>computers with little RAM have to swap this data to the hard drive
The hard drive? What machine is sold with a hard drive as swap in 2024?
The hard drive? What machine is sold with a hard drive as swap in 2024?
The surprising thing is that you can buy a desktop computer (but no monitor) for less than a day of minimum wage in California.
https://www.walmart.com/ip/Restored-Dell-Optiplex-790-Deskto...
What I find more surprising is that there is any margins in selling those sort of computers. Enough to actually reliably profit.
I get these types of machines (actually somewhat newer i5/i7 11th gen+) from an Amazon returns auction house for $5-$20/ea and they invariably have mismatched ram in them and HDDs with 50-70K hours on them already. They also typically won't boot because of a faulty ram stick 9r failed HDD.
That being said, I also have 4 kids and those machines have served well as 'starter' systems. They get to upgrade the PSU, HDD-->SSD, GPU and max out the ram on a shoestring budget.
Between a local MicroCtr and /r/homelabsales ... They get to build out performant systems for $300-$600 total. I also consider this to be a much greater investment than just throwing a console at them.
Profits or not for them; we found some profit in their waste stream.