red-ray wrote on 2026-10-24, 12:37:

Thank you and I suspect it all comes down to timing, I have long pined for a Quad Socket 8 system, never got one, but do have 4 […]
Show full quote

Trashbytes wrote on 2026-10-24, 11:38:

Quad ...ok so now I have a new even more expensive and less likely to be working target...still it must be done !

Thank you and I suspect it all comes down to timing, I have long pined for a Quad Socket 8 system, never got one, but do have 4 bootable Quad socket systems:

1. Dell 6300/450 - 4 x Intel Pentium II Xeon (Drake) 450MHz [B1] @ SL33V
2. HP DL580 G4 - 4 x Intel Xeon MP 7140M DC (Tulsa) 3.40GHz [B0] @ SL9HA
3. HP DL580 G5 - 4 x Intel Xeon MP X7460 XC (Dunnington) 2.66GHz [A1] @ SLG9P
4. HP DL580 G8 - 4 x Intel Xeon E7-4880 v2 (Ivy Bridge-EX) 2.50GHz [D1] @ SR1GM

I got them while they were still available and as, I suspect, companies did not want them the prices were very reasonable. I also guess it depends where you live as international shipping could be a killer.

I just spotted https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/168248991034 - 2 x SL25A for GBP 250 and wonder if that is typical.

Yes International shipping is killing the hobby quickly for me, most places even in the EU do not ship to Australia anymore and the ones that do tend to have extortionist costs for it.

Sadly the one above is unavaliable to me and a great many US items are now unavaliable all due to postage costs.

I find it amusing though, not calling out anyone here, just making general observation, that when I said a few years back to fill your bags, while P4 stuff was still cheap, that people were laughing at me. The feeling conveyed to me was that anything P4 was now, and would forever be, worthless, had no place in retro, it was impossible to appreciate*, etc etc . Fine I think, you do you. But then prices go up a little and it's getting denigrated still, while gaining some more serious aficionados. More gets scrapped, unsaved and unappreciated. Then prices go sky high and it's "these people are ruining retro for the common retro enthusiast!!" ummm you mean the enthusiast who called it worthless junk just a couple of years ago? IMO people who neg on the stuff and encourage it to be scrapped do more to raise prices than the people who appreciate it "early" and hold on to it.

Anyway, if you are actually an enthusiast, pick up your sandybridge thru haswell best ofs now. (& AM2-AM3+) Yeah yeah yeah, it's too new, it doesn't have endearing qualities like the real old stuff, it's just generic cookie cutter shit worth pennies, I've heard that for 286, 386, 486, Pentium, PII, PIII, P4.... and here we are.

BTW we're already into price movement on s939, late 775, first gen core, tick tock.

P4 CPUs alone still aren't that pricy, outside of a few outliers. The platform overall is though. Good DDR memory, fancy 865PE/875P motherboards. But then again, there's a lot bog-standard boards which are not sought after, but still perfectly serviceable.

I have my P4's and if its more than $40 its a scam

RandomStranger wrote on 2026-10-24, 12:02:

I disagree. Opening up the hobby to the wrong people just makes the hobby less accessible to those who are actually interested in it and take the time and effort to learn and make the community richer. And I don't say that Phil or Clint (LGR) are majorly responsible for it, but the hobby did become less accessible because speculative investors pushed prices up. Now a lot of people who aren't interested in retro hardware and software trading them between each other to make a buck in the meanwhile they aren't just not providing value to the community, they actively remove value from it.

Without the people using it as a way to make a buck, we'd have even less stock as only the collectors would have it. There's always a period where the prices of things hit a bottom, and then naturally rise as there's still some demand, but inventories are very low. The prices hit crazy levels when the parts of the last of a series with the best performance. Who cares if you can pay 85% less, people want that 3% of additional performance for those 2 extra fps or whatever.

We're now in the era of this affecting the P4. Though it's been a while since it really mattered as late era motherboards with AGP slots have been limited for years. For someone who just wants to put together something that really only affects hot rod Win9X PCs. Once you move to XP you have 2001-2012 for officially supported hardware. Newer hardware is easier to find, and of course is much more powerful. Though some day Core2 and even early i-series will hit that period will prices start increasing.

Thankfully the community is creation its own solutions for people who don't want full emulation, but also don't need a 35 year old card. The price of MIDI modules are the same as they were six years ago when all of the price spikes hit. And with Munt/MT32Pi, and the new Sound Canvas and XG emulators. People have good options that will hopefully limit natural demand. A speculator can only sell something for as high as someone else is willing to pay. There has to be a "good enough" point where the alternatives trump original hardware when compared to a sky high price.

