I've actually noticed a similar thing in my local market. My first few builds where tidy, but not over the top attention to detail. Just tidy and functional. And they had a lot of good attention. I thought I would ramp things up with the last few builds and go really hard on aesthetics. Because I had also heard that conventional wisdom that looks sell, so I wanted to test that out for myself, and have a bit of fun with some more extravagant builds in the process. Well, those listings ended up being quite expensive, price to performance wise, and are getting relatively little attention. While I noticed another seller, similar to your case, who is selling machines that are purely price to performance focused, and they have A LOT more attention on their listings. We're talking basic cases, stock coolers, bargain bin PSUs that are sometimes lower wattage than what's recommended for the GPU, SATA ssds, fixed rgb fans, basic ram sticks. Don't get me wrong I'm not hating on these builds, but it kind of does make me feel like I do need to offer some pure price to performance builds myself to compete. Because as I mentioned earlier, my first builds didn't prioritize looks and were more popular than my current listings. I've also noticed another interesting trend though. Brand new builds in fish tanks with 7+ argb fans and AIOS seem to be very popular in my local market, so I'm looking at adding some of those to my inventory too, just to see how well they do. So yeah, It seems like either pure price to performance, or going SUPER hard on aesthetics in a brand new build is what's hot right now. Doesn't hurt to have a few balanced options in the lineup though. As a saying that I heard recently goes, "there's an a** for every saddle". Of course, I'm still a noob and learning as I go, but this is something I've been thinking a lot about lately as I learn the market, so it's really awesome to see a video from you about it!
Yeah sounds like our markets are very similar. I also tried to kind of split the difference and balance looks and performance, but picking a side may be the better option.
Btw, i have seen those lines in your video for a while now. It happens when you change the FPS which the video runs at. Make sure the project fps matches the recording fps. Also i5 10400f and 3060 12gb is not a bad pairing. I have even used Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060Ti (which is a bit worse) and it sold pretty fast. It was a sleek black build with tasteful rgb. I think the balance really is to use rgb to add accent lines. MSI Gaming X/Z Trio 30--series cards have that and its really good. I don't overdo on RGB unless I get a commission that specifically requests it. Keep it up!
*I know I can make my builds look better with cable extensions, better looking fans, better cases, but in my area it's tough, profit margins are thing so I just keep to the basics and make sure, cable management is decent & pics and description are decent.
Yeah that's what I'm finding out as well, aesthetic pc's will sell, but at nowhere the rate of a budget build. I was shocked at his builds and how successful he is. Always learning and improving.
Thank you. My main suggestion is to pretty much ignore the bottleneck calculator, as it apears to not even be half right, but instead look at benchmark videos, both GPU vs GPU, and CPU vs CPU. There are a TON of these, any you can usually find multiple videos making a specific useful comparison. If your competition is using bad PSUs, it will eventually backfire on him.
I feel like I made this video. I resonated with every single thing you said. My conscious would not allow me to sell crap PSU's/Parts that are plain and simple a hazard. It's not an easy job to stay competitive in.
Well that's a great comment to read, thanks. Even if I don't sell quite as many computers, I'm not willing to sacrifice on my conviction to provide the best and most reliable pc I can. I'm not saying I'm the best, far from it, but id rather feel really comfortable that my machines will perform well.
I've wondered myself how much "going the extra mile" in the product shots as well as the aesthetic parts might be contributing to people feeling that the listing is "too good to be true". The second prebuilt I assembled and sold was a very cohesive theme. Everything was black, silver, and blue - down to tricolored cable extensions, the gpu fan shroud, ram heat spreaders, and I even painted the Wraith cooler trim ring blue as well as finding an NVME with a black and blue label. Took all my shots with the fans on blue - and it took 4 times as long to get it sold compared to my old personal system I only re-cased. My local market here seems to have a hard cap at 500(quite literally every offer if you list over 500). Building anything more than ultra budget is really rough.
