Where/how to find old(er), cheap(er) parts?

BirdofPrey

Standards Guru
Original poster
Sep 3, 2015
797
493
I have something of a conundrum. My PC is starting to get rather old. While my video card isn't too horrible quite yet (since I don't have a huge monitor to push and don't tend to play the AAA games with bleeding edge PC melting graphics), the motherboard predates such things as PCIe 3 and USB 3, and my old Phenom II X4 is starting to not cut it anymore. The problem, though, is I can't really afford to buy new gear at the moment.

I was wondering if there are any good places to pick up cast offs for people who have upgraded their old rigs and are getting rid of their previous stuff. Since I have everything else, all I'd really need is a motherboard and CPU (though memory as well would be good to have), but don't really know where to find used, but not older than a year or two, or discount parts.

Any suggestions?
 

BirdofPrey

Standards Guru
Original poster
Sep 3, 2015
797
493
I figured eBay, but there have to be other places.
Not entirely sure about local gaming forums. I don't know any that are "local" to where I live geographically (and can't say I have seen any good pickings on cragslist, maybe should put out a wanted ad)
 

Vittra

Airflow Optimizer
May 11, 2015
359
90
Depends on where you live, but enthusiast forums have B/S/T (Buy/Sell/Trade) threads. Think [H], Anandtech, HWC, etc.

Also, based on region, there are deal sites that have B/S/T sections. Canadians have RFD for example.

Also recently discovered /r/HardWareSwap and /r/CanadianHardWareSwap, if you happen to like Reddit. Note that I haven't actually used either yet, but it looks like the US one is quite active and has a feedback system integrated.
 

veryrarium

Cable-Tie Ninja
Jun 6, 2015
144
44
I'm curious, which CPUs and mobos will you be happy upgrading to in terms of brand, generation, chipset, and features?
 

BirdofPrey

Standards Guru
Original poster
Sep 3, 2015
797
493
This might be super unhelpful, but I am somewhat unsure of that myself.
I don't really have any brand preferences other than to say I want to at least get hardware that isn't crap.
I do want to get something no more than a generation or two old, and was looking mainly at the mainstream chipsets, but if a previous generation gaming/performance chipset is cheap enough, that's great. I'm hoping to have reasonably new features (USB 3.0, 16 PCIe 3.0 lanes [all I need, I don't go for dual graphics]), and was hoping to get something with Intel SRT (though if anyone knows any alternatives for SSD caching that doesn't require me to just straight up buy a new drive specifically shipped as a cache drive, I will accept said alternative which would also open up AMD platforms). Overclocking isn't something I care about, but again, I'll take it if the price is right.

Horray vaugeness
 

BirdofPrey

Standards Guru
Original poster
Sep 3, 2015
797
493
That looks like it might be useful, does it report to the OS as a single disk (and how well does Win 10 support hybrid drives in the first place)? What would that be categorized as when looking on computer parts websites?
I came across some software for the purpose, but most of them are sold with specific drives (that usually cost a bit extra). The only thing I could find that can be purchased by itself was PrimoCache which I tried during the beta phase and eventually uninstalled since it would pretty much burn the cache for no reason, now that it costs money, I need to be assured it won't spend most of its time not actually caching anything.
 

BirdofPrey

Standards Guru
Original poster
Sep 3, 2015
797
493
Oh, it only mirrors a set part of the disk? That hardly seems useful unless I can specifically tell windows to put certain things there. I already do the whole data disk and file disk thing, but the problem is I end up with the problem where the program disk runs out of space when I have storage left, and the fact some of those programs I don't use enough, or launch fast enough I don't really care about speeding them up, meanwhile there's some files I use a lot and some games like to store a bunch of stuff in the users folder.

That's why I was trying to find an actual intelligent solution.
 

Phuncz

Lord of the Boards
SFFn Staff
May 9, 2015
5,827
4,902
You could probably partition it to mimic the difference but what benefit does it have then ? It seems like an item that wastes space and money for the sole benefit of providing a feature that is moot when you already have the hardware.