Can you make money buying new parts and selling PCs

[eldude]

I tried buying all new parts, building a PC, and then selling it, but I ended up losing money. The parts ended up costing $8160, then I overclocked the PC a little and ran 3D mark on it and the price it showed in the PC's status was $8263. But when I sold it on PCBay, I got around $7700 for it. I'm guessing PCBay is somewhat random, so did I get unlucky, or is it just not possible to turn a profit off PCs built from new parts? Also, I'm on normal mode.

[🦊Λℚ𝓤ΛƑΛᗯҜᔕ🦊]

Originally posted by eldude:

I tried buying all new parts, building a PC, and then selling it, but I ended up losing money. The parts ended up costing $8160, then I overclocked the PC a little and ran 3D mark on it and the price it showed in the PC's status was $8263. But when I sold it on PCBay, I got around $7700 for it. I'm guessing PCBay is somewhat random, so did I get unlucky, or is it just not possible to turn a profit off PCs built from new parts? Also, I'm on normal mode.

No you can not. The game is designed in such a way where we can not profit from buying all brand new parts, assembling it in to a computer and then selling the resulting assembled computer. You will need to collect and repair broken computers and broken parts from buying them on PC-Bay and then assembling them as whole computers (remember to overclock them and run 3dmark first!) and then you can sell them to make a profit.

[T-Bone Biggins]

Usually the large budgets in normal mode allow you to build a PC with whatever parts you want as long as it meets the minimum requirements that a customer wants. As long as you have them unlocked, of course.

[eldude]

Originally posted by Aquafawks:

Originally posted by eldude:

I tried buying all new parts, building a PC, and then selling it, but I ended up losing money. The parts ended up costing $8160, then I overclocked the PC a little and ran 3D mark on it and the price it showed in the PC's status was $8263. But when I sold it on PCBay, I got around $7700 for it. I'm guessing PCBay is somewhat random, so did I get unlucky, or is it just not possible to turn a profit off PCs built from new parts? Also, I'm on normal mode.

No you can not. The game is designed in such a way where we can not profit from buying all brand new parts, assembling it in to a computer and then selling the resulting assembled computer. You will need to collect and repair broken computers and broken parts from buying them on PC-Bay and then assembling them as whole computers (remember to overclock them and run 3dmark first!) and then you can sell them to make a profit.

Thanks. But man, they really wanted to make it a grind to get the million dollar achievement. I was hoping I could mass buy parts and make PCs.

[T-Bone Biggins]

Originally posted by eldude:

Originally posted by Aquafawks:

No you can not. The game is designed in such a way where we can not profit from buying all brand new parts, assembling it in to a computer and then selling the resulting assembled computer. You will need to collect and repair broken computers and broken parts from buying them on PC-Bay and then assembling them as whole computers (remember to overclock them and run 3dmark first!) and then you can sell them to make a profit.

Thanks. But man, they really wanted to make it a grind to get the million dollar achievement. I was hoping I could mass buy parts and make PCs.

Get into a habit of checking PC-Bay daily and buying up useful parts. Broken PC's are the best, large discount on all the parts inside when it's likely only one that needs to be replaced. Always buy used motherboards as well, I seem to always have lots of spare CPU's and other parts but never enough motherboards to actually assemble a computer from only used parts.

Running 3dMark gets the score of the PC, and I think that bumps the price a little. Then overclocking adds a multiplier, the higher you can get a PC to score the more you can sell it for. Don't worry about long-term, push it to the edge so it barely avoids crashing during a 3dMark test.

If heat is your limiting factor it's often a good investment to buy new fans for cooling since their low price is often made up in the extra value a slightly higher overclock earns. If power is your limiting factor while overclocking (from getting a crappy 300w used PSU in that broken PC) it is typically worth buying a new one with the lowest price for the wattage you need. Also don't scrap SLI/Crossfire capable GPU's, eventually you will come across another one that can be paired with it.

[RangerX3X]

Buy all of the broken PC's you see on PC Bay. Sometimes you get lucky and the only thing wrong with it will be a broken fan (just remove it, don't bother replacing it). Run a 3DMark score (if it is above 10,000 don't bother with overclocking as it will not increase the price anymore) and dump it back on PC Bay when the Market for complete PC's has flat lined and is just starting to show an up tick. It usually takes five days for that market trend to maximize before coming back down, which is the same about of time that bidding is open on PC Bay.

[eldude]

Thanks for the advice! But I think I might just skip the million achievement. I have around 55 hours in the game, and have about 60K, with all the upgrades and just the last stock buy left. Maybe I made around $150K-ish for the whole game. The 100K isn't too far away, having to basically do the 100K 9 more times is too much.

[db.mcdonald]

Getting the $1 million achievement is definitely hard work. I'm at level 34 with just over $400k and I've been running two benches strictly for selling PC builds since PcBay became available. The biggest problem is that most of the money you earn for doing customer jobs ends up buying used parts and broken PCs. The only real money comes from selling the used PCs., which is why I have two benches for used PCs and one bench for customer jobs.

One thing to consider that is very rarely mentioned, is that you can ignore paying rent, power, and uncle Tim forever. There's no game penalty for not paying these bills, other than the space they take up in your emails.

[spanki2]

The hardest and time consuming part of this game is getting to max lvl an unlocking all parts. From that point going to $1M is not that much of a hassle, 50-70 hours I'd say.
You just have to skip doing jobs completely and focus purely on PC Bay. That's where money is at.
The only jobs you should do at this stage are upgrade jobs, especially those with target 3Dmark Score, where you can grab a lot of parts for free. Still, I'd do them only if those parts to be grabbed are expensive/high performance, like that sweet PSU for $999. Once you put it into your assembled PC it will be worth $3k because of 3x multiplier. How many jobs you need to complete to earn $3k the "usual way"? Yeah, a lot.

[izak00]

i think it depends on the market share of a certain company, its its on high demand it will be sold for more money