I actually don't think graphics card bottlenecks are bad. The problem with CPU bottlenecks is that it causes stutters, bad 1% lows, and doesn't allow for the best GPU performance which usually is most important in gaming. With GPU bottlenecks you still have a very smooth gaming experience, and get the full performance out of your GPU. It also allows you to upgrade to a more powerful GPU at any time, without having to upgrade your CPU as well. With CPU bottlenecks, trying to upgrade a CPU for a first time PC user is much more difficult than upgrading your GPU, with having to take out cooler, CPU, reapply thermal paste. So I think as long as it's not a super unbalanced PC a GPU bottleneck is perfectly good.
@josephkim3223 of course, every system is going to have a bottleneck somewhere. I personally do my best to try and match the cpu and gpu as close as possible.
Really excellent video and discussion. First I would like to say you can't compare youself to him purely on the number of PCs sold, he could be doing this full time, be building regular spec-ed rigs so he doesn't have to wait for a good deal to come up on facebook marketplace, and as you said he's not spending time on providing benchmark fps. I think aesthetics definitely help, but it has to be in line with the overall cost of the build. You can put 6 £20 a fan corsair rgb fans in a 7th gen i5 build. The same goes for cooling, you don't need excess airflow in a stock 4 or 6 core i5 build, the real proof should be the temperature the cpu and gpu reach under heavy load. You say he doesn't care about aesthetics but his builds look like they are new cases with no dust and do have some rgb, eg. in the case with less airflow he still has an rgb cpu cooler (when I suspect that he could have used the stock cooler). I do agree that some of his part selections are odd, eg. the dodgy powersupply and the cpu cooler in the poor airflow case (its barely better than the stock intel cooler), however it comes down to the overall budget for the build. The powersupply is concerning, but I have used lower tiered PSU, but they are for budget builds and I make sure the powersupply wattage miles exceeds the PC's requirements, eg. a 600 or 750 watt powersupply (that can still put most of that power on the 12 volt line) for a PC that should only 400 watts at full load of both the cpu and gpu. However you won't see those PSUs in anything over $600. From the pictures of your builds they seem all high end, so I can see why you would never use a poor PSU, however I agree an F shouldn't be used in anything but a super budget under $200 build. When you start moving onto budget builds my tips would be: 1) Use power suplies with neat black cables to afford having to use cable extensions 2) Buy a decent budget case that has 2-3 decent rgb fans 3) If a budget pc doesn't need a heafty aio cooler use a decent budget rgb cpu cooler, in the UK thermalright has great cpu tower cooler with nice rgb 4) You don't need expensive top brand fans, as above thermalright does some nice fans and there are others, I would check out youtube reviews when choosing which fans to use. It can save you a fortune in cost while still having an aesthetic build 5) You don't have to have top brand m.2 drives, I will also choose Crucial (and even more budget) drives over a Samsung. They are so fast you won't be able to tell the speed difference without running a benchmark. Lastly be careful of only using the bottleneck calculators, and for more expensive builds you should be looking at 1440p. No one buying a $1300 PC is likely to be playing at 1080p unless they are a professional gamer looking for the absolutely highest fps. At 1440p the bottleneck you mentioned with the Ryzen 5 4500 would disappear. The 4500 is on par with a Ryzen 5 3600 and you'll see that in many builds. Again great discussion, and an easy +1 sub from me, you definitely deserve a higher sub count for the quality of the video.
Really appreciate your comments. The purpose of this exercise for me is to learn what I can do better, and I am learning alot. I definitely need to reevaluate some of my builds and try to appeal to the largest group of potential buyers.
He is selling more PCs than you because he has more PCs to sell than you. He's beating you in the deal hunt and he's beating you with inventory. He's being less picky and moving his builds quick. Some people are just getting the best deals they can on the parts that they can find and spinning up a PC with whatever they happen to have and get it for sale ASAP. That builder is just a different type of builder from you. You like to do really nicely spec'd, optimized, beautiful builds. He pinches pennies, cuts corners, throws builds together to get them out the door. Some of us like to build PCs, and some of us love to make money. Great video, cheers buddy 🧃🧃🧃🧃
Those are great observations, thanks. I did learn that I really don't have an interest in cranking out an assembly line of poorly thrown together rigs, but i do want to find the balance of quality while still competing effectively for customers.
