Those two systems are a bit too modern currently to be of any good value as people demand P3 or older but you can still try to sell them provided you don't go to much over $100 for complete systems. If you are expecting or needing over $200 for the high end rig don't count on it as hardly no one is paying those prices. The low end rig won't go for much maybe $20 to $50 at the most. People who are willing to pay up to $400 for what would be considered very generic here are idiots with too much money, also sometimes eBay is used for money laundering.

If you were selling Pentium 3 era systems in good shape or older you would certainly have gotten more especially with the 3DFX cards and the socket 4 pentium era machine.

As for the economy there will not be a real recovery for perhaps a decade or worse a generation as it has rotted to that extent since 2008 as the collapse of oil is just a canary in the coal mine.

Ouch, I wasn't expecting that low of a number. Looks like I'll be tossing the Dell in the trash bin and tucking the custom build away in a box in my closet. Thanks!

Don't trash it but may take a while to sell it, never trash a working system 😀

It's not going to be worth my time to sell it for that low of a price considering the cost to ship it, and definitely not worth the time to box it up or the space occupied in a u-haul during a move.

I'll hang on to the custom system since I have about $230 invested in it from buying all the parts new, which I thought would help the value out, but if it won't sell for any more than $100 I'll probably go ahead and throw away the new empty boxes from the individual components and keep the system in storage.

People who are willing to pay up to $400 for what would be considered very generic here are idiots with too much money

Unfortunately that is true, and there are a few people like that out there, though not very many. It might possibly be worth a shot putting at least the high end system on ebay and setting the starting bid at $125-$175, maybe. Or maybe I don't know what I'm talking about 😀
If you want to move to where there are jobs, maybe you should come over here to Idaho! Our economy generally does a little better, on average, than the rest of the nation. If you can get your foot in the door in the service sector you've got it made, if you play your cards right.

hurrication wrote:

It's not going to be worth my time to sell it for that low of a price considering the cost to ship it, and definitely not worth the time to box it up or the space occupied in a u-haul during a move.

I'll hang on to the custom system since I have about $230 invested in it from buying all the parts new, which I thought would help the value out, but if it won't sell for any more than $100 I'll probably go ahead and throw away the new empty boxes from the individual components and keep the system in storage.

I strongly recommend trying to sell it locally like on Craigslist, just be sure to have good pics and a good description maybe someone who is just getting into this hobby will snatch it up. If absolutely everything is working just right you might get lucky with a business getting interested for running old accounting software ect.

I am in central Wyoming right now where the population is less than 60k. It's nearly impossible to sell anything on craigslist or the facebook local groups that isn't a gun or a 4 wheeler or a 25 year old camper. Towards the end of last year I listed my CAD/Gaming rig which is an AMD fx6300 with 32gb of ram and twin GTX Titans running triple 22" monitors in surround complete with Solidworks 2015 and Autocad 2015 and the highest offer I got on it was 1200 dollars. There's zero chance of getting any kind of money from a Dimension 2400, and I wouldn't be surprised if someone told me I was the only person within a 100 mile radius who is even interested in windows 98 gaming. Not to mention the local economy being in total shambles from oil's collapse since that was one of the only industries that fueled the boom here. Not much spare money floating around here right now.

Man! I feel for ya dude.

Sadly there is no selling on VOGONS, but at least you've come to the right place to gauge interest - plus you phrased the thread as "how much is this worth" so you're okay. 😉

Hang in there, hurrication!

hurrication wrote:

It's not going to be worth my time to sell it for that low of a price considering the cost to ship it, and definitely not worth the time to box it up or the space occupied in a u-haul during a move.

On the Dell just the mobo and video card (and maybe monitor) should bring more than the complete system.
These are links to SOLD Listings. Best place to look to find prices.
Complete System
Motherboard
Geforce FX 5200 PCI
17" Dell CRT
The other parts probably won't bring enough to be worth the trouble to pack and ship them. (The HDD may be an exception.)
The problem you may have is that eBay often isn't fast like it was years ago.
.

To get more, you may try to sell by parts.
If that machines you may realy to use and they don't just gather dust - I'd keep at least one of them. The money you may get are not significant for USA, there should be better ways to get or spare them.

Just checked the ebay offers you referred to.
Those systems have a PIII-S 1.4 (fastest P3/Tualatin), video cards like Geforce 4Ti/Geforce FX 5900/5950 (fastest video cards which still have certain features needed for older games).
Also the system are prepared very carefully and the guy offers a limited warranty.

Your high-end system is indeed fast, but I don't know how many games it might run better than the referred P3 systems which won't run on XP, and there are probably a lot of 9x games it won't run properly.
The Dell system seems a bit unbalanced, Celeron 2.4 with GF FX 5200, only 256MB. I don't know if it would really be faster than the PIII-S - did a short search and it seems that a PIII-S 1.4 easily beats a Northwood Celeron 2.0.

