I betting on the EVGA SR-2. I do not think a boxed working board in mint condition with all accessories ever will drop below $400 again.

My other bet is K8 hardware, especially Socket-939 stuff. There is still too much gear in circulation for the prices to really take off but a working DFI nForce4 board often sell for $50 - $100.

Laptops most likely. For many kids a laptop is their first computer and down the road they might want to revisit those old relics.

AMD Opteron based systems when AMD finally bites the big one.

Most of todays hardware goes from being used to recycled since it was so cheap to buy and cheaply made. You might think the computers from the last 10 years will be common in 20 years time, I don't think so.

If the current trends are anything to go by, grab the cheapest, crappiest stuff with the biggest mark-up that you can find now and hold on to it. People will fap to it in 20 years time and make themselves looks stupid when you attempt to explain that it wasn't like that when the hardware was around and there were better alternatives out there.

Who knows how far they will go to show themselves up... I've seen some really funny shit lately. Not so much on this forum - though it does happen and I assure you, a recent event has made many members of this community lose some of my respect, but that is NOT for this thread.

I guarantee the following;
ASUS motherboards will be the best (Pffttt)
EVGA video cards will be the best... Hell, probably be a load of XFX fans too.
AMD A8's will be awesome.
People will probably still go crazy for Windows 7 despite the fact it never worked.
Idiots will still play with SLi.
Probably more mechanical keyboard BS because people obviously want arthritis or don't really use their computer very much.

Unknown_K wrote:

Laptops most likely. For many kids a laptop is their first computer and down the road they might want to revisit those old relics.

I'd go a tiny bit more specific than that and say netbooks, especially some of the early models from before tablets kicked them to the curb. They were slow and frustrating to use, but they certainly were unique. Granted this is pure speculation and the future really cannot be predicted, but I would guess there might eventually be some collectible interest towards them because of their uniqueness among other systems of the time.

Probably AMD stuff. They usually do not last as long as intel stuff, and are not as plentiful... Not that someone that values their money should spend a lot on S939 stuff, as you could do anything a S939 system can with an LGA775 Intel-based system, though AGP S939 motherboards might be a little easier to get.
Other than that, probably stuff that is nostalgic and might have durability issues, like GeForce 8800 graphics cards.

Generally seems as collectible hardware may become anything from "top" sector. Better if it will stay unopened. Rare and useful (in their times), quality things have collectible interest too. Mass or bad made stuff evidently has less chances to be collectible. Mass, not expensive stuff may get collectible interest after longer time, for example as antiques after 50 years, in case of good condition.
Hence: top PC configuartion made in any moment of time will have collectible interest after 5 years. The longer time passed, the harder to get the thing, the better condition - the higher value will be. Maybe even more than it costed when sold. lo1

alexanrs wrote:

Probably AMD stuff.

AMD stuff is less prestigious, less compatible, less quality. Future value should be lower.

torindkflt wrote:

Unknown_K wrote:

Laptops most likely. For many kids a laptop is their first computer and down the road they might want to revisit those old relics.

I'd go a tiny bit more specific than that and say netbooks, especially some of the early models from before tablets kicked them to the curb. They were slow and frustrating to use, but they certainly were unique. Granted this is pure speculation and the future really cannot be predicted, but I would guess there might eventually be some collectible interest towards them because of their uniqueness among other systems of the time.

There's still a segment for "real" netbooks though, but now technology has advanced so far that they feel like just slightly slower laptops, and unless you do heavy stuff on them they're quite alright. My personal laptop is some 10" Toshiba with an Atom CPU, didn't even cost me 300 Euro.

I do remember the first EEE 701 though, ugh that was slow! And the "Linux" it had... if it's even worthy of that name, it was awful. Not the lovely, clean, standardised distributions I'm used to, but some bastardized version from hell... If you see a EEE 701 or 901 in good condition, grab them, they'll be rarities in the future 😀

I agree with the idea of the EVGA SR-2. Items that are unique or the pinnacle of an era's technology will be a draw to collectors. We go for Slot 1 boards now because it's interesting and BX chipsets because they were the best of the era. 10 or 20 years from now it will be k-series intel cpus from today and boards like the SR-2 that are loaded with features that aren't commonly available. Personally, I've liked retro computing in part for the idea of getting hardware that was prohibitively expensive in its heydey for next to nothing now. One man's trash is another's treasure sort of thing.

Pretty much the same odds and ends that people collect now like high end boards ect. Modern hardware just isn't that special in its own time unlike previous generations where there was a lot more verity and often better quality. Modern hardware is basically pretty shiny cookie cutter all the way through since the first Gen i5/7 era except for the graphics cards.

When it comes to fapping there isn't much with a wow factor worth fapping to, pants still on and so are the socks.