He is not that transparent like you, but he is a different kind of character. He would perhaps sell firehazzerd to someone, something you would never do. You love to do a good job more than max out your profit.
Yeah I haven't ever spoken to him so I don't know his intentions. But one thing is for sure, he can sell some pc's! Just took this on as a learning lesson.
My particular customer base is people on a very low budget. All they want to know is how it performs in gaming for the least amount of money. The cases I use are black and boring with no clear side. In fact, the only RGB build I sold was to a girl LOL. She said he liked the pretty lights.
To be honest, most people immediately look for the GPU whether they're experienced or a complete newbie. The former will then look at all the other specs VS the latter who will go whale just by the GPU.
@@CasualTechReview I agree, Maybe he just pairs and sells what he has around. I was thinking about the 4th gen i5 ad and a lot of buyers will just see i5 and think it's good (they won't stop to think oh there's a range of i5s). Sometimes here a good GPU is carrying him using a weaker CPU, but it's good enough to make the sale. Those F PSUs are awful but an uninformed person might just see Gamemax oh it's got game in the title. Slapping game or gamer in the descriptions might help marketing. I am thinking it's the he's showing the ad running Fortnite and a lot of these people are buying a low end Fortnite PC, so it running Fortnite and stating it's preactivated might appeal to those buyers demographic.
@dianaalyssa8726 yeah most definitely. Most of his ads are fairly transparent and have a full parts list, but some don't. I just prefer to spend more time finding good components to give someone a great buying experience, and a great pc for the price.
Given the data, I reckon if you can cut sale prices a bit by still using quality parts but maybe not putting as much labour or money into the aesthetics but still provide the more up market and professional feel of your pictures and presentations then that might be the best of both worlds and give you a bit of an edge over the other seller. It's a tough market out there, not always easy to say why consumers act in the ways they do and some people seem to get all the luck.
Yeah I tend to agree with your assessment. I'm not one to think luck is a factor, he's just playing the game better than I am at this point. My next build will be purely performance focused, and we'll see what happens!
I wonder what's the best way to meet your customers? I personally demonstrate at my house in my garage but I heard of sellers just sending videos or doing Zoom calls demonstrating the PC and then meeting at a certain location to make the transaction. Of course by meeting at a location it will be easier for the seller to ghost the customer if they complain and ask for a refund.
As a personal policy, I don't meet people at my house. Some have stated they want an in person demonstration, but I've never lost a customer over it. I'll provide a video of it doing whatever they want to see. This is where good reviews come into play I think, because potential buyers can see you are a legitimate seller.
Also, I was wondering, do you ever pay to boost your ad on FB marketplace? I have done it twice, but I don't think it is making that much of a difference.
I still trying to make my first sale. It's been two weeks, I have had three different trade offers and my first cash offer today. What drives me nuts is when I get the "Is this still available?" I respond back, but then no further responses. Just aggravating.
Oh yeah, don't expect alot of considerate buyers on there. They are operating on their own terms and have lots to choose from. I make it a priority to always be polite and responsive when messaging.
Are you planning on making this a full-time business, or is this more of a hobby? I've been flipping PCs for over twenty years and have built a decent business. My advice is to prioritize performance over aesthetics. Once you have an established customer base, you can always upsell the RGB.
I treat the PSU tier list with a big grain of salt. According to it the Aerocool 750w power supply I have should have nuked me several times over. Yet it's powered a few generations of my gaming PC now. I do wonder if the people contributing to the tier list have ever actually used the power supplies they rate as terrible. The Bottleneck Calculator also doesn't seem to have the RTX 3060 12GB card as an option. The closest I could find was the 8GB variant. As to aesthetics I think people are becoming sceptical of blinged up computers in part because so many RUclipsrs post about how unscrupulous sellers use it to trick people into buying rubbish. Your competitor also has a good idea with the video. Show the PC and then show it playing a game. Like the game or not Fortnite still sells PCs.
