The Complexity of PC System Pricing: A Guide to Finding Value

When it comes to buying a new computer system, one of the most frustrating aspects can be determining what you're willing to pay for it. Especially when dealing with third-party vendors who claim to have systems that are similar in quality and performance to a brand-new system, but at a fraction of the cost. In this article, we'll delve into the world of PC system pricing, exploring what factors influence the price, how to determine if you're getting a good deal, and some tips on how to make informed purchasing decisions.

The Challenge of Compounding Costs

--------------------------------

When shopping for a computer system, there are many costs to consider beyond the initial purchase price. For example, let's say you find a system that looks great, but the vendor is asking for around $2,300. That sounds like a lot of money, especially when compared to buying a new system outright. But what if the vendor claims that this used system has some special features or perks that make it worth the extra cost? The problem with this situation is that even if you do buy the system, you'll likely be able to build a similar system yourself for less money.

The Power of Compounding

------------------------

The issue with buying a used system like this is that even if the vendor is asking exactly what they could sell it for new, there's still a psychological aspect to consider. If you're not familiar with building PCs, it can be intimidating to try and replicate the performance of someone else's system. On top of that, learning how to build a PC can be fun and rewarding, making you wonder why you would need to buy one from someone else in the first place.

The Value of a System: More Than Just Price

--------------------------------------------

When it comes to determining the value of a computer system, there are many factors at play. One of the most important is the price that others are willing to pay for similar systems. For example, let's say you're considering buying an NVIDIA GeForce 1070 TI. If you see that other people are selling their used cards for around $300 on eBay, it suggests that this is a fair price for a system like yours.

The Importance of Going Rates

------------------------------

While the going rate can be a useful guide, it's not always a perfect indicator of value. This is especially true when dealing with older systems or components that are no longer as popular as they once were. In these cases, you may find that you could get away with paying less for a system, simply because there's less demand for the parts.

The Value of Customization

---------------------------

Another aspect of determining the value of a computer system is the level of customization involved. If you're considering buying a pre-built system that has been modified to include certain features or upgrades, it's worth thinking about whether those upgrades are truly worth the extra cost. In some cases, you may be able to achieve similar performance with less expensive components.

Conclusion

----------

Finding the right price for a computer system can be a challenging and subjective task. By understanding the factors that influence pricing, including going rates, depreciation, and the value of customization, you can make more informed purchasing decisions. Whether you're buying from a third-party vendor or building your own system, there are many ways to find a great deal without sacrificing performance or quality.

Tips for Making Informed Purchases

------------------------------------

* Research the market: Use online tools like eBay to determine what similar systems are selling for.

* Consider depreciation: Older components may not hold their value as well as newer ones.

* Look for upgrades: Some vendors may offer additional features or upgrades that can increase the system's value.

* Think about customization: If you're buying a pre-built system, consider whether the modifications are worth the extra cost.