Yet so, high end Athlons XP are more expensive than P4s from the same time period. Lesser quality means that lower end stuff will have a hard time surviving, nostalgia will make people want them, and how well they performed against Pentium 4/D means that they would be respectable period-correct machines when they work well. AM2/3 stuff will not rise in value much, unless fanboyism hits hard and people decide to buy a poor performing water-cooled furnace or Sandy Bridge stuff manages to be even more expensive in the future. Well, Nehalem is probably enough to outperform Bulldozer.

A tough question indeed....

Athlon dual CPU motherboards, Amd64 stuff and Socket478 stuff. Other than that. I think that heavy duty stuff like NorthQ cobber cooler's would be a candidate, because they are big, heavy, efficient, low noise and fits everything from Socket A to Socket 775.
The reason for mentioning the cooler, is those metal scrappers. They scrap everything, and those cooler are worth a lot because of the high content of cobber.
The last thing that crosses my mind, is what's allready beginning to get tough to find, especially if it is boxed. Well... WinXP stuff are really generic.

Just the other day, I saw some nice youtube vids. In wich people used hot running CPU's to cook food (sounds dangerous unhealthy).
That was 775's and Amd64's they used, so it might give us a hint on what's getting difficult to get.
If we look at what tends to break the fastest, and what type of stuff people are making wids of, when destroying computers on Youtube.

Any near "ultimate" WinXP video card in good working condition. People will want them for their XP retro systems and high powered graphics cards have a limited life before they start to die.

3dfx was amazing at the time, but not so much now. The list of DOS (possibly a *very* small number of Windows?) games that work only with Glide is remarkably small.

Modern hardware - struggling to think of much, really. The VR helmets coming out should be significant, as possibly may be other stereoscopic 3D technologies - 3D vision, and passive stereoscopic monitors - I love my Zalman. It may also be worth having a monitor which is not HDCP enabled.

Possibly a fast Core 2 system, before Nehalem hit and changed the architecture to add an integrated memory controller (ok, AMD got there first) and SLAT (EPT/RVI). Core 2 and certain chipsets have the now rare ability to do VT-d without SLAT, and independent of CPU capabilities.

Newer Core 2 is also the point at which PATA disappeared, although who cares in these days of SATA to IDE converters?

The parallel port, and often the PS/2 ports, are usually MIA in new motherboards. Oh yes, floppy controller, too.

New systems are mostly UEFI based, for those who care. I can't imagine many people will want to bother with the early EFI implementations - they're useless for almost anything other than updating the BIOS and some very basic testing, but you never know.

Many modern systems are now entirely PCI-e based. There are older systems supporting PCI, and PCI-X.

Specifically it's probably worth keeping hold of 975X chipsets (fast, 8GB memory, supports everything from old pentium D to quite new Core 2), and some of the Q series chipsets (for VT-d). The Intel DX38BT and DX48BT are notable for supporting Core 2, PCI-e 2.0, DDR3 and VT-d and it *actually works* (supposedly). The S3200/3210 server chipsets, which I have a lot of experience of, also work properly but have so many caveats it's not funny.

I can recommend exercising caution with the HP xw4600 motherboard. On one level it's lovely, with DDR2 support, lots of Core 2, all the ports and PCI-e 2.0. On the other hand, it will not work with most power supplies (timing issue), and the VT-d is broken. Also, it's X38 based, so you can't do an LGA771 to 775 hack on it.

I also agree the SR2 is rather special, being the only(?) dual processor Xeon motherboard supporting overclocking. It's so specialist it again has a fair few limitations, and issues, though.

I think things aren't going to become collectible, unless they are in some way remarkable. There has to be a reason why you'd want to collect specifically that hardware, rather than just any old random hardware junk.
Eg, AMD-stuff may become collectible if AMD goes out of business, and it becomes stuff from a 'bygone era'. "You know kids, when grandpa was younger, not all computers had Intel CPUs. Some of them had AMD CPUs, and they worked almost exactly the same!"

Or hardware that just does something really cool, that newer hardware can no longer do (Glide, Tile-based rendering, or GUS wavetable synth... to name a few things). Perhaps stuff like Oculus Rift becomes collectible once the hype dies down, and they are no longer being sold.
Or vice versa, if it becomes a huge success, the early Oculus Rift may become collectible, because it's the one that started it.

I see all the top / final / last revision of whatever will always be popular.

With graphics cards for example, the GTS250 or the GTX285 will always demand a premium simply because they represent the last / best version of their line.

With XP gaming, I can see two camps emerging, similar to what's going on now. One one side period correct builds, on the other time-machine type machines with the latest hardware that is still compatible. For example an Athlon XP 3200+ or Core 2 Duo build representing period correct and a Socket 1155 board with PCIe X-Fi representing the time-machine approach. With AMD I think you can go even with more modern gear...

I'm already slowly collecting "end of the line" WinXP hardware. As Phil said I do like loading an OS onto the final hardware that was supported.
Alot of that hardware is still in usable PC's so price hasn't dropped enough yet and I'm in no rush.

