This Japanese vending machine dispenses Intel Core CPUs for just $3.25 a pop

[midian182]

WTF?! Japan is home to many weird and wonderful things, including a Gacha vending machine where you can grab an Intel Core i7-8700 for about $3.25. The caveat is that the chip has some issues, but it still works – and you can't argue with that price.

The machine was highlighted by X/Twitter user LaurieWired (via Tom's Hardware), who posted that a user called Sawara-San had won the Coffee Lake S chip after placing 500 Yen, or about $3.25, into the Gacha machine. The self-serving vending machines are found in most locations globally but are especially popular in Japan. Users simply insert coins, turn the dial, and see what prize has been dispensed – they usually come inside small plastic balls.

The machines tend to spit out small toys or models, but the one outside of a computer and electronics store called 1's PC gives out something else: CPUs.

The catch is that these processors appear to be older and defective items, likely those that 1's PC couldn't sell and just wanted to clear out. The Core i7-8700 that Sawara-San won, for example, appeared to be causing display problems, and installing Windows on a PC powered by the chip didn't initially work.

The Core i7-8700 is supposed to have six cores and 12 threads, but a Windows Task Manager screenshot shows Sawara-San's has five cores and ten threads. This was likely causing some, if not all, of the issues, and there could be more problems with the chip,

Nevertheless, the CPU was still able to complete Cinebench R15 and R23 benchmarks. The 992cb Cinebench R15 nT test score was a lot lower than what a normal Core i7-8700 would offer, unsurprisingly.

Despite the faults, paying just over $3 for a CPU that can be bought second hand for $90 from 1's PC is still good. Meanwhile, a brand new Intel Core i7-8700 is $200 on Amazon, while refurbed models are $135.

This isn't Japan's first CPU vending machine. Reports in 2021 highlighted a machine in Tokyo giving away dummy AMD Ryzen 5000 boxes filled with one or several older CPUs, including Intel models, for around $9.

Permalink to story:

This Japanese vending machine dispenses Intel Core CPUs for just $3.25 a pop

 

[Nelson28]

Hold on, a CPU gacha machine?! That's both crazy and amazing! While the faulty CPU is a bummer, the price is unreal. Definitely a gamble, but for those who can handle some troubleshooting, it could be a total steal!

 

[ScottSoapbox]

Broken junk you don't need at an amazing price!!!

Two types of people: those who can't pass this up and those that can’t fathom why people are shoveling money into this.

 

[nismo91]

Damn, an average lunch in office cafeteria costs more than this. I'm genuinely impressed!

 

[Squid Surprise]

Not only is it broken but… you don’t know if you’re even going to get it! You might get a green power ranger doll instead (probably a better value).

 

[Vanderlinde]

Hold on, a CPU gacha machine?! That's both crazy and amazing! While the faulty CPU is a bummer, the price is unreal. Definitely a gamble, but for those who can handle some troubleshooting, it could be a total steal!

Look up mystery box on those common websites. Same idea.

 

[redgarl]

Great and all... but good luck finding the motherboard going with that thing when it is an older gen...

 

[BadThad]

I suppose that's one way to get rid of your ewaste! LOL

 

[dant63]

Note to self...quit buying CPU's on ebay

 

[brozkeff]

If you watch the video more properly (and if you don't know Japanese use autogenerated English subtitles...) you discover that the trick to make the partially defect CPU working was to use a board with BIOS enabling selective disabling CPU cores. Surprisingly just disabling one core and keeping the first 5 cores running made the Windows and other apps work, and the CPU showed then as 5-core, 10-thread, instead of the regular 6-core, 12-thread. Not all boards support such feature, and if the issue was not on the last core but perhaps the second it would not be so cool, as running the CPU single-core would not be such a great thing. Perhaps some boards could offer selective disabling cores not just from the end but picking any core manually but this will probably be very rare.
However if Linux would be used there is a software tool that can disable cores at runtime and perhaps if it starts singlecore it could do it early at boot and then enable what cores work gradually from the OS.
However such tinkering is not suitable for everyone.

 

[Watzupken]

I think it is not a bad idea to sell off used or even faulty CPUs to those who may be interested. For all you know, that 3 bucks CPU may result in the sale of a motherboard and ram to use it.

 

[hwertz]

*shrug*. Linux will also let you disable cores selectively. Both at boot time and at run time. I just got my Coffee Lake system (with Core i7-8700) for like $185 just about 6 monnths ago. Mine came in a case and has 32GB RAM included though.

Man, if we had something like this here, I'd be putting some cash into it! I'd have no issues with getting a CPU for $3.50 that I need to shut a core off on; maybe some RAM with a bad bit or two (Linux supports disabling bad RAM, I assume 1 4KB page at a time). Probably not a defective hard drive or SSD.

 

[whateversa]

So technically this is paying for something broken and outdated, which does not perform according to the model number.

 

[hwertz]

So technically this is paying for something broken and outdated, which does not perform according to the model number.

Broken? Yes, insofar as you had to turn off 1 core. Outdated? Well, also yes, but in this case this CPU includes everything a newer CPU has but AVX512 (which Intel has been removing on some newer CPUs anyway, so it's unlikely you'll come .)

If you're stuck with Windows, Intel & Microsoft have moved to rapidly pulling driver support for their CPUs and chipsets. Eventually enough changes are made to Windows that the final drivers don't work, and your system is no longer able to receive OS updates. Outside the world of Windows and Mac, it's more a matter of "Is it too slow? Is it so old it's highly likely to have hardware problems?" (I.e. for a motherboard or power supply, blown caps?) The Mesa Gallium 3D driver (written in scratch within the last 5 years) has support for up to *18* year old Intel GPUs? (And AMD support goes back about that far too.) So this old of hardware, it's not just that it has some old driver that's still included, it has a fully modernized driver written within the last 5 years.

Just saying, if you run Linux on this thing, you might have concerns over time of unreliability because of extreme age (or those flaws getting worse in this case); or becoming too slow as your workload increases. But you won't run into problems with forced obsolescence (being unable to update your OS due to dropped support.)

And, keeping systems here a looong time, I've found the things start blowing caps when they get to about 18 years old, that's the time when I would worry about the system spontaneously dying and definitley look into replacement even if it's running fine (I mean, if it draws power like a desktop; if they made Raspberry Pis 20 years ago, I doubt the caps on it would be under much strain). I had a system laster year go at 20 years old -- a 3.0ghz P4 I was still running as a DVR; replaced it with a C2D desktop I had in storage and after a few weeks THAT blew caps (days before it turned 18 according to the manufacturing date on the case); I'm now running my Ivy Bridge desktop there. I had one Sandy Bridge blow caps when it was far younger than that, but that thing ran hot as all hell and probably cooked the caps.