If you ever find yourself needing cheap or older parts, rather than scouring eBay for what you need try a local thrift store. Using eBay can, many times, be cost prohibitive because the shipping you pay is sometimes more than what the part is worth.

I’ve bought many PCs from thrift stores for under $25 which included a functioning hard drives, PC 100/133 RAM, sound/video/network cards, floppy/CD drives, motherboards and CPUs (up to P3). Not to mention the case they come with. The only thing to be careful of is many times the unit is not functioning as a whole, but typically the majority of the parts work.

This route is perfect if you are looking to build or repair an old test machine as you can get a fully functional PC for virtually nothing.