The Art of PC Flipping: Navigating the Current Market Turbulence

As we take a closer look at the current market situation, it's clear that the landscape for PC flipping has undergone significant changes. The question on everyone's mind is whether it's still worth investing time and effort into building and selling gaming PCs. RM Gaming UK recently reached out to us with a question about a video we made about PC flipping a few years ago, asking if we would consider doing an update for the current situation. We're happy to address this query and provide some insight into our experiences.

Recently, I've been building PCs for the last few years, and recently was the first time I had to drop a PC's price so low to sell it. I actually made a 50-pound loss on that particular sale, but fortunately, my next purchase yielded a profit of £200. However, it seems much harder now, and PCs are taking longer to sell. This change in market dynamics has made me realize that the environment is indeed tougher than it was a few years ago.

We've all been warned about the potential for economic downturns and inflation, but nothing can truly prepare you for the reality of the situation. The central banks' actions have slowed down the "money printers," and this slowdown has led to a significant shift in the market. As I mentioned earlier, I've been reporting on this trend for quite some time, and it's clear that we're now facing a period of economic uncertainty.

As someone who's relatively new to the Japanese market, I don't have extensive boots-on-the-ground experience navigating these types of economic downturns. I only arrived in Japan about six months ago, and since then, I've been mostly focused on sourcing parts for my PCs rather than actively selling them. However, I do plan to return to Australia soon, where I was previously building a business around PC flipping. This trip will give me the opportunity to test the market and gauge the demand for gaming PCs.

In terms of used parts in Japan, the market seems quite slow. Even when I visit popular hard-off stores, I still see the same products sitting on the shelves, not moving. It's clear that the market is struggling, and it will take some effort to turn things around. One possible strategy could be to increase competition by pricing our PCs lower or offering more competitive deals. However, this approach requires careful consideration, as it can be challenging to balance profit margins with customer demand.

The situation in Japan is mirrored in other markets, including the PC gaming community. As NVIDIA prepares to launch their new GPUs, they'll need to compete with consumers who are increasingly wary of price hikes and inflated profit margins. In order to survive, NVIDIA will likely need to offer better value than they have in the past, either by reducing prices or increasing the quality of their products.

In conclusion, navigating the current PC flipping market requires a deep understanding of the economic landscape and a willingness to adapt to changing circumstances. While it's clear that times are tough, we can still find ways to weather the storm better than others. By tuning our logic radars to where things are heading and being prepared for potential challenges, we can continue to build successful businesses around PC flipping.

As I mentioned earlier, I love talking about finance and economics, and I'm excited to share my insights with you in future videos. In fact, I plan to create dedicated videos on the current market situation, as well as explore other finance-related topics that are relevant to our community. So, be sure to stay tuned for more content like this, and don't forget to hit that like button, subscribe, and ring that bell to get notified whenever a new video drops.

