Why are old laptop hardware so expensive?!?

I am planning to upgrade my msi gx 640 but the hardware is so expensive. I the Intel xm940 goes for like 800 bucks used on ebay. What the ??

Gpus are also damn expensive. For the cost it takes to upgrade I could buy a clevo with the 770m and 4th gen intel cpu which would be way better than this upgrade. How do they get to sell this stuff who buys it when it's more expensive than a brand new better laptop

 

Its because lots of discontinued parts are still in high demand and therefore command a high price.
Second, because they are the highest end items, there were less of them made to begin with.
Third, graphics cards are often proprietary to a particular brand. IE Lenovo cards won't work with Dell and vice versa.

Some people like old hardware and collect computers. But of course they want the highest end items.
What some people do is to buy computers that have all the high end materials, swap parts and then sell the computer with the not as good hardware. Risky, lengthy investment, and a bit costly up front, but it can be done.

A great example of overpriced parts is the M1730. X9000 still $200, 9800m GTX SLI around $300. 8GB Ram upgrade is another $120. Right there you are 3/4 on the way to a decent system.

 

I noticed the same with my GX740, by shopping around a bit I found slightly cheaper upgrades ( going from an i5 430M to an i7 720qm for £20) but the highest level you can fit in a first generation machine are unfortunately £300+ definately not worth it in terms of value for upgrading against performance gained, I'm happy that the upgrades I have made have improved the performance, but as most people on this forum will also tell you, its not worth upgrading the GPU and CPU to the highest possible as you will be much better off buying a new notebook altogether.

Best of luck and look for used parts (if you trust it) as you may get a fairer price.

 

Old parts aren't made anymore, supply goes down, so price goes up.

For that sort of money, I'd just get a new system...

 

Most of them go to repair otherwise working older systems. It's not worth upgrading an older notebook because of this, and the fact that notebooks only last so long because they're moved about and the keyboard and trackpad are integrated. I generally live by the rule that if the notebook is more than 2 it's half-way through it's lifespan and not worth upgrading. Sure, it could last a bit longer. Or it could die tomorrow. I once had a 2.5 year old HP laptop (dv2201) I babied die with a dead motherboard ($600 replacement, I had paid $350 for the entire notebook).

 

Even a top end machine will only be good for a few years in Notebook world.
To use the m1730 again,
The highest end version début was in 2008. To get that SLI model with the 9800m GTX and the x9000 would have run in the neighborhood of $3-4k. Now you can find that same unit for about $800, and it is a mid end system.

 

It's very low end now really. Not even worth $800 really.