Question Best sales strategy for Gaming PC? Upgrade and sell whole PC? Or component by component?

[rhst1]

Best sales strategy advice requested. Should I upgrade and sell as a complete Gaming PC or sell components individually?

PC is an Avatar desktop with:
1) AMD FX-8350 Eight-Core, Vishera 32NM Tech CPU
2) 32GB DDR 3 666Mhz RAM
3) Gigabyte GA-78LMT-USB3 Socket M2 Motherboard
4) 500GB SSD
5) 650 watt power supply
6) dual fan CPU cooler
7) NVIDIA GeForce 710 GPU

I'm guessing the components listed above are worth about $100 to $200 sold separately. Do you agree? If not what is your estimate?

Alternate sales strategy:
1) upgrade GPU
2) upgrade case with fans, lights
3) upgrade to water cooled
Then sell as a complete gamer pc with reasonable features/specs

What do you think of this strategy? How much to invest? Which components? What would reasonable sales price be after upgrades?

Any questions to clarify the situation?

Thank you very much in advance for your response!

 

[Tech Junky]

Gift it to an org and take a tax write off.

 

[BoomerD]

Not a whole lot of resale value to any of that. I tore down my "ancient" pc last year. ASUS 1155 motherboard, Intel i5-760 CPU, 8 GB (4x2) Corsair DDR3 RAM, EVGA GTX660 GPU
It's all stuffed into a box in my garage until I decide what to do with it.

 

[manly]

The worst possible strategy is to "upgrade" anything. Otherwise it's an exercise in how much you value your own time. Selling it as-is would be advisable, except shipping the case is painful.

I wouldn't even think about "profit maximization" to be honest. What's your most convenient option with least effort involved? If you can get someone to do a local pickup, and not get scammed, then get what you can for some beer money. Parting it out just to find some unicorn buyers on eBay just shifts any surplus value to eBay & PayPal.

 

[Zeze]

That system is so old. You can't upgrade anything.

My main rig was ancient like yours with the intel equivalent (i3-2120) in 2011-2012. That's same age as your FX-8350. Then I upgraded it for way too long on that same mobo over 10 years until I finally started all new in just 5 months ago.

I dropped in the fastest allowed CPU on it which is i7-3770. The i7 was bought used 5 years after the release. Paired with GTX1060 6gb, it actually played AAA titles just fine at 1080p (Overwatch 1, Red Dead Redemption, Elden Ring, etc).

It was time to let go. I don't even think you can sell your old unit since Win10 requires a hardware TPM unit.

My old rig is just sitting somewhere in the closet.

 

[Torn Mind]

Any knowledgeable buyer is going to lowball you for a whole system based on that CPU. It's a 100 or best offer type of rig, and don't be surprised if the offers are in the 30-50 dollar range.

Obviously, my personal examples are rare Craigslist buys, but I have an i3-10100 Dell with initial cost of $85(upgraded RAM and SSD put me into the 3 hundreds) and an Acer hexacore with a 6 core i5 8000 series and spinner for 75 or 85.

FX-8350 is a 50 dollar Ebay chip, so after fees and shipping, you might get 30-40 at most.
The Ram might sell for 30-40, and it's likely a slow mover.
The mobo could sell for 50 on Ebay before fees and shipping. Or you could try to sell chip and mobo as a combo
PSU, it depends. It will not net much though given what I've seen in Ebay transactions.

The cooler could sell if you have the mounting hardware and it performs well. Chips these days demand aftermarket cooling more than the decade of the 2010s.