We'll also have to see where the Reverse Engineer Anything movement ends up. There have been reports Claude is rejecting prompts so some guardrails appear to be going up. But the genie is already out of the bottle. People know what's possible and unlocked models will be created over time. People will continue to argue about slop. But good modern ports of things are possible now. Being able to extract the exact core logic, and modernize the IO systems to modern standards give you ability to create a modern port of pretty much anything. I feel this will greatly limit a good chunk of demand in the future. When you have a high quality native executable for current systems for the one or two games you really want to play. You just aren't going to build a system with 30+ year old parts. Not all of the ports are in a good place yet, but seeing what's been accomplished in about 2-3 months is insane. Especially when you see the ones that re-enabled online multiplayer. This will be a big issue for the gaming industry. You now have to keep with decades of the best of the best. And I find myself mostly rewatching old shows and movies versus how much time I give to new ones. Games will hit that same point.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-10-24, 13:32:

Anyway, if you are actually an enthusiast, pick up your sandybridge thru haswell best ofs now. (& AM2-AM3+) Yeah yeah yeah, it's too new, it doesn't have endearing qualities like the real old stuff, it's just generic cookie cutter shit worth pennies, I've heard that for 286, 386, 486, Pentium, PII, PIII, P4.... and here we are.

BTW we're already into price movement on s939, late 775, first gen core, tick tock.

100%, the one saving grace with all this was standardization. A boring office PC with a good GPU slotted in will give 95% of the performance of a best of the best system being overclocked and redlined.

The part to focus on now is the real Sound Blaster X-Fi cards. IMO those are the last sound cards to matter. As they supported EAX5 under XP. After that sound was just sound. Audiophiles will complain about op-amps, etc. But we were just playing back digital streams with everyone done in software. No unique hardware features were used. I do see high prices already so if you don't have what you want you might have missed the boat already. But I see them going higher still.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-10-24, 13:32:

I find it amusing though, not calling out anyone here, just making general observation, that when I said a few years back to fill your bags, while P4 stuff was still cheap, that people were laughing at me. The feeling conveyed to me was that anything P4 was now, and would forever be, worthless, had no place in retro, it was impossible to appreciate*, etc etc . Fine I think, you do you. But then prices go up a little and it's getting denigrated still, while gaining some more serious aficionados. More gets scrapped, unsaved and unappreciated. Then prices go sky high and it's "these people are ruining retro for the common retro enthusiast!!" ummm you mean the enthusiast who called it worthless junk just a couple of years ago? IMO people who neg on the stuff and encourage it to be scrapped do more to raise prices than the people who appreciate it "early" and hold on to it.

Anyway, if you are actually an enthusiast, pick up your sandybridge thru haswell best ofs now. (& AM2-AM3+) Yeah yeah yeah, it's too new, it doesn't have endearing qualities like the real old stuff, it's just generic cookie cutter shit worth pennies, I've heard that for 286, 386, 486, Pentium, PII, PIII, P4.... and here we are.

BTW we're already into price movement on s939, late 775, first gen core, tick tock.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2026-10-24, 13:42:

P4 CPUs alone still aren't that pricy, outside of a few outliers. The platform overall is though. Good DDR memory, fancy 865PE/875P motherboards. But then again, there's a lot bog-standard boards which are not sought after, but still perfectly serviceable.

I thought P4 CPUs and motherboards are still cheap or even free. It's just the rare unicorn models like Extreme Editions and industrial motherboards with ISA slots that are somewhat expensive. Otherwise you'd probably be better off using an Athlon 64 instead. And you can still get a bit less good DDR memory even for free, if you are willing to live without the last few percentage points of performance.

Mike_ wrote on 2026-10-24, 14:16:

I thought P4 CPUs and motherboards are still cheap or even free. It's just the rare unicorn models like Extreme Editions and industrial motherboards with ISA slots that are somewhat expensive. Otherwise you'd probably be better off using an Athlon 64 instead. And you can still get a bit less good DDR memory even for free, if you are willing to live without the last few percentage points of performance.

They are mostly cheap, but if you want RDRAM build, for whatever reason, or 875P they will command premium. That's not a specific Pentium 4 problem, to be honest.

Also rarely someone cares about common office junk Socket 370 Celerons paired with mediocre VIA boards, but they are still perfectly serviceable for retrogaming.

The Serpent Rider wrote on 2026-10-24, 18:06:

They are mostly cheap, but if you want RDRAM build, for whatever reason, or 875P they will command premium. That's not a specific Pentium 4 problem, to be honest.

Also rarely someone cares about common office junk Socket 370 Celerons paired with mediocre VIA boards, but they are still perfectly serviceable for retrogaming.