"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: eneverybody is complaining about the prices of RTX 4090s even my dad's complaining about it and he doesn't even know what a graphics card is and today I have a solution for each and every one of you on how you can obtain an RTX 4090s so we've got here at the channel two RTX 49ers that was sent in for review and the first is the colorful Eye game Vulcan OC and if you thought the founders was big at 2.2 kilograms and massive triple slot cooler this thing's even bigger it takes up three and a half slots it's longer and it weighs two and a half kilos so the graphics cards have gone absolutely massive but there is some good news there and that is that they are going to impress I think people in terms of temperatures and noise though in today's video we can't talk about any performance figures again and just tell you that I'm testing on my test bench with an 850 watt power supply and everything is okay it is certainly not going to be a case of you press the power button and your whole house is burning down well it might be if you're using a really really terrible power supply like we've done in the past but even then that just smoked itself up so let's go over everything RTX 4090 in today's video and yes the 4 in the RTX 4090 stands for four pcie power cables never pay full price for Windows 10 or 11 again with today's video sponsor SED Keys you can get activated as little as 15 using that coupon bftyc links in description below welcome back to Tech yes City and the first thing you will want to hear is Brian how can I save up for an RTX 4090 well I'm going to tell you guys a little story about how I saved up for my car how I saved up for the gear that I used to record my YouTube videos back when I was uh saving as hard as I could and it was a little friend called baked beans that's right baked beans you were able to get these from the supermarket for 65 cents in Australia so if we adjust that for the U.S exchange rate we're getting 415 grams of baked beans in Australia for around 40 US cents that's a bargain so what this means is is that effectively instead of going out and spending ten dollars on that burrito or 15 on that burger lunch set you can get a can of baked beans for 40 cents and then just pocket the difference do that for 180 days my friends you get yourself an RTX 4090 so there it is the solution you have all been waiting for to how to get an RTX 4090 just thank me in the comments section the one thing about baked beans is that they are very resistant to inflation and that's because they already have a very cheap price to begin with so say for instance suddenly the cost of dollar goes out 25 percent it's gone up 25 but in absolute terms people can still very much afford that even with the bogus inflation numbers and even the bogus wage price increases that they've been touting in the news now let's take a look at the other side of the equation and that is when graphics card prices go up 25 that's a few hundred dollars that's a very difficult thing to stomach especially if you're an avid PC Gamer though going back to the RTX 4090 and we're going to pay particular attention to the 4090 in this video because I have expressed disappointment in the RTX 4080 especially the 12 gig model which I thought was more of a 40 70 when we look at the spec sheet however the 4090 it's coming in at 15.99 over the 1499 and that's about seven percent more expensive but that's still even better than the inflation numbers so technically and I know people are going to get angry three but technically if we look at the numbers you're getting a much better deal with a 4090 at 15.99 then a 30 90 at 14.99 however that being said this time around we don't have what looks like a 30 80 700 value card coming into the mix to really shake it up for those people who want high end but also want the value now it's time now to put on my serious pants and talk to you guys without any of the jokes or any of the baked beamed inflation things even though they are like legitimate ways to get yourself a nice things is just eat baked beans it's what I've done and I attest to it but going forward there is some serious concerns about the Outlook of the economy and it's absolutely horrendous it's never been this bad in my whole life I've never seen Outlook being as bad as it is right now Energy prices are going up it looks like there's a shortage on energy and wherever I look people like to blame the person closest to them whoever's selling that product is the person to blame so in this case it'd be nvidia's fault if you want to buy a CPU it's amd's fault that their new motherboard costs are so expensive the CPU isn't so expensive Intel will probably cop a lot of that too with raptor Lake but these are businesses trying to survive they're trying to not just survive as well of course they're trying to thrive and they're trying to thrive in a different set of conditions than they're used to and this is where I've critiqued Nvidia AMD and Intel where they're just simply going to have to take a haircut they're gonna have to make less money than they used to not just in terms of total revenue but in terms of how much profit they get per item and so wherever I go if it's different videos I'm watching even about unrelated stuff to Tech or if it's my own comment section I'm seeing a lot of people just complaining in general so as true inflation grows that is when you go down the supermarket and something goes up 20 in a couple of weeks and then the government's telling you hey inflation only went up five percent you're scratching your head saying what is going on here this is not reflecting how