Oh yeah, agree or disagree with anything I learned, it's clear he's doing it better than me. Always good to have an open mind and willingness to adapt. As far as the tier list goes, I use it as a guide. I don't think an F Tier means it's a 100% guarantee it will explode and kill your kittens, I believe it just means it's not ideal and may use some substandard components.
His list sale price I promise you isn’t what he’s selling them for. He’s letting folks beat him down on price (which fb market kids love to try to feel good) and not up dating the price to what happened in the chat aggreement. I build like you. Give myself at least 10% profit over parts cost that’s my bottom. Also don’t get to hung up on the bottleneck calculator it’s a guess in total cpu throughput. A 2699 v3 cpu on it show as better than 5600’s but it’s not. Use Techpowerups cpu reviews to help determine true bottlenecks. Also pay attention Intel had them omit some older gen on newer gen test. 5th through 11th gen didn’t change fps as much as everyone thinks 14++++++
Yeah it's true I don't know the true sale price, and people do love to low ball. I am going to try some more performance based builds just to see how they do.
@@CasualTechReview How much is really being wasted on aesthetics though? $15-20 on cable extensions? Maybe $10-20 more on a better case with more fans? $10-20 for a better looking cooler? Or is it not goin with 16GB’s of ram and a 512gb NVMe that’s causing a $50 increase? Sure there’s some fat that can be cut but that other guy is buying other peoples rigs for scrap prices then reusing that scrap to build. Luckily the guy in my area that does it never lets himself profit more than $50. Though it makes it difficult to sell my “new” builds of equal performance for $50 more at the $500-$600 price point but people recognize the quality and new or restored (GPU) components and eventually sale. His turn around time maybe better but I like knowing people are getting quality. I’ve been playing around with the idea of offering minimum ram 16gb and ssd 512gb and noting in the ad that the purchaser can use their old storage device for games or they can upgrade through me. If price is too high many people just pass on by. Kingspec has been good to me on NVMe and Apevia prestige gold rated non modular psu’s are my go to every time. I’ve loaded a 600watt down with 620watt at the wall with and oc’ed x58 Xeon at 4.66ghz and Rx 5700xt torture testing over night and it didn’t skip a beat with good noise levels for the extreme use case. Also approaching the $1000 price point it has to be a fish tank.
@jayprosser7349 yeah I agree that aesthetics definitely don't add tons to the overall cost, but usually 50-100 bucks. He does also skimp on storage, using sata ssd's about half the time as well. Cable management is just a time investment so that doesn't factor into cost. Some of it is still a mystery, as I would happily pay a little extra for something that looks tremendously better, but obviously that's just not the case for my potential pool of buyers. I think that was my biggest surprise, just how successful he is.
@@CasualTechReview Yep hardcore pure gamers on a tight budget don’t care how things look or cool. Hell they likely already have what they need to finish guys builds. Paying him a finders fee for putting the scrap parts together basically.
Thanks for that bottleneck site! I've been building for 20 years and never had anything lay it out so simply, even with a games portion. LOL, and it appears all my home PC's are CPU-bottlenecked by a huge margin of 20% or more. Can't upgrade platforms right now, and am not going to downgrade GPU's, so they will stand as is. Good to know for future builds, though!
@NOLAgenX glad it was helpful. You will see alot of spirited opinions about the bottleneck calculator, but if kept in proper context it's a great tool.
The bottleneck calculator is not really all that accurate. I know my 7900X and 4090 says it is something like 25% bottlenecked and the 7800X3d and 4090 says something like 34% bottleneck yet it isn't.
@1Fracino yep, the gpu brand preference is really stark. I typically only buy Nvidia for flipping, but I've used a few amd. Personally I use amd graphics and love them. And yes, psu is important to get a quality product.
@@CasualTechReview yeah that's what I got from it and lookin at 2nd hand gpu prices etc. Lookin at lot's more of your vids, won't comment on every 1, just trying to learn if I can make it work for me. :)
Rethinking things it might be a lot of these sales are low end Fortnite PCs, buyer doesn't care what it looks like just that it runs Fortnite and is preactivated Windows.
Yeah it was definitely eye opening to see how successful he's been, with the way he puts his builds together. I'm definitely going to start doing some builds more performance focused!