* Don't be afraid to negotiate: If you're buying from a vendor who is willing to listen, don't be afraid to negotiate the price.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enevery now and then someone asks why we have Craigslist videos like this one on our channel a channel with the word science in its name it's a good question most straight-up answer I can give you and perhaps the most blunt is that you guys enjoy the content for the most part some of you hate it and that's fine don't watch this video this white titles exist that's why thumbnails exist they give you an idea of what the video will be like and if what we post in a thumbnail and title doesn't please you or get you excited then by all means don't click the video you can still watch the video if you want and support us and that is appreciated even if you already know what the topic is about and maybe you already know the answer to the question perhaps that we asked in the video it doesn't matter thing the fact is you can choose to watch what you want so do that that's it I think videos like these when done in moderation can still be valuable to the viewer on an informative level because there are several questions many of you tend to have when it comes to the value of used components and when you find a PC on a site like Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace listed for sale its first off inherently used so then how much less should you pay for use proponents and then on top of that it's already assembled so you should technically pay a little more for a assembled PC right because that's work that's time that someone's a laborer that you're paying towards and how much labor should you expect to pay for a given build there are a lot of questions that go through a buyers mind especially a used buyer and there are a lot of inherent risks as well and we try to dive into all of those in these kinds of videos with that said we have a Facebook marketplace ad that I think is just a bit outlandish and you're gonna see why here shortly we've also put together a pc parts picker link and actually built something pretty similar to this system using in 2nd gen or actually 3rd gen rising almost a 2nd gen riser bits is n2 so if you're interested in something like that you can check it out in the video description we put something similar together when we were benchmarking that 3900 X needless to say though this person's PC is yeah it's worth nowhere near 2,300 dollars so we're gonna swing it over to the PC and I'm gonna give you the rundown if you're rockin the Windows 10 operating system and haven't activated your copy click the link below and purchase an OEM license from s CD key then click here here here and then here paste your activation key and you'll have a fully activated OS in seconds and be sure to use my offer code as studio for an 18 percent discount on your order the title says high-end gaming PC thread Ripper CPU 32 gigs of ram dual GPUs 1070 TI and rx 470 I mean there are huge scenarios where having two different cards from totally different factors to different architectures families everything can work together in tandem if you want to talk about something like explicit multi adapter which we covered in a really old video you can check it out up here if you really curious then yeah pairing two different cards like this would be I mean but it'd be viable I don't know you'd want to say feasible but it's possible to get him to work together issue is explicit multi adapter is not like a thing it's not something that a lot of games take advantage of in fact the only game I tested it in was ashes of singularity and like nobody plays that game right so yeah on to the price $2,300 and off the top of my head I can already tell you this is gonna be a bad deal this is a cyber PowerPC I'm not sure I guess it was a yeah I guess it was a prebuilt 32 gigs of tritons a ddr4 at 3000 megahertz 512 gig w black m dot 2 SSD he's got a 5 terabyte what is this 5 terabyte I doesn't even have a company name so alright that's weird gigabytes what is this horas X 3 9 9 gaming 7 ok and he has a 8 Eng 1000 watt 80 plus gold power supply I'm not sure what a TNG is so weird msi geforce gtx 1070 TI and then he's got the sapphire right on RX 478 gig just kind of confusing and he's got Windows 10 Pro on the PC so this is this is just a cluster so before we actually price this thing out PC par picker I want to take a look at some of the pictures he has here cable management is questionable at best it looks like he used the rubber grommets which is nice some people don't on these sites but for some reason he's got the cables from the fans front lake from the motors themselves removed from the chassis and just like straight up dangling there in front of the AIO block I don't I don't know what his thought process was here he could have routed these maybe the cables were just too short I'm not sure it just looks tacky in my opinion especially when those cables when those wires I guess I should say are not blacked out they're like green and yellow and yeah it's just it just it's just weird and then you've got these two graphics cards and like you just your head just starts spinning because if you know anything about PC's you know that these two cards won't work together for really any gamer like in any game for that matter most most games like will not take advantage of that second card at all and yeah he doesn't say what he has it in here for in fact somebody who knows next and nothing about pcs and just wants to buy a really beefy system could potentially buy this and think that both of the cards would work fine in gaming and and it's done it's not the case so there's no disclosure of that there's no clarification I feel like that's slightly misleading yeah well just let's just leave it at that now on to the PC far bigger list and I'm going to be upfront with you here I couldn't find exactly what he had especially in stock so some of the prices aren't really there for Amazon and Newegg also specifically to the guy who's suing me right now if you have a problem with me using outlet PC as one of my sources and PC part picker you can pack Sam because I'm gonna keep using it if I was building this PC I would totally use that with PC so anyway 19:50 X from outlet PC a little under $500 courser h ATI this is in the same AIO but it's a similar one for