A Good Flip?

[KingPizza]

I had a couple spare parts lying around from a recent upgrade and decided to build a PC around them to flip. I'll link the part list below. The prices are what I paid after tax (if applicable) and if there's $0 listed, it was a part I already had. The Power Supply is expensive because it's the cost of the upgraded PSU for my main build, which I'm hoping to make my money back on. If I can sell this thing for $700 I'll be happy.

 

This isn't something I do often so I'm genuinely curious to know how everyone thinks I did, and I'm interested in hearing about your own experiences flipping parts/PCs.

 

To be clear, I'm in no way interested in making this a regular thing. Perhaps 3 or more years ago I'd have thought about PC flipping as a hobby or job, but it seems to be harder now more than ever to find good deals on used parts. The collector/scalper/flipper market is experiencing a gold rush like saturation I'm not sure society will ever recover from.

 

https://pcpartpicker.com/user/Kingpizza/saved/#view=z3q7vK

[RONOTHAN##]

24 minutes ago, KingPizza said:

I'm interested in hearing about your own experiences flipping parts/PCs.

If you want to make money flipping parts, you're generally better off sticking to just flipping the parts. Most people expect some sort of bulk discount when buying a prebuilt system, so you in turn make less money. You can usually sell everything quicker if you just sell everything, but given you only seem to have a handful of parts you're better off selling just those parts. 

 

This is coming from a guy who spent a number of years just buying and selling PC components on Craigslist, generally buying complete systems then parting them out for a profit. The only part where I kinda struggled to flip stuff was the cases, and even then I still managed to make a fair bit of money selling stuff. I did go the other way around a few times when I just wanted stuff gone, and in turn I usually made less money than I figured I would have if I just sold everything individually. 

[jaslion]

Sell parts you'll make more but it will rake longer. You even have a noctua cooler so that will sell for a decent chunk.

 

700$ is not something people will give. The only specs they'll look at is the cpu, gpu, ram and storage. Anything else 99% doesnt care about so you could have a stock cooler or a nhd15 they will basically demand the sams price. Same with a psu. Its even more likely theyll be scared of by how much it consumes because itsn850w (not how it works but lors think this).

 

Then worst sin of all theres no rgb in a gaming pc so no way its good. This is legit how most think about this

[venomtail]

I dunno. I hear flipping has thin margins and that $80 Corsair PSU setting you back $130 will likely have eaten away most of the profit for a PC as a whole. I think flipping PC's over parts seems more prestigious but I think that'd come with far more issues in terms of points of failure that have people calling you back cause "PC's not working" but it's just RAM out of place, instead of selling the RAM and your buyer's at the mercy of his own ideocracy to not screw up.

[KingPizza]

19 minutes ago, venomtail said:

I dunno. I hear flipping has thin margins and that $80 Corsair PSU setting you back $130 will likely have eaten away most of the profit for a PC as a whole. I think flipping PC's over parts seems more prestigious but I think that'd come with far more issues in terms of points of failure that have people calling you back cause "PC's not working" but it's just RAM out of place, instead of selling the RAM and your buyer's at the mercy of his own ideocracy to not screw up.

You're probably right about my chances of breaking even on my PSU upgrade. Removing that from the cost makes the build look way more compelling. What I'll probably do is list it with the PSU cost factored in, and if it doesn't seem to be selling, I'll remove it.

[Lurking]

If you have lower-brand cooler, PSU, MB etc., it is better in a complete system since complete buyers don't appreciate a super fancy PSU or whatever. 

a complete PC buyer doesn't know that a PSU could cost more than $50 new, or what even is a PSU. They just want a working PC that says "gaming PC". 

 

If you have really special and fancy MB, PSU etc., parting out may be better since a knowledgeable buyer will be willing to pay extra. 

[KingPizza]

3 hours ago, Lurking said:

If you have lower-brand cooler, PSU, MB etc., it is better in a complete system since complete buyers don't appreciate a super fancy PSU or whatever. 

a complete PC buyer doesn't know that a PSU could cost more than $50 new, or what even is a PSU. They just want a working PC that says "gaming PC". 

 

If you have really special and fancy MB, PSU etc., parting out may be better since a knowledgeable buyer will be willing to pay extra. 

The consensus in this thread is exactly what you're saying, I'll probably end up having to part everything out. I'm still going to attempt to sell the whole thing, but I'm also preparing to part it.

[linustechtipscom]

This is how much each component is worth in the states on eBay. In other words the used market value.  

Cpu - $180

cooler - $60

Motherboard - $90-95

Ram - $35-40

SSD - $50

GPU - $250

Case - $90

PSU - $60

 

Total - $815 

Minus 13-15% ebay fee. 

 

Cash in hand value of individual components. $692 - $709

Then you have to think about discount of selling at as a whole computer. 

 

You might be able to sell it for $700 if someone really wants it. 

 

[KingPizza]

1 hour ago, linustechtipscom said:

This is how much each component is worth in the states on eBay. In other words the used market value.  

Cpu - $180

cooler - $60

Motherboard - $90-95

Ram - $35-40

SSD - $50

GPU - $250

Case - $90

PSU - $60

 

Total - $815 

Minus 13-15% ebay fee. 

 

Cash in hand value of individual components. $692 - $709

Then you have to think about discount of selling at as a whole computer. 

 

You might be able to sell it for $700 if someone really wants it. 

 

Some optimism is nice to see every once in a while, lol. I'll be waiting on a few of these parts to arrive sometime next week so I have time to think about everything.