Gamble pays off: SSDs worth over $1,800 found in $50 motherboard with bent pins on eBay

Despite the pricing crisis surrounding the gaming hardware industry, a bunch of lucky bargain hunters and scavengers have managed to strike gold in these trying times. We have covered some of these lucky gamers, and it appears that we are about to do so yet again.

Scavenging for broken computer hardware does tend to pay off every now and then, considering that one manages to salvage some value out of a discarded piece of kit. For instance, Redditor R550MAGIC2 managed to find a damaged MSI Pro Z690-A motherboard on eBay, with the seller blaming bent pins to be the primary issue. Self-admittedly, the seller did not have much know-how when it came to computing hardware, which likely made the deal possible.

Buyer lucks out: SSDs totaling 12 TB found in $50 motherboard

Ultimately, the motherboard was sold to OP for just $50. Interestingly, OP did notice that the motherboard had all four of its M.2 SSD heatsinks installed, and upon finalizing the purchase, discovered that every single one of them was indeed populated. The installed drives include two WD SN850X 4 TB drives, an Intel 670P 2 TB drive, and a Corsair MP600 2 TB drive.

Pricing wise, the 4 TB WD SN850X can be found for around $599 on Amazon. The MP600, now discontinued, should be worth around $350 when new, and the Intel 670p is currently $300 on Amazon. In total, the Redditor had managed to secure drives worth over $1,800 as of this writing. Of course, used drives are likely to be substantially cheaper if bought used - on eBay, the entire lot could be purchased for around $1,110.

Needless to say, the moral thing to do here would be to return the SSDs to the seller, considering that they were clearly unaware of what was in their possession. However, it might also be argued that a deal is a deal, and it is not the responsibility of the buyer to educate the seller. Either way, it is unclear whether or not the buyer informed the seller of the same once the discovery was made.