u/TaZm1n2

Most of this one came out of old office PCs that were lying around doing nothing. Skylake-era stuff nobody wants on its own, but drop in one decent GPU and tidy it up and it turns into a proper budget 1080p machine.

What went in, and what each part cost me (NZD):

• Intel Core i5 6500 (used): $20
• ASUS H170 M-E D3 motherboard (used): $20
• 16GB DDR3-1600, 2x8GB Crucial (used): $20
• 1TB WD Blue HDD (used): $10
• 250GB Samsung 870 Evo SSD (used): $20
• PowerColor RX 5600 XT 6GB (used): $100
• Kolink KL-400 400W PSU (from the parts bin): $0
• DeepCool CC360 ARGB white case (new): $85
• A-RGB cooler (new): $40

Total in: $315 NZD (~$190 USD)
Sold: $600 NZD (~$360 USD) on Facebook Marketplace
Net profit: ~$285 NZD (~$170 USD)

The old office guts (CPU, board, RAM, HDD) basically cost nothing and nobody buys them separately. The RX 5600 XT is the only real money I put toward performance, and it's the part that turns a dead office box into a 1080p gaming PC. The rest of the spend went on presentation: a clean white ARGB case and a new cooler so a stack of 2015 hardware photographs like a modern build. That's the bit I think gets underrated. Old parts crawl on their own, but a good-looking finished machine with a card that handles 1080p sells in days.

I planned the build and worked out the cost split and profit in a tool I've been building for this, PartPlanner.

The used market seems to have a strange relationship with older hardware. Some parts are dismissed simply because they’re a few generations old, while others hold their value despite no longer being particularly good buys.

For lower-cost 1080p builds, I often think the best value comes from parts that are old enough to have fallen out of favour but still easily handle the games the buyer actually wants to play.

Windows 11 support has complicated that, though. There are older CPU platforms that still perform perfectly well in games, but putting them into a PC intended for a normal buyer is becoming harder to justify. Most buyers probably don’t want to hear about bypasses or why the unsupported hardware is technically still capable.

I’m interested in what everyone here is still buying:
- Which older CPUs and GPUs do you think the market undervalues?
- Are there any previously overlooked parts that have now become too expensive?
- How much does official Windows 11 support affect what you’ll build or resell?
- Is there any older hardware you’ve completely stopped buying?

I wrote up my own thoughts on some of the overlooked parts that can still make a great 1080p PC here: https://www.partplanner.io/blog/overlooked-parts-1080p-gaming-pc/

Full disclosure: it’s on the PartPlanner blog, which is the platform I recently launched. The article itself is free and doesn’t require an account. I’m mainly interested in hearing which parts other flippers are still having success with.

Sorry in advance for the self-promo, I don't usually do this. I've just been buried in this project for ages and I really want to see some real flippers actually try it.

I've been doing this for years and the bit I love is the rescue. Grabbing some dead office tower nobody wants, seeing what still works, and turning it into a gaming PC.

The money side always did my head in though. You pay next to nothing for a machine, pull out a GPU, CPU, RAM, a PSU, and then... what did the GPU actually cost you out of that $60? I could never answer it without wrestling a spreadsheet that got worse every month.

So I built the bit I used most into a free calculator. No signup, no email:

https://partplanner.io/pc-part-value-calculator

Put in what you paid and it splits that across the parts by what each one's worth. Would genuinely love to know if the default weightings match what you see, I've only got my own pile to go off.

I'm also building a proper version of this (PartPlanner) and would love a few of you to beta test it and tell me where it's rubbish. Comment or DM if you're up for it, it'd honestly make my week.

Thanks for reading, and sorry again for the plug. Cheers