Sell your old gaming system as a whole or sell it in parts?

Mustey · Sunday at 19:38

Say you have a 5 year old system and it's doing alright but you are itching to build something on the newfangled stuff.
Wondering if I could leverage the experience of people who have been doing this a lot? I've only ever sold one used GPU on ebay when I upgraded...

Here's my current thinking:

Pro's selling as a whole system:
- Less ads and sales work
- Can overhaul and optimize the system so that the buyer is as happy as possible (I take pride in doing that)
- Maybe people will pay more because it's a working system out of the box?
- Everything gone. You won't be left with some dead-end Intel mobo nobody wants

Pro's selling parts:
- Can get money sooner, assuming at least some of the parts are interesting to someone
- Can keep things like Case, PSU, SSD for next build
- Much easier and less risky to pack and ship parts rather than shipping a built system

Wondering what you have found that works best

Blackjack Davy · Sunday at 19:41

In my experience, parts. People want a particular part card or cpu or ram rather than an entire system. Cases in particular are heavy and people don't want to pay the shipping (and unless its a Lian Li or something similarly desirable they're simply not wanted anyhow). Its like breaking a car its always parts that sell not the entire unit.

Subliminal Aura · Sunday at 19:43

You're over thinking it
5 year olds kit is going to hard to shift unless you split
A Complete PC sale may be viable around Xmas time when people are desperate

throwaway4372 · Sunday at 19:44

I give the old pc to my mum.

Mustey · Sunday at 19:45

Blackjack Davy said:
In my experience, parts. People want a particular part card or cpu or ram rather than an entire system. Cases in particular are heavy and people don't want to pay the shipping (and unless its a Lian Li or something similarly desirable they're simply not wanted anyhow). Its like breaking a car its always parts that sell not the entire unit.

damn, I was hoping to get rid of my case (Be Quiet! something). It's a great case but I want a change

tamzzy · Sunday at 20:04

no harm in listing the pc as a whole and also in parts at the same time
but yeah, the likelihood is that you'd probably sell it in parts bar the case, unless you have the box for the case and are willing to post it (or get lucky with a local collection)

Gray2233 · Sunday at 20:08

List as a whole and see if you get any bites locally, you don't want to try mailing an entire PC given shipping costs and how much that can go wrong.

Also list a motherboard/cpu/ram bundle, they're more likely to sell together than any other part of a PC.

Otherwise split.

adrichardson81 · Sunday at 21:01

You'll get more money selling it as parts - a whole system isn't that attractive. Even the case is worth advertising for local collection (worst case it'll save you a trip to the bin).

I'd do it separately as you'll find some components will attract a higher premium than you'd expect.