Advice: Buiding a Cheap Rig to Sell

[poindextermatic]

I have decided to try and make a little money and feed the need to fiddle with PCs, so in my spare time I am going to build a cheap computer that I can sell on in the local paper and hopefully make a little profit.

I guess a complete build for around £200 would be possible (I already have a 17" monitor and keyboard ready), I could then sell on for about £300 to someone who wants a word processor/internet browser/homework machine etc...

Has any one out there done this before?

I am going to have to buy horrid cheap parts - is their any makes I should steer clear of?

Any advice at all would be good.

[nichomach]

Good luck, mate, but you're going to be head-to-head with Dell, and they have TV ads on their side.

PCChips. Don't. Just don't, OK?
Excelstor drives look cheap, but actually in £-per-Gig, you can do better with other makes.

[Jonny M]

Buy lower specced quality components rather than high specced crap ones. eg, a slightly older Asus board rather than a bang up to date PC chips or whatever.

And I don't think you will be able to compete with the likes of Dell for making cheap systems.

[Allen]

http://forums.hexus.net/showthread.php?t=42013

Any good? Re-case it and you might make £50 or so...

[Xusen]

in these age...i am sure there is someone outthere who will want it.

[speedy_s]

sempron 2200+
cdrom
256MB mem
40gb hdd
case+400watt
motherboard+onbard audio+video
4rm ebuyer £150 inc del

[Moby-Dick]

my record for a new base unit was about £120 including a CDRW

[Moby-Dick]

then again if you hunt around on ebay you can get a decent pIII based system ( which is fine for non gaming apps if built correctly ) for under a ton.

[speedy_s]

my record for a new base unit was about £120 including a CDRW

what was the spec and where did u source it 4rm?

[Moby-Dick]

ebuyer IIRC ( it was a while back )
case was about 12 quid
Duron 1600 I think
256 Meg ram
40 gig drive
B grade motherboard ( all in one ) ( no box )
CDRW was dirt cheap ( given that you can get them for about £13 ex vat if you know where to look )

[RDL]

Of course this is possible, but an increasingly large number of people try this. The only place to sell is the paper, which you are saying is where you will sell. Just don't worry about anything fancy, you can easily make it sound good, as most people (buying through the paper) don't have a clue what they're buying, however once you have sold a couple, try making a slightly higher spec. Generally from what I have seen (I've been monitoring this for a few years now), slighty higher spec models will sell for £600-£800, way more than they would make on ebay etc.

Good luck.

[Allen]

Just shove a load of big numbers in the add, they'll snap it up. But make sure not to rip off people, wouldn't wanna give a bad name to small time builders.

[Moby-Dick]

 	Qty   	Product   	QuickFind   	Stock   	 Price  	   Line Total
Remove from cart 		PcChips M848ALU SKT A SIS 748 400 DDR AGPx8 ATA133 6CH Sound/lAN/USB 2.0 will Take Upto a 3.2+ AMD Athlon XP And Sempron CPU's Retail Box 	051760 	1241 	£19.54 	£19.54
Remove from cart 		AMD Sempron 2200+ / 1.5ghz L2-256KB Cache Skt A Retail Box Processor with 3 Year Warranty 	081997 	381 	£30.63 	£30.63
Remove from cart 		Ebuyer 256MB DDR PC2100 266MHz 184pin Extra Value RAM 	020929 	244 	£12.99 	£12.99
Remove from cart 		Sapphire ATI Radeon 7000 32MB DDR AGP TV-Out Retail Box 	059320 	32 	£13.72 	£13.72
Remove from cart 		Benq 52x Internal IDE CD-ROM Drive - Retail Box 	038187 	5 	£7.29 	£7.29
Remove from cart 		Maxtor Diamondmax Plus 8 40Gb ATA 133 7200rpm Disk Drive - OEM 	040971 	705 	£23.44 	£23.44
Remove from cart 		Antler Mercedes Style PC-179 ATX Tower Case 350w PSU Red 	046800 	8 	£13.99 	£13.99
- remove item 	Cart Total: 	£121.60
 
What is this? Deliver my Order by:
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Approx Cart Weight: 10.23Kg
 
Do you have a promotion code? Enter it here then click 'Update Cart' 	 

	Shipping Surcharge: 	£1.80
SubTotal: 	£128.19
VAT: 	£22.48
Total: 	£150.67

the cheapest I could find at the moment - then again I didnt look too hard.

[BUFF]

Substitute the MSI KM4M-L SKT A 8x AGP Onboard Video/Sound/lAN ATA133 MATX CPU support Up to XP 3000+ (FSB333) Retail Box quickfind 051278 for the PC Chips mobo & the Radeon 7000 & save a few £.

Don't forget an OS - Microsoft Windows Xp Home SP2 OEM -Single Pack QuickFind: 66489 £49.55 £58.23 inc VAT

[YorkieBen]

If you can get a Pentium in there the name (Intel/Pentium).

The common bum on the street doesnt know AMD too well

[speedy_s]

ya put in a celeron. and say its superfast.