much prices are going up and then you've also got unemployment true unemployment On The Rise I believe it's actually on the the rise when you have those two things combined together the misery index goes up in other words in an aggregate total in society people become more miserable as inflation and unemployment go up though before we get back to the 4090s I want people to understand I'm going to actually start calling this out in my videos the more I can get a chance to and that is it's not AMD Nvidia or Intel's fault for these price rises in these conditions in any other conditions I would say yes but when the money supply is getting inflated so fast and governments around the world are recklessly spending money and they're not just that they're introducing new regulations and cutting off Supply that's the reasons inflation is going up and people are becoming more miserable it's governments and central banks people so let's get to these 4090s and taking a look at what we can take a look at while the NDA is still in effect so we've got the founders here this is a huge Behemoth which comes in at a bigger fan then previous generation found as God's one on the front one on the back and this does an extremely good job of cooling the GPU and keeping temperatures low as well as noise low and then at the back of the card you've got HDMI 2.1 out as well as your display port outs there I would have liked to have seen two HDMI 2.1 outs from the get-go and also we've got the 12 pin with a sensor adapter which then requires four pcie connectors from a traditional power supply in order to get this thing running now in the testing here I can say that nothing's melting down and nothing is really out of the ordinary there and in fact like I've said earlier in the video I'm using an 850 watt power supply to do my testing with and it's doing an absolutely fine job so if you've got a really solid 850 watt power supply then you should be okay but in terms of the founders Edition card it is kicking ass in terms of its design in terms of how now it cools and everything else at the back of the car there's also a little bracket you can take out and screw into a graphics support slot just to keep the card from suffering from GPU sag though speaking of GPU sag this is where we've got the colorful Eye game Vulcan OC with its three 100 Mil fans and an even bigger Dimension spec than the RTX 4090 in fact this gravis card comes in with its own GPU support bracket in the Box you also get a screwdriver and two face plates one which can display information and another one which will just give you some fancy RGB and the logo however you can put the information plate on a separate USB readout separate from the graphics card so I thought that was pretty cool in terms of the back of the card you've got again the one HDMI 2.1 and the three display port out I would have liked to have seen the two HDMI 2.1s then you've got a turbo button there which is essentially a dual BIOS button so you've got normal and then OC mode so it's good to see dual bios on this RTX 4090 for those who want to play around with different profile configurations anyhow guys I have to get back to testing out these gpus and giving you guys full day one coverage as well as all the other tests that you like to see if there's anything peculiar you want to see do let us know in the comments section below if it gets enough upvotes I can see if I can entertain that request for you also I do apologize for not uploading in nearly a week I've had a lot going on behind the scenes here I've started testing the 4090s but I had to get this Visa problem sorted where I only had a few days where I would have had to have gone back to Australia but I'm like look I have to get some things sorted here first like for instance actually getting an ID and which I don't have here and this is going to actually tie into the question of the day but I have been slow because there's been a lot of stuff that I've had to do behind behind the scenes I will make a vlog very soon BTS Vlog updating you guys with what's been going on but that aside we do have the question of the day here which comes from RM Gaming UK and they ask just watching this again a few years later so they're talking about a video we made about PC flipping a few years later and they're saying now the PC selling environment is a lot tougher would you consider doing an update for the current situation that is rapidly dropping GPU prices lower demand because of the economic environment I've been building PCS for the last few years and recently was the first time I had to drop a PC's price so low to sell it I actually made a 50 pound loss next PC I got great deal and made a 200 pound profit but it seems much harder and PCs taking longer to sell so to answer this question directly I recently had a good friend actually last week good friend of mine called me up and he just told me Brian I cannot move anything I've got things up for sale and I'm getting just not even any interest at at all and this is where markets go from Good Times to bad times and currently we're in a really bad time I've been reporting on this in the last year especially last year I was warning people this was going to happen I feel like this scenario was going to happen just based on looking at the central banks and what they were doing and how also they were then the trajectory of the money printers was slowing down and all it took was the money printers to slow down to get bad economic conditions and that seemed like that prediction was right on the money no pun intended but in terms of the situation helping you out directly I don't have at the moment a whole lot