Thing is OS wise hardware requirements haven't changed much and there haven't been any major breakthroughs that I can think of hardware wise that really makes anything stand out from the rest

I think if any tech in general just survives todays recycling mania and throwaway culture it gets rare and collectible regardless of how plentyfull it have been.
Since i work in corporate IT i recently have started to save some servers, desktops and laptops from recycling.

My bet is servers will be rarer to find in the years to come because of the cloud and virtualization. Big Corporations will probably keep their datacenters, but for SMBs i bellieve many will not have their own servers in the future. Corporation and govermental organizations gear are often decomissioned by external partners for safe wiping and then recycling. You can probably buy some of this equipment used, but shipping costs for lets say a 2U rackserver will keep many away. Old servers are also powerhogs and noisy as hell so market for them seems to be limited.
I have kept an eye for years on the used server market, because we sometimes have buyed some for spares etc. Complete pre 2000 servers like Compaq Proliant PII-PIII servers seems to be mostly gone now and the few that you can find have a high price tag. Spare parts seems to be easier to find so that indicates most are cannibalized.

Just because of lazyness and lot of storage room theese servers survived at our office for spares:
- 1x Compaq Prosignia 500, tower, 486 dx33, EISA
- 1x Compaq Proliant 4500, rack, P166 (can be upgraded to 4 way), EISA
- 1x Compaq Proliant 2500, tower with complete rack kit, 2x PPro200, EISA, PCI
- 1x Compaq Proliant 5500, tower with complete rack kit, 4x PPro200, EISA, PCI
- 1x Compaq Proliant 800, rack with complete tower kit, 2x PIII500, ISA, PCI (have parts for convert to 2xPII400 and older compaq hot swap caddies)
- 1x Compaq Proliant 1600, rack with complete tower kit, 2x PIII550, ISA, PCI (never figured out whats the difference from the 800..)
- 1x Compaq Proliant 3000, rack, 2x PIII600, ISA, PCI
- 1x Compaq Proliant ML370, rack with complete tower kit, 2x PIII933, PCI-X
- 3x Compaq Proliant ML370 G2, rack, 2x PIII1266, PCI-X
- 2x Compaq Proliant DL360 G2, rack, 2x PIII1400, PCI-X

I can keep them, but sooner or later i have to take them home. The storage room is beeing cleaned up and it have to be emptied in the near future so now i have a problem with space... I have worked personally with all these servers with among many others that are long gone so i want to preserve atleast one specimen of each model and take spare parts from them with 2 or more. All of them listed above i consider collectible, but maybe for special minds 😊
To make it worse i today added some more modern 5x Proliant DL380 G3, rack, 2x X2400-2800 that have been kept outside the server room for 2-3 years. Inside the room its stored 4x Proliant DL380 G4, rack, 2x X3400. Still have 3 more in place in the racks and running with non critical applications that we hasnt virtualized. I have to get a new house...

"Obsolete" server hardware has always been an amazing bargain on eBay. That stuff gets liquidated in huge quantities and so few people on the buying end of eBay are aware of it, that prices just hit the floor. I've noticed that server/workstation components often end up cheaper than their consumer equivalents.
I can imagine server hardware becoming less commonly used or available in the future though, as Scraphoarder described.

I mentioned late WinXP era graphics cards, but I'll add a couple more things:
Hard drives that support a logical block size of 512 bytes. Eventually this will fade away and the drives will only report and support a 4KB block size (other transitions may happen later). Lack of 512 byte logical sectors might break these drives on older operating systems. The "advanced format" drives still being made today will be useful.
Hard drives wear out with age, so maybe healthy ones would become hard to get in 20 years. However, maybe modern drives are so massively produced that this still won't be a serious problem. One thing I've always wondered about is how hard drives react to long periods of idle storage. If they don't like being stored, 20 years could wipe out most of the population.

CRT televisions and monitors - admittedly that's mostly late 90s, but they're still pretty easy to find for little money today. That won't be true in 20 years. If I had a place to put them, I'd probably stockpile these things and 20 years from now I'd be selling the excess. Whenever I'm at a Goodwill and see a decent television, I have to restrain myself only because of the size of them. The size condemns most of them to the trash.
Eventually CRTs will disappear and many people will develop an interest in having *one* good CRT somewhere in their house, and they'll probably start having to pay good money to get them.
When the kids who grew up with Nintendo/Sega/Atari reach retirement, there's going to be a run on vintage video game equipment (including the TVs). They'll have lots of time to relive those experiences and collect and play all the games they didn't have the first time around.

shamino wrote:

When the kids who grew up with Nintendo/Sega/Atari reach retirement, there's going to be a run on vintage video game equipment (including the TVs). They'll have lots of time to relive those experiences and collect and play all the games they didn't have the first time around.

The ones seeking that fix are already using Retron 5's and such. Old consoles are just way too much fuss, and I say that as somebody with a wall of consoles.

These people aren't pixel-peeping retro game nerds, so the small trade-off in authenticity is well worth the convenience of wireless controllers and HDMI out.