> at these places are often invited to build personal machines to take home out of these “too good” parts — and yet there’s so much that they can’t possibly use it all up that way.

I work in the refurb division of an e-waste recycling company. Those days are over for now. We're listing RAM that will sell for more than scrap value (about $2 per stick), which is at least 4 GB DDR3. And we got a list of people who will buy all we got.