G80FTW
Active Member
Im sure alot of people here have thought about, or even are, building and selling computers. I built my first computer in 2001 with my step-dad and have been doing it ever since. I have always thought about building and selling them to friends and what not but ran into the problem of not seeing a profit.
The problem is, big name PC makers like HP and Dell can both get wholesale prices on all their hardware and probably have deals with hardware makers to make their prices even lower. Someone like me cannot compete with that.
For instance, when I built my current PC 2 years ago it costs me $1,300 for the whole thing. Thats excluding a monitor. When I looked it up though, Alienware was charging over $3,000 for essentially the same equipment with a monitor and junk. So I guess, if I built gaming computers I figure I could probably flip them for $500 profit each provided I could find a big enough customer base of people who dont know how to build them themselves.
So difficulty establishing a solid customer base was the main reason I have never gone about it. But I feel like I wont be able to do what I love for a living without going to college. Which I refuse to waste my money on. Granted I dont know everything by any means, but to pay upwards of $20k+ for a piece of paper telling me Im qualified to work with computers is just a scam if you ask me. When anything I would ever need to know is a second away at the hands of Google.
So as of right now, Im going to just try and sell the computers I already have. Which is going to prove the most difficult since they are all ancient. Here is what I have that works as of right now:
Pentium 4 Prescott 3GHz socket 478
ASUS P4P800
2GB DDR400
6800 Ultra 128MB AGP
Pentium Celeron D 2.13GHz
ASRock P4i945GC
2GB DDR2667
onboard video
I also have my old AMD build which I dont know if it still works or not but assuming it does:
AMD Athlon X2 Brisbane (dont remember the speed)
ASUS M3A
2GB DDR2667
8800GTS 320MB
Now Im not expecting to get much of anything out of these builds except maybe the AMD one provided it works.
All these computers need is a case, power supply, and HDDs. So that would run me about $200 per computer just to make them operational.
I think I might be able to get $200 out of the AMD, the others I highly doubt.
If anyone has any experience in this business I would love some advice on how to get started into it if its even possible. Im not looking to quit my day job over it or anything, just would like to make a little extra money doing what I love is all. Right now I have just under $1,000 a month of disposable income. I dont want to dump ALL that into this, as Im also trying to save up for a house, but I think that should be enough to build simple basic computers to sell as opposed to $1,000+ gaming machines.
I would also like some opinions on what these machines would be worth each paired with a 1TB HDD and Windows 7 Basic.
The problem is, big name PC makers like HP and Dell can both get wholesale prices on all their hardware and probably have deals with hardware makers to make their prices even lower. Someone like me cannot compete with that.
For instance, when I built my current PC 2 years ago it costs me $1,300 for the whole thing. Thats excluding a monitor. When I looked it up though, Alienware was charging over $3,000 for essentially the same equipment with a monitor and junk. So I guess, if I built gaming computers I figure I could probably flip them for $500 profit each provided I could find a big enough customer base of people who dont know how to build them themselves.
So difficulty establishing a solid customer base was the main reason I have never gone about it. But I feel like I wont be able to do what I love for a living without going to college. Which I refuse to waste my money on. Granted I dont know everything by any means, but to pay upwards of $20k+ for a piece of paper telling me Im qualified to work with computers is just a scam if you ask me. When anything I would ever need to know is a second away at the hands of Google.
So as of right now, Im going to just try and sell the computers I already have. Which is going to prove the most difficult since they are all ancient. Here is what I have that works as of right now:
Pentium 4 Prescott 3GHz socket 478
ASUS P4P800
2GB DDR400
6800 Ultra 128MB AGP
Pentium Celeron D 2.13GHz
ASRock P4i945GC
2GB DDR2667
onboard video
I also have my old AMD build which I dont know if it still works or not but assuming it does:
AMD Athlon X2 Brisbane (dont remember the speed)
ASUS M3A
2GB DDR2667
8800GTS 320MB
Now Im not expecting to get much of anything out of these builds except maybe the AMD one provided it works.
All these computers need is a case, power supply, and HDDs. So that would run me about $200 per computer just to make them operational.
I think I might be able to get $200 out of the AMD, the others I highly doubt.
If anyone has any experience in this business I would love some advice on how to get started into it if its even possible. Im not looking to quit my day job over it or anything, just would like to make a little extra money doing what I love is all. Right now I have just under $1,000 a month of disposable income. I dont want to dump ALL that into this, as Im also trying to save up for a house, but I think that should be enough to build simple basic computers to sell as opposed to $1,000+ gaming machines.
I would also like some opinions on what these machines would be worth each paired with a 1TB HDD and Windows 7 Basic.