

Very often the fastest chips for a given socket/chipset are sought after by people that want to upgrade older systems well after the chips have been out of production.

I sort of agree on the collectible idea. Though I think anything in the PCIe era is more or less equivalent. Aside from performance increases they are pretty much the same type of computers we've had for a while. You have to go back pretty far before things like AGP and PCI were the norm. I keep around my old GPUs and one computer with a working ISA and PCI bus just in case I have to troubleshoot something. (Not sure I have an AGP computer anymore, maybe my old PIII)

In recent months it is a suggestion I am making more often due to the price of buying new memory. If they've already got 16GB of DDR3, I say grab the fastest DDR3 chip and board they can get a hold of. Which is typically the i7-4790k and an LGA1150 board. So either $650+ for a new CPU, motherboard, ram. Or dropping in a used chip for a third the cost.

 

[hang-the-9]

Those are all basically made up prices they pick, not real value of the item. You will find the same thing with anything older that is not easy to find. I have seen some keyboards and mice priced at hundreds of dollars over new prices for them. 10 year old wireless keyboard/mouse combo for $500 for example.

What is funny is when you see people on craigslist trying to sell the same stuff for "cheaper than online" but is still 300% overpriced.