@@CasualTechReview except it can't really as I just showed. It is so wildly inaccurate as to be worthless. Game avg fps from actual reviewers like techpowerup is more relevant. And even then, it depends on the type of games you play and the resolution/refresh rate of your monitor.
That's really interesting, because I thought my market was tight. I've seen others sell builds for 100 dollars more than what I can get here. You can really learn a lot when you analyze open source data, and make adjustments.
I think there's really only 2 ways to look at. Either he is just unaware of the Tier list and does not know that it's an unreliable component (I hope this is the case), or he doesn't care and is more concerned with the profit. I'm careful to not use anything below Tier C in a budget build.
I’ve loved following your videos but just a quick constructive criticism. You sound so salty that this guy is beating you in the market and are so salty, you’re sounding super jealous and exhibiting an “it’s my way or the highway; I know best” attitude. If he’s beating you, then you obviously don’t. Just take what he’s doing and tailor what you are doing with it and beat him at his own game 🤷🏻♂️
Thanks for the honest feedback. I thought I made it clear in the video, and in the comments, that I'm well aware he is beating me and I'm going to change some things to be more competitive, I'm always open to learning how to improve. But yes, that is my mindset.
@@CasualTechReview yeah... I got ya. Fully understand. I learned that in business, especially one like this, you can't be "jealous" of someone's success but instead, should take it and work harder and make them sweat. In PCs, as one other commenter mentioned, it's about margins and more people looking for budget items. I sold a PC with an R7 360 with a 256GB SSD, a 5400 RPM 500gb HDD, Intel Celeron G3900, and 8gb of RAM about a month ago for $300 which is nuts when you think about it. I just had those parts lying around with an old Focus G case. I was pretty shocked I got that much for it but people see the price, some benchmarks (which I don't think the typical FB Marketplace buyer cares about), and they jump at the cheapness as long as it will play some simple games and esports titles. That's what I target anyway. Good luck to you and keep up the vids... They are quite enjoyable
Much appreciated, I try to always be humble enough to accept criticism, it's what'll make you better! I was definitely surprised and realized I must have been existing in an aesthetics echo chamber. For folks with more disposable income, its great. For the average gamer, it's obviously all about performance.
@@CasualTechReview I didn’t get the impression you were salty at all, in fact the opposite, I thought your observations were fair, you praised his builds and you were self critical 👍🏼
I've actually noticed a similar thing in my local market. My first few builds where tidy, but not over the top attention to detail. Just tidy and functional. And they had a lot of good attention.
I thought I would ramp things up with the last few builds and go really hard on aesthetics. Because I had also heard that conventional wisdom that looks sell, so I wanted to test that out for myself, and have a bit of fun with some more extravagant builds in the process.
Well, those listings ended up being quite expensive, price to performance wise, and are getting relatively little attention. While I noticed another seller, similar to your case, who is selling machines that are purely price to performance focused, and they have A LOT more attention on their listings. We're talking basic cases, stock coolers, bargain bin PSUs that are sometimes lower wattage than what's recommended for the GPU, SATA ssds, fixed rgb fans, basic ram sticks.
Don't get me wrong I'm not hating on these builds, but it kind of does make me feel like I do need to offer some pure price to performance builds myself to compete. Because as I mentioned earlier, my first builds didn't prioritize looks and were more popular than my current listings.
I've also noticed another interesting trend though. Brand new builds in fish tanks with 7+ argb fans and AIOS seem to be very popular in my local market, so I'm looking at adding some of those to my inventory too, just to see how well they do.
So yeah, It seems like either pure price to performance, or going SUPER hard on aesthetics in a brand new build is what's hot right now. Doesn't hurt to have a few balanced options in the lineup though. As a saying that I heard recently goes, "there's an a** for every saddle".
Of course, I'm still a noob and learning as I go, but this is something I've been thinking a lot about lately as I learn the market, so it's really awesome to see a video from you about it!
Yeah sounds like our markets are very similar. I also tried to kind of split the difference and balance looks and performance, but picking a side may be the better option.
