China seemed to take chips from obsolete motherboards and turn them into boards to allow reuse of old Xeons, at least for awhile there. I can't imagine those chipsets were still being made so I assume that is what was happening. A lot of those old processors were still quite useful but since the motherboard supply had dried up they were cheap e-waste. I can't imagine that kind of recycled product being made here, not least of which because Intel would probably find a way to sue a domestic company out of existence if they even tried.
I am running one right now, ancient 10 core Xeon on a new motherboard, runs as a beast, aircooled (iirc these boards were first designed by russian hackers and appeared on a message board years ago). Anyway, almost everything seems to get recycled/repurposed in China (sd cards, memory chips, styrofoam), heck even if there is no demand but just overstock they find a way to create demand, what do you do with an overstock of ballbearings? Fidget spinners?