a hundred bucks you could get cheaper AI O's if you wanted I just wanted one in a similar size and from a reputable company and then we have asrock X 399 gaming six for a little over $200 from Newegg not the same motherboard but pretty close next up we have a g.skill tried it in Z RGB kit that he had only ours is slightly faster you could definitely get cheaper 32 gig kits online but I wanted to go with the same models and even slightly faster than what he has for a little over 200 bucks again you could go much cheaper and justice eyes that Seagate five terabyte 5900 rpm Drive he listed a 7200 rpm drive but he didn't list the specific brand so I'm choosing the cheapest five ter but I can find at 150 bucks in stock on Amazon Western Digital black envy me 500 gig drive pretty fast here for 110 bucks msi gtx 1070 TI this is where I had to modify something the price here is modified to account for the two cards that he has in his system that again don't work together the Sapphire rx was at 475 70 doesn't matter 8 gig card I found those going for around a hundred bucks on eBay maybe a little cheaper but I said a hundred bucks to give him the benefit of the doubt and then 10 and 70 TI is going rate for those was around $300 so that's how I came to the 400 dollar figure it accounts for both of those discrete GPUs and then the NZXT th 500 case was the one that I chose because it wouldn't make sense first off paying full retail price for a use case in my opinion they're already pretty cheap to begin with and I think the H 500 is a better case for most people it wasn't even populating all of his drive bays so there's really no need in my opinion for a full tower and then I have the Rose well 1050 watt 80 plus gold certified power supply fully modular for 121 dollars on outlet PC and this was pretty much the same wattage isis unit and the same efficiency rating I just chose Rose wou because it was cheap we have a total price of eighteen hundred and seventy dollars so just on just under 1902 1903 aliy wanted but that's still less than what he's asking by about four five hundred dollars yeah somewhere around there and that's I'm not seeing it not seeing it I mean this is kind of a compounding issue for me because even if he was asking exactly what we could build it for let's say he was asking eighteen hundred and seventy dollars the problem I have with it then is while it's used why would I buy your system used if I could buy it myself new you know like why would I do that I mean unless you didn't want to build it but even then I would say it takes I mean it's pretty easy to learn how to build PC it's not rocket science and on top of that you're gonna learn something you'll probably have fun doing it you might find a new hobby granted it can be an expensive hobby I'll give you that but it's fun at the same time and yeah so I mean $2,300 there's no that we're not even in the same ballpark for a you system you're also asking more than retail for that system doesn't make sense no doesn't compute my brains overloading oh yeah I can't I can't do this anymore now if you have to ask what I would pay for the system it'd be somewhere in the 1415 maybe $1,500 maybe and that's only because I know I could sell that graphics he's one of those graphics cards right away for a decent chunk of change and that would leave me with just over $1,000 system depending on which card I sold and I think at a thousand bucks for a 16 core original Zen architecture thread Ripper chip like that's not bad you know if you're stuck with rx 570 or whatever this card is then that's fine too you know it's still a decent system for 1080p gaming even some like 1440p stuff and yeah I mean it's a it's a thread Ripper platform and it's the oldest thread Ripper chip you know but you could still do a lot with it I'll give them that and I think asking over a thousand dollars at that point is justified but how much more especially if we're taking out like the 1070 TI I just don't I don't know as is I don't see any more than $1,500 so to recap that I wouldn't spend any more than about 1500 bucks on that system you might be willing to pay a little more you might be willing to pay a little less and no maybe no more than like for $200 or $1300 value is inherently subjective but there are certain aspects about the word value that are objective for instance there is the going rate to the market rate for certain items that would be what you could get in exchange for that item in cash on the used market in fact eBay will even sometimes give you an estimate as to what the going rate for a particular SKU or product is the 1070 TI I showed you earlier I priced at 300 bucks because I saw this right here and that suggests that a majority of people are listing and selling their cards for around this price it's kind of an average of sorts with that let me know in the comments below if you think my $1500 asking price is fair or not do you think that's a little too much maybe a little too less maybe I'm maybe I'm ripping the guy off I mean you never know some people would I'm sure things something obscure like that in my opinion I think I seen a little under what you could build a similar system for in PC port picker is reasonable because again used parts aren't worth what they are new spent like driving a car off a lot although the depreciation in that respect is a bit more exaggerated I would say with PC parts you could get roughly what you paid for your system as long as the parts in question are not a generation or two old by that point you usually have replacement parts that can be purchased for around the same price that you paid for your system two years ago and that would mean that your system is now suddenly worth less so don't always rely on the going rates of parts like an eBay and whatever and you could possibly get more if you live in a town where there's not a Bund ins of PC tech maybe you could seize and take advantage of that market a bit better and look that's totally legal I'm not going to Cathy for that but if you start asking you know $4,000 over what I think you should for a product then you might just fall in line in a Craig's this video may I read playlist you don't want to be on the IRA playlist okay thank you guys for watching thumbs up thumbs down you know take whatever subscribe button come on member for feeling especially fancy and I will catch