Btw, i have seen those lines in your video for a while now. It happens when you change the FPS which the video runs at. Make sure the project fps matches the recording fps.
Also i5 10400f and 3060 12gb is not a bad pairing. I have even used Ryzen 5 3600 and RTX 3060Ti (which is a bit worse) and it sold pretty fast. It was a sleek black build with tasteful rgb. I think the balance really is to use rgb to add accent lines. MSI Gaming X/Z Trio 30--series cards have that and its really good. I don't overdo on RGB unless I get a commission that specifically requests it.
Keep it up!
Appreciate the encouragement, thanks! And i will check out the project fps, thanks for the tip.
*I know I can make my builds look better with cable extensions, better looking fans, better cases, but in my area it's tough, profit margins are thing so I just keep to the basics and make sure, cable management is decent & pics and description are decent.
Yeah that's what I'm finding out as well, aesthetic pc's will sell, but at nowhere the rate of a budget build. I was shocked at his builds and how successful he is. Always learning and improving.
Thank you.
My main suggestion is to pretty much ignore the bottleneck calculator, as it apears to not even be half right, but instead look at benchmark videos, both GPU vs GPU, and CPU vs CPU. There are a TON of these, any you can usually find multiple videos making a specific useful comparison.
If your competition is using bad PSUs, it will eventually backfire on him.
Yeah I don't look at the bottleneck calculator as gospel, just a data point to consider.
I feel like I made this video. I resonated with every single thing you said. My conscious would not allow me to sell crap PSU's/Parts that are plain and simple a hazard. It's not an easy job to stay competitive in.
Well that's a great comment to read, thanks. Even if I don't sell quite as many computers, I'm not willing to sacrifice on my conviction to provide the best and most reliable pc I can. I'm not saying I'm the best, far from it, but id rather feel really comfortable that my machines will perform well.
I've wondered myself how much "going the extra mile" in the product shots as well as the aesthetic parts might be contributing to people feeling that the listing is "too good to be true". The second prebuilt I assembled and sold was a very cohesive theme. Everything was black, silver, and blue - down to tricolored cable extensions, the gpu fan shroud, ram heat spreaders, and I even painted the Wraith cooler trim ring blue as well as finding an NVME with a black and blue label. Took all my shots with the fans on blue - and it took 4 times as long to get it sold compared to my old personal system I only re-cased. My local market here seems to have a hard cap at 500(quite literally every offer if you list over 500). Building anything more than ultra budget is really rough.
Yeah there are definitely fewer buyers looking for more high end options. They sell, but the competition is tight for sure.
I actually don't think graphics card bottlenecks are bad. The problem with CPU bottlenecks is that it causes stutters, bad 1% lows, and doesn't allow for the best GPU performance which usually is most important in gaming. With GPU bottlenecks you still have a very smooth gaming experience, and get the full performance out of your GPU. It also allows you to upgrade to a more powerful GPU at any time, without having to upgrade your CPU as well. With CPU bottlenecks, trying to upgrade a CPU for a first time PC user is much more difficult than upgrading your GPU, with having to take out cooler, CPU, reapply thermal paste. So I think as long as it's not a super unbalanced PC a GPU bottleneck is perfectly good.
@josephkim3223 of course, every system is going to have a bottleneck somewhere. I personally do my best to try and match the cpu and gpu as close as possible.
Really excellent video and discussion.
First I would like to say you can't compare youself to him purely on the number of PCs sold, he could be doing this full time, be building regular spec-ed rigs so he doesn't have to wait for a good deal to come up on facebook marketplace, and as you said he's not spending time on providing benchmark fps.
I think aesthetics definitely help, but it has to be in line with the overall cost of the build. You can put 6 £20 a fan corsair rgb fans in a 7th gen i5 build. The same goes for cooling, you don't need excess airflow in a stock 4 or 6 core i5 build, the real proof should be the temperature the cpu and gpu reach under heavy load.
You say he doesn't care about aesthetics but his builds look like they are new cases with no dust and do have some rgb, eg. in the case with less airflow he still has an rgb cpu cooler (when I suspect that he could have used the stock cooler).
