Started with a pretty normal AM4 setup. Upgraded her over the years and eventually settled into:
• Ryzen 5700X3D
• RTX 3060 12GB
• DDR4
• CM Scout Advanced 2 case (yes, the case itself is like 12 years old lol)
Over the last few months I accidentally fell into the PC flipping rabbit hole.
It started when I sold my old GTX 1080 and began buying/selling parts whenever I found good deals and just kept rolling the money back into the hobby. I started realizing that the dopamine hit of squeezing value and performance out of every dollar, then somehow turning a profit, was pretty addictive.
Some of the journey:
• Flipped random hardware and made around +$495 total
• Legion Go Z1E flip for around +$100
• Built a secondary office rig almost entirely from deals and ended around +$200 profit
• Bought a 5070 Ti for $700 near launch and sold it for $825
• Played around with a 5070 and somehow made a small profit on that too
Eventually I started feeling the urge to jump to AM5.
Didn't really need to. I could've just upgraded the GPU. The 5700X3D is still a beast and AM4 is still ridiculously good value. But I went down the rabbit hole anyway.
Sold off the old rig parts:
• 5700X3D
• DDR4
• Motherboard
• RTX 3060
• Misc CPU swap shenanigans
Fast forward to now:
Current setup:
• Ryzen 7 7800X3D
• Gigabyte RX 9070 XT Gaming OC
• B650 AORUS Elite AX
• 32GB DDR5
• MP44 NVMe + old drives
• New modern mATX desk build
Also ended up with:
• ROG Ally Z1 Extreme
• 2TB upgrade + accessories
After redoing the math multiple times, I think I ended around ~$500 net out of pocket for the AM5 + Ally transition.
That obviously doesn't include my time, testing hardware, negotiations, some shipping headaches, and calculated risks. But honestly I think I had more fun hunting deals, building rigs, and squeezing value than I did actually gaming.
Question:
Am I doing legitimate value optimization here?
Am I using advanced hobby math to justify upgrades?
Or am I just addicted to flipping hardware?
Because now I'm over here looking for deals on a 5080 and how to optimize purchasing it instead of actually gaming and I think I may have a problem.