Oh look, 2015 technology with 2023 pricing.
It’s usually the case at the higher end of any generation, and it all boils down to supply and demand. While the lesser CPUs drop a lot in price due to age and less desirability, there are more folks wanting to max out their existing platform are willing to pay the price to not have to redo everything.
My suggestion is to do the math. What CPU and motherboard alternatives are available for the price? It will take work but it’ll also move folks into a newer platform with greater support in the future.
(Note that I am not staff. I just volunteer to help out on the forums.)
Yeah I can see your perspective, but even micro center have daily sales for a modern cpu mobo Ram combo for like 200-300$ varies on model
If you’re upgrading a cpu it’s actually easier to build a new pc then swapping out your old pc
Easier, yes, but cases and power supplies aren’t as cheap as they used to be. Undoing the cables and like 8 screws isn’t that time consuming IMHO. Granted, I have been building since the 8088 days, so there’s a lot that’s kind of second nature to me.
(TBH, I find cable management to be the most time consuming part, and that applies whether it’s a new build or upgrade/rebuild.)
It’s not always about easier.
For someone who already has a Z170 motherboard (or even a lower chipset from the Skylake generation), and good DDR3 memory, while I am not super excited about that price, it is still a good CPU, which could easily be used to help turn that existing hardware into something useful, rather than just e-waste.
While I wouldn’t recommend this for gaming (eight years later), it would make a decent basic desktop, or a solid enough platform for a homegrown NAS or media server.
Skylake was mostly DDR4 already, though. There were some exceptions; I’ve encountered some Dell machines that were still DDR3 in 6th gen.
The value spot seems to be aiming a notch or two below the top. These 7700k still command a premium. If one can do without HT, the i5-7600 variants can be had for about 30-50% of its price.
This all said, I picked up a H110 ITX board with an unknown CPU i3-6100 under a stock Intel cooler for $8 at a thrift store yesterday, so I guess I’m going to kludge up yet another computer in the near future. The case might end up as the most expensive part of the build.
Yup - I was mixed up on the DDR type 
. Thanks for pointing that back in the right direction. Been a while since I built anything on that generation of hardware. I did a Kaby one from scavenged parts about two years ago.
The point is still to prevent usable gear from ending up in landfills, when it could be doing something useful!
My old Pentium D wasn’t a good processor but it did work fine as a space heater. 