I do agree that some of his part selections are odd, eg. the dodgy powersupply and the cpu cooler in the poor airflow case (its barely better than the stock intel cooler), however it comes down to the overall budget for the build. The powersupply is concerning, but I have used lower tiered PSU, but they are for budget builds and I make sure the powersupply wattage miles exceeds the PC's requirements, eg. a 600 or 750 watt powersupply (that can still put most of that power on the 12 volt line) for a PC that should only 400 watts at full load of both the cpu and gpu. However you won't see those PSUs in anything over $600. From the pictures of your builds they seem all high end, so I can see why you would never use a poor PSU, however I agree an F shouldn't be used in anything but a super budget under $200 build.
When you start moving onto budget builds my tips would be:
1) Use power suplies with neat black cables to afford having to use cable extensions
2) Buy a decent budget case that has 2-3 decent rgb fans
3) If a budget pc doesn't need a heafty aio cooler use a decent budget rgb cpu cooler, in the UK thermalright has great cpu tower cooler with nice rgb
4) You don't need expensive top brand fans, as above thermalright does some nice fans and there are others, I would check out youtube reviews when choosing which fans to use. It can save you a fortune in cost while still having an aesthetic build
5) You don't have to have top brand m.2 drives, I will also choose Crucial (and even more budget) drives over a Samsung. They are so fast you won't be able to tell the speed difference without running a benchmark.
Lastly be careful of only using the bottleneck calculators, and for more expensive builds you should be looking at 1440p. No one buying a $1300 PC is likely to be playing at 1080p unless they are a professional gamer looking for the absolutely highest fps. At 1440p the bottleneck you mentioned with the Ryzen 5 4500 would disappear. The 4500 is on par with a Ryzen 5 3600 and you'll see that in many builds.
Again great discussion, and an easy +1 sub from me, you definitely deserve a higher sub count for the quality of the video.
Really appreciate your comments. The purpose of this exercise for me is to learn what I can do better, and I am learning alot.
I definitely need to reevaluate some of my builds and try to appeal to the largest group of potential buyers.
Great video idea. I love the deep dive into what he is doing and how it compares to you.
Quite an interesting result if I do say so myself.
Yeah it was interesting for sure. But if I can use that information to improve my situation, then it's worth doing!
@@CasualTechReview indeed indeed
He is selling more PCs than you because he has more PCs to sell than you. He's beating you in the deal hunt and he's beating you with inventory. He's being less picky and moving his builds quick. Some people are just getting the best deals they can on the parts that they can find and spinning up a PC with whatever they happen to have and get it for sale ASAP. That builder is just a different type of builder from you. You like to do really nicely spec'd, optimized, beautiful builds. He pinches pennies, cuts corners, throws builds together to get them out the door. Some of us like to build PCs, and some of us love to make money. Great video, cheers buddy 🧃🧃🧃🧃
Those are great observations, thanks. I did learn that I really don't have an interest in cranking out an assembly line of poorly thrown together rigs, but i do want to find the balance of quality while still competing effectively for customers.
He is not that transparent like you, but he is a different kind of character.
He would perhaps sell firehazzerd to someone, something you would never do.
You love to do a good job more than max out your profit.
Yeah I haven't ever spoken to him so I don't know his intentions. But one thing is for sure, he can sell some pc's! Just took this on as a learning lesson.
My particular customer base is people on a very low budget. All they want to know is how it performs in gaming for the least amount of money. The cases I use are black and boring with no clear side.
In fact, the only RGB build I sold was to a girl LOL. She said he liked the pretty lights.
I'm definitely going to try to appeal to this crowd more going forward, as it seems like it's the same on my area as well.
This guy just wants to make money. He knows people look at the gpu and he takes advantage of that. I wonder how much profit he makes per build
To be honest, most people immediately look for the GPU whether they're experienced or a complete newbie.
The former will then look at all the other specs VS the latter who will go whale just by the GPU.
Yeah I don't know what his process is, I've never spoken to him. One thing you can say for sure, he knows how to sell a computer!