of boots on the ground experience going through this Market because I came to Japan about six months ago and I haven't been flipping much at all uh in terms of I got some stuff on eBay in Australia that my brother's helping me post when that cell but in terms of me selling gaming PCs I don't have any ID here so I can't set up the unnecessary Avenues to sell my PCS and test the market in Japan but in terms of Australia I was actually going to go back in about a month and a half before Christmas and literally just get double luggage so you get like 80 kilos load that up with all the PCS that have been Parts hunting in the last few months and then just sell all those gaming PCs locally but when I do that I'll be able to update you guys and tell you what's going on in Australia but in terms of used parts in Japan the market seems very slow like I've as I go to some of those hard offs you still see the same thing sitting there I mean they're a bit of a rip-off but even if I go to some of these PC stores that have really good prices some of the stuff is just sitting on the shelves there it's not moving at all so it is a very slow market and in these markets you can only do one thing and that's turn up the competitive dial and get even more competitive and that's what's going happen not just in PC flipping but everything else if we relate that back to the RTX 4090 Nvidia is going to have to compete people are talking about okay nvidia's just going to rip us off well if they try to they're going to be met with a consumer that's just not going to buy their product so they're either going to have to provide really good value or take a haircut or both and so it's looking like it's the latter and that is it's going to be Bose that you have to take a haircut and provide better gains better value than they're ever provided in the past in order to survive so hopefully that answers that question and I will catch you guys in another video very soon but in terms of that question I will make dedicated videos on the situation when I can don't worry about that I do love the used Market it's part of me and I love everything about it and also I will update you guys in some more Finance in the videos as well because I love talking about this stuff it's actually really good going forward even though I've lost a bit of sleep over it and thinking about where things are going I think if we can sort of tune our logic Radars to where things are heading and be prepared for that even if it's bad we can at least weather the storm better than others anyhow guys I hope you enjoyed today's video if you did then be sure to hit that like button for us and also if you've stayed this far and you're enjoying that content then be sure to hit that sub button ring that Bell to get the vids as soon as they drop and I'll catch you in the next one peace out for now bye foreigneverybody is complaining about the prices of RTX 4090s even my dad's complaining about it and he doesn't even know what a graphics card is and today I have a solution for each and every one of you on how you can obtain an RTX 4090s so we've got here at the channel two RTX 49ers that was sent in for review and the first is the colorful Eye game Vulcan OC and if you thought the founders was big at 2.2 kilograms and massive triple slot cooler this thing's even bigger it takes up three and a half slots it's longer and it weighs two and a half kilos so the graphics cards have gone absolutely massive but there is some good news there and that is that they are going to impress I think people in terms of temperatures and noise though in today's video we can't talk about any performance figures again and just tell you that I'm testing on my test bench with an 850 watt power supply and everything is okay it is certainly not going to be a case of you press the power button and your whole house is burning down well it might be if you're using a really really terrible power supply like we've done in the past but even then that just smoked itself up so let's go over everything RTX 4090 in today's video and yes the 4 in the RTX 4090 stands for four pcie power cables never pay full price for Windows 10 or 11 again with today's video sponsor SED Keys you can get activated as little as 15 using that coupon bftyc links in description below welcome back to Tech yes City and the first thing you will want to hear is Brian how can I save up for an RTX 4090 well I'm going to tell you guys a little story about how I saved up for my car how I saved up for the gear that I used to record my YouTube videos back when I was uh saving as hard as I could and it was a little friend called baked beans that's right baked beans you were able to get these from the supermarket for 65 cents in Australia so if we adjust that for the U.S exchange rate we're getting 415 grams of baked beans in Australia for around 40 US cents that's a bargain so what this means is is that effectively instead of going out and spending ten dollars on that burrito or 15 on that burger lunch set you can get a can of baked beans for 40 cents and then just pocket the difference do that for 180 days my friends you get yourself an RTX 4090 so there it is the solution you have all been waiting for to how to get an RTX 4090 just thank me in the comments section the one thing about baked beans is that they are very resistant to inflation and that's because they already have a very cheap price to begin with so say for instance suddenly the cost of dollar goes out 25 percent it's gone up 25 but in absolute terms people can still very much afford that even with the bogus inflation numbers and even the bogus wage price increases that they've been