you in the next one this is science video thanks for watching again and thanks for learning with usevery now and then someone asks why we have Craigslist videos like this one on our channel a channel with the word science in its name it's a good question most straight-up answer I can give you and perhaps the most blunt is that you guys enjoy the content for the most part some of you hate it and that's fine don't watch this video this white titles exist that's why thumbnails exist they give you an idea of what the video will be like and if what we post in a thumbnail and title doesn't please you or get you excited then by all means don't click the video you can still watch the video if you want and support us and that is appreciated even if you already know what the topic is about and maybe you already know the answer to the question perhaps that we asked in the video it doesn't matter thing the fact is you can choose to watch what you want so do that that's it I think videos like these when done in moderation can still be valuable to the viewer on an informative level because there are several questions many of you tend to have when it comes to the value of used components and when you find a PC on a site like Craigslist or Facebook Marketplace listed for sale its first off inherently used so then how much less should you pay for use proponents and then on top of that it's already assembled so you should technically pay a little more for a assembled PC right because that's work that's time that someone's a laborer that you're paying towards and how much labor should you expect to pay for a given build there are a lot of questions that go through a buyers mind especially a used buyer and there are a lot of inherent risks as well and we try to dive into all of those in these kinds of videos with that said we have a Facebook marketplace ad that I think is just a bit outlandish and you're gonna see why here shortly we've also put together a pc parts picker link and actually built something pretty similar to this system using in 2nd gen or actually 3rd gen rising almost a 2nd gen riser bits is n2 so if you're interested in something like that you can check it out in the video description we put something similar together when we were benchmarking that 3900 X needless to say though this person's PC is yeah it's worth nowhere near 2,300 dollars so we're gonna swing it over to the PC and I'm gonna give you the rundown if you're rockin the Windows 10 operating system and haven't activated your copy click the link below and purchase an OEM license from s CD key then click here here here and then here paste your activation key and you'll have a fully activated OS in seconds and be sure to use my offer code as studio for an 18 percent discount on your order the title says high-end gaming PC thread Ripper CPU 32 gigs of ram dual GPUs 1070 TI and rx 470 I mean there are huge scenarios where having two different cards from totally different factors to different architectures families everything can work together in tandem if you want to talk about something like explicit multi adapter which we covered in a really old video you can check it out up here if you really curious then yeah pairing two different cards like this would be I mean but it'd be viable I don't know you'd want to say feasible but it's possible to get him to work together issue is explicit multi adapter is not like a thing it's not something that a lot of games take advantage of in fact the only game I tested it in was ashes of singularity and like nobody plays that game right so yeah on to the price $2,300 and off the top of my head I can already tell you this is gonna be a bad deal this is a cyber PowerPC I'm not sure I guess it was a yeah I guess it was a prebuilt 32 gigs of tritons a ddr4 at 3000 megahertz 512 gig w black m dot 2 SSD he's got a 5 terabyte what is this 5 terabyte I doesn't even have a company name so alright that's weird gigabytes what is this horas X 3 9 9 gaming 7 ok and he has a 8 Eng 1000 watt 80 plus gold power supply I'm not sure what a TNG is so weird msi geforce gtx 1070 TI and then he's got the sapphire right on RX 478 gig just kind of confusing and he's got Windows 10 Pro on the PC so this is this is just a cluster so before we actually price this thing out PC par picker I want to take a look at some of the pictures he has here cable management is questionable at best it looks like he used the rubber grommets which is nice some people don't on these sites but for some reason he's got the cables from the fans front lake from the motors themselves removed from the chassis and just like straight up dangling there in front of the AIO block I don't I don't know what his thought process was here he could have routed these maybe the cables were just too short I'm not sure it just looks tacky in my opinion especially when those cables when those wires I guess I should say are not blacked out they're like green and yellow and yeah it's just it just it's just weird and then you've got these two graphics cards and like you just your head just starts spinning because if you know anything about PC's you know that these two cards won't work together for really any gamer like in any game for that matter most most games like will not take advantage of that second card at all and yeah he doesn't say what he has it in here for in fact somebody who knows next and nothing about pcs and just wants to buy a really beefy system could potentially buy this and think that both of the cards would work fine in gaming and and it's done it's not the case so there's no disclosure of that there's no clarification I feel like that's slightly misleading yeah well just let's just leave it at that now on to the PC far bigger list and I'm going to be upfront with you here I couldn't find exactly what he had especially in stock so some of the prices aren't really there for Amazon and Newegg also specifically to the guy who's suing me right now if you have a problem with me using outlet PC as one of my sources and PC part picker you can pack Sam because I'm gonna keep using it if I was building this PC I would totally use that with PC so anyway 19:50 X from outlet PC a little under $500 courser h ATI this is in the same AIO but it's a similar one for a hundred bucks you could get cheaper AI O's if you wanted I just wanted one in a similar size and from