How can I build more rigs?

[Mkfish]

So I woke up this morning and the Sun was shining gloriously, I peeled myself out of bed and thumbed open the new day. It then dawned on me that I am not building nearly enough rigs as I'd like. As some of you will surely agree, building rigs is hella fun. Problem being that I blew all my money on my own rig.. derp I'm on a pretty low income and can't just build rigs for the sake of it. I had considered selling my rig, to fund a newer and much improved rig, but this is a lengthy process and would leave me without a rig at all in the transition period. I like the idea of building old rigs out of cheap parts but with that said I will just end up with a bunch of old rigs taking up space and nothing to really do with them. Ideally I'd like to build them with a view to selling them on, and build up a portfolio of awesome build logs, but this again is going to be costly for me at some stage.

I'm probably going to build myself a file and web server in the very near future, so that's one project. But I'd love to hear what suggestions you guys have?

[KamiKatze]

Apply for a job that deals with building PCs for customers and works on the RMA for PCs. Just like Linus did at NCIX.

 

Edit: i also was thinking about doing something like that maybe over the summer holidays because building PCs is great fun and getting paid for it is even better!

[Mkfish]

That's a great idea but unfortunately I live in a small sea-side town, there is virtually no tech industry here, least of all tech related jobs. I guess a solution would be to move to a more industrious area like a city, but again that's a big step for now, and would need to convince my girlfriend to move as well.

I've thought about starting my own business, which I think would be the most likely scenario for now. But I'd need to save some capital to invest. At least there would be no competition for me here   
My aim isn't to be building just high spec gaming rigs, or even make buckets of cash. I'm really just looking for any excuse to build great PCs for people.
 

[Lays]

There's a few people on the forums that have their own business for building PC's, they barely scrape by on house calls to fix things like a geek-squad type of person would do, there simply isn't enough business in the building scene.  Business may be booming at the beginning, but PC's last a very long time and sooner or later you're gonna run out of people to build for.

[TheDigitalRealm]

That's a great idea but unfortunately I live in a small sea-side town, there is virtually no tech industry here, least of all tech related jobs. I guess a solution would be to move to a more industrious area like a city, but again that's a big step for now, and would need to convince my girlfriend to move as well.

I've thought about starting my own business, which I think would be the most likely scenario for now. But I'd need to save some capital to invest. At least there would be no competition for me here   

My aim isn't to be building just high spec gaming rigs, or even make buckets of cash. I'm really just looking for any excuse to build great PCs for people.

I wouldn't recommend starting your own business building PC's for people at this stage. The market is just too saturated with PC builders that you wouldn't make a viable income. You could never compete on price, as bigger companies benefit from economies of scale, and you wouldn't be able to compete by providing boutique systems as the demand is so low these days. I'm really sorry to burst your bubble, I'm really only trying to help you. Nowadays most of the tech jobs are in the commercial space, as networking engineers, security or coding professions or graphic design.

[Mkfish]

Lol good thing I have chosen the networking pathway on my Computing and IT degree then.

Seriously though I'm not bothered about going pro, or commercial in any way. Just looking for ways that I can do some builds.

I'm thinking about appealing to my local community to donate old parts and tech that they don't use so that I can fashion them into folding machines. I think this is something that people are going to want to get behind. And that way I get to build stuff, and it's all free and for a good cause.

[Madmanchris1]

Go to gumtree find old laptops (nothing older than xp). i bought 2 for like £15 each (slightly broken ones) then took them apart fixed one using the others parts sold it and made a small profit. The other is in the process of becoming an apache2 webserver. i would say do desktops but the ones on gumtree near me are so old and people break their laptops more (like when your drunk and spill vodka on it ) and look at gumtree for quick cheap options.

 

Edit: also your folding option sounds great, but you would need to account for power- performance as that would probably me a down side to using older parts. ( my opinion)  

[Blecter]

Got any friends who want new rigs? That's how I'm rolling. Built my new rig in Jan, fixed one bud's just after that, will be building a new rig for another buddy in a couple months, then will be selling mine to yet another buddy to fund a more expensive rig when the next gen of tech comes around.

 

Not a whole lot of building, but better than nothing!

 

I'm also looking into a part time job at a computer store.

[Mouse-Potato]

You might be able to talk to the city council about building computers for families or schools in need, they might even pay you for it and/or help you find the parts.

 

Some people might donate their old computers for the cause and sometimes for tax rebates and such. I know that's how the salvation army does it. Anyways you'd have a lot of building to do, and that sounds like what you want. 

 

It would look good on your resume too.

[TheTechGenius]

You know what they say, "You need to spend money to make money".  First you need some kind of decent Income. Or you could build Systems for people you know, if they want you to anyway. If they want you to build them a system, get them to pay you for the parts at first, then you buy the parts, build it, and tell them you need the rest of the money because their Computer is finished.

[flibberdipper]

Get a job at a place like Best Buy. Be the only intelligent person there.

[TheTechGenius]

Get a job at a place like Best Buy. Be the only intelligent person there.

 

Lmao! That is very funny, but yet very true! LOL

[SirReallySam]

You could build and then sell them online perhaps

 

 

 

Go to gumtree find old laptops (nothing older than xp). i bought 2 for like £15 each (slightly broken ones) then took them apart fixed one using the others parts sold it and made a small profit. The other is in the process of becoming an apache2 webserver. i would say do desktops but the ones on gumtree near me are so old and people break their laptops more (like when your drunk and spill vodka on it ) and look at gumtree for quick cheap options.

 

Edit: also your folding option sounds great, but you would need to account for power- performance as that would probably me a down side to using older parts. ( my opinion)  

LOVE this idea btw might do it myself!

[Guest Generallee]

Rob a bank

 

Then watercool your toilet water with a custom loop.

[Jumper118]

build a dual cpu socket 370 rig with window 98 

[Madmanchris1]

You could build and then sell them online perhaps

 

 

 

LOVE this idea btw might do it myself!

 

Yeah it really fun and you learn very quickly if it feels like there's a screw there is haha. 

The only problem is waiting for the laptops to show up, broken screen ones are quite useless, unless you want to buy a new screen or use one from another pc. 

You can find loads of really old tech on there too!

[Yummychickenblue]

Get a job at a place like Best Buy. Be the only intelligent person there.

That gets you fired though.