touting in the news now let's take a look at the other side of the equation and that is when graphics card prices go up 25 that's a few hundred dollars that's a very difficult thing to stomach especially if you're an avid PC Gamer though going back to the RTX 4090 and we're going to pay particular attention to the 4090 in this video because I have expressed disappointment in the RTX 4080 especially the 12 gig model which I thought was more of a 40 70 when we look at the spec sheet however the 4090 it's coming in at 15.99 over the 1499 and that's about seven percent more expensive but that's still even better than the inflation numbers so technically and I know people are going to get angry three but technically if we look at the numbers you're getting a much better deal with a 4090 at 15.99 then a 30 90 at 14.99 however that being said this time around we don't have what looks like a 30 80 700 value card coming into the mix to really shake it up for those people who want high end but also want the value now it's time now to put on my serious pants and talk to you guys without any of the jokes or any of the baked beamed inflation things even though they are like legitimate ways to get yourself a nice things is just eat baked beans it's what I've done and I attest to it but going forward there is some serious concerns about the Outlook of the economy and it's absolutely horrendous it's never been this bad in my whole life I've never seen Outlook being as bad as it is right now Energy prices are going up it looks like there's a shortage on energy and wherever I look people like to blame the person closest to them whoever's selling that product is the person to blame so in this case it'd be nvidia's fault if you want to buy a CPU it's amd's fault that their new motherboard costs are so expensive the CPU isn't so expensive Intel will probably cop a lot of that too with raptor Lake but these are businesses trying to survive they're trying to not just survive as well of course they're trying to thrive and they're trying to thrive in a different set of conditions than they're used to and this is where I've critiqued Nvidia AMD and Intel where they're just simply going to have to take a haircut they're gonna have to make less money than they used to not just in terms of total revenue but in terms of how much profit they get per item and so wherever I go if it's different videos I'm watching even about unrelated stuff to Tech or if it's my own comment section I'm seeing a lot of people just complaining in general so as true inflation grows that is when you go down the supermarket and something goes up 20 in a couple of weeks and then the government's telling you hey inflation only went up five percent you're scratching your head saying what is going on here this is not reflecting how much prices are going up and then you've also got unemployment true unemployment On The Rise I believe it's actually on the the rise when you have those two things combined together the misery index goes up in other words in an aggregate total in society people become more miserable as inflation and unemployment go up though before we get back to the 4090s I want people to understand I'm going to actually start calling this out in my videos the more I can get a chance to and that is it's not AMD Nvidia or Intel's fault for these price rises in these conditions in any other conditions I would say yes but when the money supply is getting inflated so fast and governments around the world are recklessly spending money and they're not just that they're introducing new regulations and cutting off Supply that's the reasons inflation is going up and people are becoming more miserable it's governments and central banks people so let's get to these 4090s and taking a look at what we can take a look at while the NDA is still in effect so we've got the founders here this is a huge Behemoth which comes in at a bigger fan then previous generation found as God's one on the front one on the back and this does an extremely good job of cooling the GPU and keeping temperatures low as well as noise low and then at the back of the card you've got HDMI 2.1 out as well as your display port outs there I would have liked to have seen two HDMI 2.1 outs from the get-go and also we've got the 12 pin with a sensor adapter which then requires four pcie connectors from a traditional power supply in order to get this thing running now in the testing here I can say that nothing's melting down and nothing is really out of the ordinary there and in fact like I've said earlier in the video I'm using an 850 watt power supply to do my testing with and it's doing an absolutely fine job so if you've got a really solid 850 watt power supply then you should be okay but in terms of the founders Edition card it is kicking ass in terms of its design in terms of how now it cools and everything else at the back of the car there's also a little bracket you can take out and screw into a graphics support slot just to keep the card from suffering from GPU sag though speaking of GPU sag this is where we've got the colorful Eye game Vulcan OC with its three 100 Mil fans and an even bigger Dimension spec than the RTX 4090 in fact this gravis card comes in with its own GPU support bracket in the Box you also get a screwdriver and two face plates one which can display information and another one which will just give you some fancy RGB and the logo however you can put the information plate on a separate USB readout separate from the graphics card so I thought that was pretty cool in terms of the back of the card you've got again the one HDMI 2.1 and the three display port out I would have