a reputable company and then we have asrock X 399 gaming six for a little over $200 from Newegg not the same motherboard but pretty close next up we have a g.skill tried it in Z RGB kit that he had only ours is slightly faster you could definitely get cheaper 32 gig kits online but I wanted to go with the same models and even slightly faster than what he has for a little over 200 bucks again you could go much cheaper and justice eyes that Seagate five terabyte 5900 rpm Drive he listed a 7200 rpm drive but he didn't list the specific brand so I'm choosing the cheapest five ter but I can find at 150 bucks in stock on Amazon Western Digital black envy me 500 gig drive pretty fast here for 110 bucks msi gtx 1070 TI this is where I had to modify something the price here is modified to account for the two cards that he has in his system that again don't work together the Sapphire rx was at 475 70 doesn't matter 8 gig card I found those going for around a hundred bucks on eBay maybe a little cheaper but I said a hundred bucks to give him the benefit of the doubt and then 10 and 70 TI is going rate for those was around $300 so that's how I came to the 400 dollar figure it accounts for both of those discrete GPUs and then the NZXT th 500 case was the one that I chose because it wouldn't make sense first off paying full retail price for a use case in my opinion they're already pretty cheap to begin with and I think the H 500 is a better case for most people it wasn't even populating all of his drive bays so there's really no need in my opinion for a full tower and then I have the Rose well 1050 watt 80 plus gold certified power supply fully modular for 121 dollars on outlet PC and this was pretty much the same wattage isis unit and the same efficiency rating I just chose Rose wou because it was cheap we have a total price of eighteen hundred and seventy dollars so just on just under 1902 1903 aliy wanted but that's still less than what he's asking by about four five hundred dollars yeah somewhere around there and that's I'm not seeing it not seeing it I mean this is kind of a compounding issue for me because even if he was asking exactly what we could build it for let's say he was asking eighteen hundred and seventy dollars the problem I have with it then is while it's used why would I buy your system used if I could buy it myself new you know like why would I do that I mean unless you didn't want to build it but even then I would say it takes I mean it's pretty easy to learn how to build PC it's not rocket science and on top of that you're gonna learn something you'll probably have fun doing it you might find a new hobby granted it can be an expensive hobby I'll give you that but it's fun at the same time and yeah so I mean $2,300 there's no that we're not even in the same ballpark for a you system you're also asking more than retail for that system doesn't make sense no doesn't compute my brains overloading oh yeah I can't I can't do this anymore now if you have to ask what I would pay for the system it'd be somewhere in the 1415 maybe $1,500 maybe and that's only because I know I could sell that graphics he's one of those graphics cards right away for a decent chunk of change and that would leave me with just over $1,000 system depending on which card I sold and I think at a thousand bucks for a 16 core original Zen architecture thread Ripper chip like that's not bad you know if you're stuck with rx 570 or whatever this card is then that's fine too you know it's still a decent system for 1080p gaming even some like 1440p stuff and yeah I mean it's a it's a thread Ripper platform and it's the oldest thread Ripper chip you know but you could still do a lot with it I'll give them that and I think asking over a thousand dollars at that point is justified but how much more especially if we're taking out like the 1070 TI I just don't I don't know as is I don't see any more than $1,500 so to recap that I wouldn't spend any more than about 1500 bucks on that system you might be willing to pay a little more you might be willing to pay a little less and no maybe no more than like for $200 or $1300 value is inherently subjective but there are certain aspects about the word value that are objective for instance there is the going rate to the market rate for certain items that would be what you could get in exchange for that item in cash on the used market in fact eBay will even sometimes give you an estimate as to what the going rate for a particular SKU or product is the 1070 TI I showed you earlier I priced at 300 bucks because I saw this right here and that suggests that a majority of people are listing and selling their cards for around this price it's kind of an average of sorts with that let me know in the comments below if you think my $1500 asking price is fair or not do you think that's a little too much maybe a little too less maybe I'm maybe I'm ripping the guy off I mean you never know some people would I'm sure things something obscure like that in my opinion I think I seen a little under what you could build a similar system for in PC port picker is reasonable because again used parts aren't worth what they are new spent like driving a car off a lot although the depreciation in that respect is a bit more exaggerated I would say with PC parts you could get roughly what you paid for your system as long as the parts in question are not a generation or two old by that point you usually have replacement parts that can be purchased for around the same price that you paid for your system two years ago and that would mean that your system is now suddenly worth less so don't always rely on the going rates of parts like an eBay and whatever and you could possibly get more if you live in a town where there's not a Bund ins of PC tech maybe you could seize and take advantage of that market a bit better and look that's totally legal I'm not going to Cathy for that but if you start asking you know $4,000 over what I think you should for a product then you might just fall in line in a Craig's this video may I read playlist you don't want to be on the IRA playlist okay thank you guys for watching thumbs up thumbs down you know take whatever subscribe button come on member for feeling especially fancy and I will catch you in the next one this is science video thanks for watching again and thanks for learning with us\n"