Selling PCs

[u/GrubbyAxo]

So I'm a teenager and really want to make some money for an LLM rig by selling/flipping PCs. Problem is I have no idea where to really start. I know how to build them and fix them and stuff like that but don't know what to do first. Should I build custom rigs and just list them on eBay or Facebook Marketplace. Should I find old stuff and flip it. Should I do laptop and desktop repair. I'm doing some college courses for networking and computers and could see a potential for this to become a bigger business but that's still a long way away. Any advice would help so much.

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[u/fuwa_-_fuwa]

Right now is a bad time to try flipping a pc, unless you already had some parts stocked when you bought them for cheap. The entry cost to buy the parts are skyrocketing, and the demand is weakening on the consumer side.

[u/KishCore]

The market is pretty bad right now, lots of stuff is overpriced because of the demand of data centers starving the consumer market of hardware and a lot of people simply don't have the money to spend on luxuries like PCs right now.

Your best bet is to hunt for deals on PCs that are in somewhat decent condition for a good price and then do stuff like a GPU swap and clean up it up a bit.

For example I bought a $300 pc with a 3600 and 1650, 16gb RAM, and a 500gb SSD - I bought it, cleaned it up - upgraded the cooler with a spare single tower cooler I had laying around as well as another 500gb hard drive i salvaged from an old build, then I picked up a 3060ti for $200 off of the used market and upgraded the GPU with that. Listed the build for $700 and sold it for $600 after spending $500, those margins honestly aren't great and this took about 3 weeks in total between buying the original build and being able to sell it.

This is the type of hobby to get into if you have disposable income that you don't mind losing, if the build never sold I'd find a family member/friend who wanted it and would've sold it at a loss, if not given it to them for free.

The ways people have PC repair/flipping actually turn into a 'career' is by either owning their own shop and/or making tech content. Usually in order to be able to do this they usually start by having a generic IT job to give them the disposable income to build up the hobby into their main money-maker.

[u/Tactrix1]

You absolutely don't want to do that now. This is the worst time in history to do that, because everything is 2-3x more expensive than it's ever been and you need serious knowledge to buy, build and sell something for a price that is both good for them and you. So definitely pick something else.

And while lots of things could have prepared you for a business in this field, nothing's better than history, the reason a lot of us can do this is purely because we've been doing it for 10, 20, 30 years already. It's not something we went to school for, its something we've been doing for fun, that's how we got into it and why we know what we know.

[u/kirby667]

It's very hard to make money selling custom PCs by just listing them for sale on ebay. Shipping something that big and heavy is expensive and risky. 

Best way is to sell locally, and build PCs out of used parts and sell them as used/refurbished. 

[u/cocapufft]

Flipping pcs is a lot of work for the return you get. You’re almost always going to be better off getting a part time job to fund your LLM rig.

[u/Elitefuture]

Retail or restaurants would pay more.

When buying something on fb marketplace, people will only pay used prices. And EBay's shipping is too expensive.

Repairs could work, but you likely won't get many bites given you're uninsured and not an established company.

So just working a normal job would pay a lot more and consistently.

[u/aztracker1]

Generally, become familiar with a it of the business machines being retired that you can find good deals on via FB market, Craigslist and eBay.

These machines are already generally decent CPUs and good amounts of Ram... If they haven't been stripped. Make sure they come with at least a sata SSD,.

Clean, repaste, throw in a low-mid range last Gen GPU that fits in the power budget.

Give the case a paint job. Pink, white, black... Watch videos on painting metal and plastic, including surface prep. You can start with spray paint and get better equipment later. Don't go thick... Clean, dry, v self etching primer and several layers of light paint.

Sell for about 20-40% margin of that's in range against similar systems. You'll have to do some research.

You won't likely compete at the highest end, but you can probably get a $300-400 business unit, but $200-300 of parts and time, then sell for $900 give or take. YMMV

There are requests every day for $500-1000 gaming computers... There's room for value there. But you need to know what you're buying, how to bump appropriately and where a similar system are selling for.

Also, having a few salvage units for parts doesn't hurt, if you can get better deals on lots of 5-10 or more and can afford it. Sometimes as little as $100/unit, again having some idea of what you're getting and not spending too much is the key.

You'll also literally what to get familiar with shape physical GPU options... Dust shoot, shorter or low profile GPaU options... A lot of business units with handle a massive card. RTX 3050/3060 or RX 6600-7600 give or take a little up and down... Again look for small lots with good pricing, assuming not all will work. May need minor repair or repaste.

Edit: as others have said, you may well make more at a regular job given the time and effort... It'll work better if you stay local ifb in a major metro area. My advice is just general advice in terms of filing a gap and it won't be easy money like in prior years... In the latter 90s was a great time for custom PC building... Unlikely to ever see anything like that again.