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Hello - Obviously I'm very new to the board, but I've been aware of boardsort for many years. I'm currently working on preparing my first load to send in, as I've been collecting e-scrap for a while now. Apologies if this has been asked before, but I couldn't find a good answer in my search.

What is the best solution for PSUs? Specifically, box PSUs from home computers.

I've got approximately 150 pounds of them, possibly more. I certainly wouldn't mind sending them in with all of my other stuff, but it seems like shipping costs will always be higher than the prices offered for them. Additionally, I'm very confused about the "with cords" versus "without cords" prices. A PSU is about 4 pounds on average with wires, and 3 to 3.5 pounds without the wires. Even if I were to ship the separated wires to sell with everything else, the "without cords" category will always net less money, yet is categorized as "primary focus" instead of "potential cleaning." Am I misunderstanding those categories, or am I missing something else?

The only yard that I can find in my entire state that takes PSUs has offered a whopping $0.04 per pound for them, which I'm pretty sure is worth less than the steel casing alone.

Is my only viable solution here to fully scrap out every single PSU I have to sell as low grade boards? Does anyone else regularly send in boxes of power supplies?

I’ll start with the easy part.
The wires, often called a tail, are the most valuable part of most power supplies.
Most people I talk with simply cut the tail off and dump the rest of the supply as steel transformer or a low grade electrical shred locally.

The average power supply has a raw scrap value of under $1. Actually recovering the materials costs more than the supply is worth in labour and materials.
4 cents is a fair rate. Steel right now is around .4-.5 cents per pound. That’s half a penny. They will probably drop it in with other coated plastics and mixed steel and eventually shred it.

If they are high end supplies, such as with removable cables, they may be worth opening up for you. Many of those have extra copper and high quality heatsinks.

Server bricks as well; have a large amount of aluminium in them.

Unfortunately there isn’t much more to do with them. They are literally dead weight.

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Gotcha, thank you - that makes me feel less crazy. I guess I was a little surprised since my last trip to the scrap yard was giving me 6 cents a pound for steel shred.

Good to know I don't need to be maximizing anything on these. Thanks!

A few years ago I tried stripping PSUs and separating the wires from the board and case. I tried pulling off the aluminum heatsinks, but most of them are riveted and cost more in time than it's worth. I recently took about 80 lbs of power supplies to the scrap yard and got $0.05 per pound as shred with wires attached. The guy running the scale told me I should cut the wires off and separate them so I told him to try that and let me know how long it took him!

Medium sized bolt cutter. $34.99. (Don’t buy the 19.99 ones, they last a few days).
I snip tails as I stack rows on a quarter pallet.

Just like lopping small branches off of a tree.

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Pull a Kramer and bring them to a yard here in NY where you can enjoy .10/lb for light iron (steel here is reserved for rotors, pipes, cast iron).
In all seriousness, these cutters are $15 bucks and have a decent warranty and work well for PSU wires, like a hot knife through butter. Or in a pinch, use household scissors.