My p4 system benchmarks with a passmark score of 825-830 as it sits compared to around 300 for a p3 1.4. And the ebay guy's computer has a GF4 4600, not FX 5xxx's. My 6800GT is almost 28x as fast as a GF4 4600 going by benchmark scores, and the FX 5200 in the Dell (RIP) was close to twice as fast as a GF4 4600. His computers also come with PC133 SD ram compared to DDR 400 in mine. My high end system also uses a SSD boot drive with a SATA2 storage drive... not even in the same universe there. It boots up in about 10 seconds, loads games in a fraction of the time as a P3 system, gets well over 150fps in some games at 1280x1024, and I haven't come across a 98 game (even glide games) that have any problems running.

You're right, though, a p3 1.4 will probably have a slight edge over a Celeron 2.4 on benchmark scores alone, but the Celeron system with DDR ram and a 400mhz FSB will easily outperform a p3 system in overall computing, and the fx5200 that was in mine still outperforms a GF4 4600. The high end system literally wipes the floor with even the best p3 system, though.

OK, regarding your high-end system: I didn't want to say that it wouldn't run games (or other programs) much faster than the systems in the ebay listings, calling it wiping the floor is probaly correct. What I meant ist that all games you'd really want/need to run in Win9x are probably fast enough on the P3 already. Games that can use more power will probably run well enough under XP. There might be some (few) games where it would have an advantage.
Regarding GF4/GF FX: I also looked at the finished offers from the guy, some systems use GF4, some use GF FX 59xx.
Regarding GF FX 5200: I'm sorry, but that one is slower than a GF4 4600. Lower fill rate, lower memory bandwidth, lower shader performance in DirectX 8.1, and too slow for DirectX 9 shaders.

It's not about speed. If it were about speed only, just get a used C2D, or heck, use your modern system, get patches for your games, and run them in a modern OS.

P3's are sought after, and the Tualatin 1.4 as the latest and greatest P3 is going to fetch a high price, especially in a tested system with warranty. P4's are still a dime a dozen, doesn't matter if they're faster. Performance has nothing to do with market value in this case.

idspispopd wrote:

...Geforce 4Ti/Geforce FX 5900/5950 (fastest video cards which still have certain features needed for older games)...

Exactly. The GeForce 4 Ti 4600 is the fastest AGP card that still retains full compatibility, and certainly more than fast enough for any 98SE-era games. Also, high-end models are sought after, whereas the FX5200, for example, is an entry-level card that doesn't have the same coolness factor.

The eBay computer that sold for close to $400 is A) new or newish and B) contains some cherished parts, namely the 1.4 tuatalin and ti4600. This is widely considered one of the best configurations for W98SE gaming outside of the 1.4 tuatalin / Voodoo 5500 combo (a personal favorite).

Unfortunately pentium 4's are not at all sought after. People looking for a retro rig in that period usually go for athlons (a venice core is a great option for the period).

blank001 wrote:

Unfortunately pentium 4's are not at all sought after. People looking for a retro rig in that period usually go for athlons (a venice core is a great option for the period).

Interest in Pentium 4s is still a long ways away and it will only be a trickle at first but once options for other retro rigs become difficult or cost prohibitive people will more than likely start building them. I agree about the Athlons as they are really nice for the period if you can get a Good board, Good ran, and a equally or better cooler to match. People going the way with building XP rigs with second or third gen i3s could become common because of all the drm crap and windows 10.

Some Socket-478 motherboards can already sell for alot of money, Abits 875P and 865PE boards are probably the best examples.

There are too much Socket-478 systems on the market for the less interesting boards to be worth anything at all and I agree it will take a long time before most Socket-478 boards / systems are even worth selling as they are not worth the shipping cost. i915 s775 boards will probably never be sought after but perhaps i925XE boards like the Abit AA8XE could be.

Skyscraper wrote:

Some Socket-478 motherboards can already sell for alot of money, Abits 875P and 865PE boards are probably the best examples.

There are too much Socket-478 systems on the market for the less interesting boards to be worth anything at all and I agree it will take a long time before most Socket-478 boards / systems are even worth selling as they are not worth the shipping cost. i915 s775 boards will probably never be sought after but perhaps i925XE boards like the Abit AA8XE could be.

I have to agree that most of the hardware from that era is junk and never will be worth anything until like 10 or 15 years from now when most of it is rotting in a dump somewhere or smelted down for a few nickles worth of gold. The only good thing is that aside from a few select pieces the rest of it is almost free and there are some great gems to be had including laptops like the Inspiron 9300 ect. If you see any 915 pentium M boards in a atx format with all the usual slots buy it as they are really nice and a bit rare.

If one can get their hands on a high clocking 478 board one can run a mobile P4 (northwood core without an ihs) and go for the moon fsb wise without too much power draw ect.