liked to have seen the two HDMI 2.1s then you've got a turbo button there which is essentially a dual BIOS button so you've got normal and then OC mode so it's good to see dual bios on this RTX 4090 for those who want to play around with different profile configurations anyhow guys I have to get back to testing out these gpus and giving you guys full day one coverage as well as all the other tests that you like to see if there's anything peculiar you want to see do let us know in the comments section below if it gets enough upvotes I can see if I can entertain that request for you also I do apologize for not uploading in nearly a week I've had a lot going on behind the scenes here I've started testing the 4090s but I had to get this Visa problem sorted where I only had a few days where I would have had to have gone back to Australia but I'm like look I have to get some things sorted here first like for instance actually getting an ID and which I don't have here and this is going to actually tie into the question of the day but I have been slow because there's been a lot of stuff that I've had to do behind behind the scenes I will make a vlog very soon BTS Vlog updating you guys with what's been going on but that aside we do have the question of the day here which comes from RM Gaming UK and they ask just watching this again a few years later so they're talking about a video we made about PC flipping a few years later and they're saying now the PC selling environment is a lot tougher would you consider doing an update for the current situation that is rapidly dropping GPU prices lower demand because of the economic environment I've been building PCS for the last few years and recently was the first time I had to drop a PC's price so low to sell it I actually made a 50 pound loss next PC I got great deal and made a 200 pound profit but it seems much harder and PCs taking longer to sell so to answer this question directly I recently had a good friend actually last week good friend of mine called me up and he just told me Brian I cannot move anything I've got things up for sale and I'm getting just not even any interest at at all and this is where markets go from Good Times to bad times and currently we're in a really bad time I've been reporting on this in the last year especially last year I was warning people this was going to happen I feel like this scenario was going to happen just based on looking at the central banks and what they were doing and how also they were then the trajectory of the money printers was slowing down and all it took was the money printers to slow down to get bad economic conditions and that seemed like that prediction was right on the money no pun intended but in terms of the situation helping you out directly I don't have at the moment a whole lot of boots on the ground experience going through this Market because I came to Japan about six months ago and I haven't been flipping much at all uh in terms of I got some stuff on eBay in Australia that my brother's helping me post when that cell but in terms of me selling gaming PCs I don't have any ID here so I can't set up the unnecessary Avenues to sell my PCS and test the market in Japan but in terms of Australia I was actually going to go back in about a month and a half before Christmas and literally just get double luggage so you get like 80 kilos load that up with all the PCS that have been Parts hunting in the last few months and then just sell all those gaming PCs locally but when I do that I'll be able to update you guys and tell you what's going on in Australia but in terms of used parts in Japan the market seems very slow like I've as I go to some of those hard offs you still see the same thing sitting there I mean they're a bit of a rip-off but even if I go to some of these PC stores that have really good prices some of the stuff is just sitting on the shelves there it's not moving at all so it is a very slow market and in these markets you can only do one thing and that's turn up the competitive dial and get even more competitive and that's what's going happen not just in PC flipping but everything else if we relate that back to the RTX 4090 Nvidia is going to have to compete people are talking about okay nvidia's just going to rip us off well if they try to they're going to be met with a consumer that's just not going to buy their product so they're either going to have to provide really good value or take a haircut or both and so it's looking like it's the latter and that is it's going to be Bose that you have to take a haircut and provide better gains better value than they're ever provided in the past in order to survive so hopefully that answers that question and I will catch you guys in another video very soon but in terms of that question I will make dedicated videos on the situation when I can don't worry about that I do love the used Market it's part of me and I love everything about it and also I will update you guys in some more Finance in the videos as well because I love talking about this stuff it's actually really good going forward even though I've lost a bit of sleep over it and thinking about where things are going I think if we can sort of tune our logic Radars to where things are heading and be prepared for that even if it's bad we can at least weather the storm better than others anyhow guys I hope you enjoyed today's video if you did then be sure to hit that like button for us and also if you've stayed this far and you're enjoying that content then be sure to hit that sub button ring that Bell to get the vids as soon as they drop and I'll catch you in the next one peace out for now bye foreign\n"