PCBAY - An in-depth guide

An in-depth guide that will show you the step-by-step guide on how to use PCBAY, how to profit from it, when to use it and common troubleshooting methods.

Understanding PCBAY

What is PC bay?

PC bay is an online marketplace to buy used Computer parts or sell parts that you have.

Why use PC bay?

PC bay sells some very good computer parts for VERY cheap. Discounts usually range from 60% - 90% and you can get parts ranging from case fans to 1080tis.

How do I use PC bay?

Plug your USB stick into the computer of choice and double click PC bay from the "add programs" list. You then must restart the computer and it'll be there, on your desktop.

Buying on PCBAY - Basics

How do I buy these parts on PC bay?

Very simple, just launch the PC bay application and click buy on any part that you'd like to purchase!

What will I even use these parts for?

Some jobs don't actually specify that they only want new parts. This means that you can use used parts for the whole build but just be sure to stock up so that when the opportunity arises, you can nab that part and use it in a build.

Other uses of used parts

Recently, the option to sell PCs on PC bay was added, just walk over to your desk and pick up the small leaflet that says PC bay on it. Then walk over to your PC which will presumably have used parts in it and click to upload it to PC bay for selling.

Buying on PCBAY - Advanced

Buying PCs on PCBAY

Recently I shifted my gameplay direction to ONLY PC bay. I've stopped doing any missions which has affected my level and how much money I make. It's worth noting right now that buying broken PCs on PC bay and selling them isn't currently a stable source of income. The only reason I do it is because doing missions simply got boring.

So, what's first?

Buy a PC from PC bay. Whether it is broken or not, just buy one. The delivery will take quite a time but now you'll have a PC to work on.

Should I buy broken or normal PCs?

I'd 100% suggest getting broken PCs first. They are much more fun to work on and are cheaper whilst providing profit once fixed.

Selling on PCBAY - Basics

What can I sell on PC bay?

At the moment, PC bay allows you to sell broken parts, working parts and PCs. To sell parts, go to your inventory (accessible by clicking on the shelf in the main workspace) and next to the Sell button, you should see a button that says "Auction on PC bay". Clicking this will put the item up for auction on PC bay (who knew!). To sell PCs, you have to go to the left of your desk and find some post-its which say "On PC bay". Click to select them and walk over to the PC you want to sell. Once you've got it selected, click once to apply the post-it note onto that PC and put it up for sale.

How can I see what I'm selling?

If you head onto the PC bay window, you'll see a tab called "SELL". Clicking on it will show you all of the items and PCs that you are selling. It will also show you information such as the number of bidders, current bid and days left.

Noooo, I didn't mean to sell that!

Do not worry, you can cancel a PC bay listing at any time before the last day of bidding. To do so, go to the PC bay window and select the SELL tab. Beneath the listings you'll either see "Collect Auction" or "Remove from PC BAY". If the option is "Collect Auction" then you can't cancel the listing and just have to take the money.

Selling on PCBAY - Advanced

How to ensure profit on PC bay

The easiest way is to check the resale value of a PC, note that down somewhere and watch the bids every day. If the bid on the last day is around $50 less than the resale value, you might want to cancel the listing. This may be patched in the future since it can guarantee profit every time.

How to rule the stock market

PCBS has a piece of software called "Market" which provides weekly-ish updates on part prices. You will also get daily emails from PC bay with hints about prices. If you notice a certain part is currently cheap, buy them and wait for the prices to go back up and sell then.

Overview

Positives of using PC bay as a source of income

• Much more fun that missions
  
• Bad sales won't affect reputation or level
  
• You can make a lot of money from nothing
  
• VERY cheap parts

Negatives of using PC bay as a source of income

• Your profit margin will be tiny
  
• Stock market can be unpredictable
  
• You can lose a lot of money very quickly
  
• Most jobs don't like used parts
  
• You don't gain any levels or rep

How the devs can improve on PC bay

• FOR THE LOVE OF GOD LET US LEVEL UP FROM SALES!
  
• Make it more like the shop where you can buy every part in the game but the amount of stock of each price is different. E.G if you see a 1080ti for sale, you better buy it quick since it is very rare to see those sold second hand
  
• If you don't want to use that last suggestion, at least add more parts to buy. When I use this as my main source of income it's very annoying when all 3-4 parts available to buy are case fans or HDDs.
  
• Make profit more guaranteed. In real life, you can buy a broken PC for $200 and sell it for $400 easily. In this game it is very hard to see that level of increase.
  
• Show the amount you bought the PC for. I'd love to know how much I bought it for and compare how much I sold it for to see if I made profit or not.
  
• More jobs that allow for used parts

Thank you for reading, please leave feedback in the comments and if I've made any mistakes point them out and I'll be sure to update my guide.

[ibnmuhdd]

Mine not showing pc bay option. Anyone know why?

[spotify95]

Something I've started doing is using PC Bay and buying in every single component every day. It's cheaper than buying new components and may come in handy. Also, a lot of the "broken" PCs tend to just have a very minor fault, such as a dead case fan - removing the case fan in question makes it working again!

One other thing. I know a lot of customers tend to specify they want new components. If I've got a lot of used components lying around (which I do at the moment), I'll just use used components anyway. So long as you meet all of the other hidden objectives (e.g. timescales, custom cabling, required manufacturer parts, etc) you'll still get a 4 star Bongle review, which is enough to keep the minimum requirement of 4 stars (enough for most missions). You can then get 5 stars on the ones that don't mind used components, as a bit of a buffer to keep you above 4 stars in case you accidentally miss something else.

[spheniscine]

By the way, if anyone reading is willing to use mods, "Seba Fixes" is almost mandatory if you want PCBay to be a viable part of your playstyle, instead of merely either a rare thing you occasionally get the opportunity to do, or you have to skip a lot of jobs and thus suffer from low income/progress (as well as save scum to avoid droughts).

In particular, you can:
- increase the number of items on offer per day (but only takes effect the day after you first unlock PCBay), giving more chance to get parts you might want (or the coveted broken PC "booster pack")
- speed up delivery and auction times to be overnight
- gain XP for finalizing auctions
- you can even enable an option to improve the bid prices, though I find with these other improvements I'm quite happy with the vanilla bid prices

I find the setting of 7 items per day and 0.1 xp rate is suitable, you may want to set them higher if you'd rather spend more time building auction PCs than completing jobs

[PUC_Snakeman]

PC Bay is a tool purchased in the Shop. So long as you are not using a cheated/hacked save file, the game should give you a pile of PC Bay sticky notes to place onto PCs that you build. If it isn't working, contact The Irregular Corp support directly.

[ProjectRipTide]

sorry was on wrong account as said using IdiscipleI could be because playing on epic instead of steam or do you need the dlc to use it

[IDiscipledI]

I been trying to sell on pcbay it does not show the option for pcbay could it be cause i'm playing the game on epic instead of steam

[PUC_Snakeman]

Regarding selling full PCs on PC Bay:

Resale Value goes up +$100 if the PC boots, and goes up again if you do a 3D Mark, and goes up even more if you do Overclock + 3D Mark run.

For such an in-depth guide, I really feel this info should have been included in this guide. Could you include it? Thanks.

[Thurston.]

Boot and 3DMark all your working builds. This boosts the value of your sales :)

[ROCKnROLLA]

I have done it once and I believe it was on the day of the Auction finishing. I say this because I tried it another time, the day after it finished, and could not remove the label.

[Gose]

This isn't possible to do. Maybe they updated it?
https://i.imgur.com/OzKtCvq.jpg