{"id":818140,"date":"2025-12-08T18:22:40","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T18:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/cjsgjjMDYxhnrkQHyyYQHD"},"modified":"2025-12-08T18:22:40","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T18:22:40","slug":"fancy-a-borked-intel-cpu-for-just-3-25-this-japanese-gacha-machine-is-just-for-you","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/arcader.org\/news\/fancy-a-borked-intel-cpu-for-just-3-25-this-japanese-gacha-machine-is-just-for-you\/","title":{"rendered":"Fancy a borked Intel CPU for just $3.25? This Japanese Gacha machine is just for you"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

I've sometimes toyed with the idea of building a wall display of dead hardware, so I can live out my fantasies of a house covered in futuristic greebles<\/a>. This Japanese Gacha machine might be the cheapest way of getting hold of a large number of borked chips for my project, as it dispenses them for a mere $3.25 a go.<\/p>\n

Located outside of a Japanese electronics store, this Gacha machine is the sort that usually dispenses a small toy in a plastic bubble (via Techspot<\/a>). However, YouTuber Sawara-san<\/a> has discovered that for a mere 500 Yen\u2014equivalent to around $3.25\u2014this one instead provides you with a CPU. In this case, the prize was an Intel Core i7-8700, although some later testing revealed that the chip, presumably like all the others in the machine, had some serious issues.<\/p>\n

A Windows Task Manager screenshot reveals the beleaguered CPU only reported five working cores and 10 threads, whereas a fully functioning Core i7 8700 should have six cores and 12.<\/p>\n

Still, for $3.25 you really can't complain, especially as you can still buy this particular model (fully functional, of course) for $200<\/a>. Given that this vending machine appears to be located in a district full of electronics retailers, I would imagine that this is simply a way of making a bit of extra cash from damaged hardware by selling broken chips off as curiosities.<\/p>\n

Given that e-waste is an ongoing issue<\/a>, the idea of giving broken hardware a second life as an aesthetically pleasing, slightly desirable object is a pleasant one, if not perhaps a sustainable solution.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\n