One of the more interesting rumors emerging in the wake of yesterday’s massive Dell Inc./EMC Corp. merger is the revelation that Dell apparently tried to offload its PC business in the weeks running up to the deal.

According to Re/Code, Dell’s main financial backer and co-owner Silver Lake Partners approached a number of tech firms in the past week, including rival Hewlett-Packard Co., and China’s Lenovo Group Ltd. and Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd. to offer them the chance to buy Dell’s struggling PC division.

Unfortunately for Dell, Silver Lake’s approaches were apparently rebuffed – though of course, that didn’t stop Dell from going ahead and swallowing EMC in the tech world’s biggest acquisition ever. Sources told Re/Code that HP wasn’t interested because it’s about to break into two, Lenovo didn’t believe the deal would pass U.S. authorities’ scrutiny, and Huawei has no interest in getting into the PC business. Re/Code added it isn’t immediately clear if Silver Lake made these inquiries alone, or if Dell was consulted on the move, nor is it clear if Dell might continue to explore a sale.

Such a move wouldn’t come as a surprise, especially now that Dell has one of the largest debts in history to service (the interest payments alone will amount to $2 billion a year). Although Dell’s PC unit accounts for about half of its annual revenues ($27 billion a year) according to Goldman Sachs, the PC industry itself is in decline with sales declining with each and every year that passes. Dell’s PC business is also a high-volume, low margin one, which means it could well become an unwanted distraction for Dell/EMC as it tries to reshape itself into an enterprise technology provider for the cloud era.

Re/Code says that if Dell does sell its PC unit, the sales price would likely be just a fraction of its annual revenue, which is of course difficult to gauge these days since Dell went private in 2013. Re/Code ‘guestimates’ a sales price in the region of $8 billion, based on an analysts’ estimate of HP’s PC division’s sales price back in 2011, when that company also weighed up selling its PC unit.