I guess that's true, a lot of usable retro gear is a bit boring. I'd say the only "special" thing about Pentium 4s are the industrial boards with ISA slots. They have the latest chipsets that can still support fully functional ISA slots, which means that they basically turn e-waste (such as Pentium 4 CPUs and DDR1 memory) into extremely useful retro gaming gear, as they can cover more years into early 00s than say, socket 370. There are Socket A motherboards with ISA slots as well, but they have KT133/KT133A chipsets, which means SDR memory. While they are a decent option as well, their eBay prices are surprisingly close to those industrial P4 boards. And well, late Athlon XPs were competitive with Pentium 4s, but only with DDR chipsets such as nForce2...

I look for the EE CPUs and have been able to aquire most of the Pentium 4, Pentium D and Core 2 ones for very cheap over the past many years.

I should probably think about selling a couple that I have doubles of.

jh80 wrote on 2026-10-24, 00:15:

ElectroSoldier wrote on 2026-10-23, 23:46:

Philscomputerlab did a lot to drive up prices, which isnt a good thing.

It's not a bad thing to get more people interested in the hobby, though.

Why?
Its not like the hobby depends on adding more and more people to keep it alive as is the case with other hobbies like Warhammer or fishing.

BitWrangler wrote on 2026-10-24, 13:32:

I find it amusing though, not calling out anyone here, just making general observation, that when I said a few years back to fill your bags, while P4 stuff was still cheap, that people were laughing at me. The feeling conveyed to me was that anything P4 was now, and would forever be, worthless, had no place in retro, it was impossible to appreciate*, etc etc . Fine I think, you do you. But then prices go up a little and it's getting denigrated still, while gaining some more serious aficionados. More gets scrapped, unsaved and unappreciated. Then prices go sky high and it's "these people are ruining retro for the common retro enthusiast!!" ummm you mean the enthusiast who called it worthless junk just a couple of years ago? IMO people who neg on the stuff and encourage it to be scrapped do more to raise prices than the people who appreciate it "early" and hold on to it.

Anyway, if you are actually an enthusiast, pick up your sandybridge thru haswell best ofs now. (& AM2-AM3+) Yeah yeah yeah, it's too new, it doesn't have endearing qualities like the real old stuff, it's just generic cookie cutter shit worth pennies, I've heard that for 286, 386, 486, Pentium, PII, PIII, P4.... and here we are.

BTW we're already into price movement on s939, late 775, first gen core, tick tock.

I still think all that shit sucks, and will for the rest of my life

Prices mean nothing to me because I won't be buying any of it

PS - the western world fundamentally changed around the turn of the millennium,it's not just about nostalgia for one's childhood or the sliding window of what's "old"
things made before~during the early 2000s will forever have an elevated position relative to those made after

The SL7CH has now sold. Final price was $1500 USD. I’m lost for words.

yes final price is $2150 australian dollars,,,

come on guys, i know it was one of you... explain yourself.. make it make sense..

Wasn't me, I was out buying RAM cheap while everyone was distracted 🤣

I mean, yeah, the SL7CH has been selling for around $1k for awhile now. Not sure why the surprise.

kennyPENTIUMpowers wrote on 2026-10-26, 04:05:

yes final price is $2150 australian dollars,,,

come on guys, i know it was one of you... explain yourself.. make it make sense..

Sorry, Phil promised me he'd pin my next YouTube comment if I bid 2k for it.

But seriously, that's absurd money, and I too would love to know which of you bought it.

It’s a similar situation with other retro parts as well.

For example, the Geforce FX5800 and FX5900 series that delivered poor performance and was considered a disappointment compared to the offerings from ATI at the time. Yet, those FX cards demand an astonishingly steep premium now, even compared to cards like the Radeon 9800 series, which by almost all accounts, is a much better card.

Similarly, the ATI Rage Fury Maxx which was a complete disaster in terms of performance and driver quality, and certainly far from desirable in its day. Yet it’s listed for insane prices on the bay now. (And the only thing that makes it special is the dual chips, whereas other dual chip cards like the Voodoo 5 were actually special and their current premium is somewhat justifiable)

Objectively they're all bad, eclipsed by next gen, or in case of Voodoo5, struggling to stay level with era adjacent Geforce2 MX400.

Stuff I've held onto that somehow goes for over $100... several soundcards worse than onboard AC97 audio, some of them aren't even stereo, several VGA cards worse than a Radeon 7000 SDR, a cpu worse than a DX4-75, a cpu worse than a Pentium 100 and so on.

byte_76 wrote on 2026-10-26, 06:34:

Yet, those FX cards demand an astonishingly steep premium now

Users of this forum spent years hyping them up so they're priced accordingly