@@CasualTechReview I agree, Maybe he just pairs and sells what he has around. I was thinking about the 4th gen i5 ad and a lot of buyers will just see i5 and think it's good (they won't stop to think oh there's a range of i5s). Sometimes here a good GPU is carrying him using a weaker CPU, but it's good enough to make the sale. Those F PSUs are awful but an uninformed person might just see Gamemax oh it's got game in the title. Slapping game or gamer in the descriptions might help marketing. I am thinking it's the he's showing the ad running Fortnite and a lot of these people are buying a low end Fortnite PC, so it running Fortnite and stating it's preactivated might appeal to those buyers demographic.
@dianaalyssa8726 yeah most definitely. Most of his ads are fairly transparent and have a full parts list, but some don't. I just prefer to spend more time finding good components to give someone a great buying experience, and a great pc for the price.
This comment makes sense to me, people do look for gpu first aye
Given the data, I reckon if you can cut sale prices a bit by still using quality parts but maybe not putting as much labour or money into the aesthetics but still provide the more up market and professional feel of your pictures and presentations then that might be the best of both worlds and give you a bit of an edge over the other seller. It's a tough market out there, not always easy to say why consumers act in the ways they do and some people seem to get all the luck.
Yeah I tend to agree with your assessment. I'm not one to think luck is a factor, he's just playing the game better than I am at this point. My next build will be purely performance focused, and we'll see what happens!
I wonder what's the best way to meet your customers? I personally demonstrate at my house in my garage but I heard of sellers just sending videos or doing Zoom calls demonstrating the PC and then meeting at a certain location to make the transaction. Of course by meeting at a location it will be easier for the seller to ghost the customer if they complain and ask for a refund.
As a personal policy, I don't meet people at my house. Some have stated they want an in person demonstration, but I've never lost a customer over it. I'll provide a video of it doing whatever they want to see. This is where good reviews come into play I think, because potential buyers can see you are a legitimate seller.
Also, I was wondering, do you ever pay to boost your ad on FB marketplace?
I have done it twice, but I don't think it is making that much of a difference.
Nah, haven't paid for any marketing, don't plan to either. I think the best marketing I can do is good reviews, so I focus on good customer service.
Maybe you could try doing a cheap build so you have machines for sale in both price brackets...
Yeah 100%, my next build is going to be a budget, no frills machine. Curious to see how it does.
I still trying to make my first sale. It's been two weeks, I have had three different trade offers and my first cash offer today. What drives me nuts is when I get the "Is this still available?" I respond back, but then no further responses. Just aggravating.
Oh yeah, don't expect alot of considerate buyers on there. They are operating on their own terms and have lots to choose from. I make it a priority to always be polite and responsive when messaging.
Are you planning on making this a full-time business, or is this more of a hobby?
I've been flipping PCs for over twenty years and have built a decent business. My advice is to prioritize performance over aesthetics. Once you have an established customer base, you can always upsell the RGB.
No it's just a side gig for me, but my plan is to make a more balanced approach and have some performance based builds available as well.
I treat the PSU tier list with a big grain of salt. According to it the Aerocool 750w power supply I have should have nuked me several times over. Yet it's powered a few generations of my gaming PC now. I do wonder if the people contributing to the tier list have ever actually used the power supplies they rate as terrible.
The Bottleneck Calculator also doesn't seem to have the RTX 3060 12GB card as an option. The closest I could find was the 8GB variant.
As to aesthetics I think people are becoming sceptical of blinged up computers in part because so many RUclipsrs post about how unscrupulous sellers use it to trick people into buying rubbish.
Your competitor also has a good idea with the video. Show the PC and then show it playing a game. Like the game or not Fortnite still sells PCs.
Oh yeah, agree or disagree with anything I learned, it's clear he's doing it better than me. Always good to have an open mind and willingness to adapt.
As far as the tier list goes, I use it as a guide. I don't think an F Tier means it's a 100% guarantee it will explode and kill your kittens, I believe it just means it's not ideal and may use some substandard components.
His list sale price I promise you isn’t what he’s selling them for. He’s letting folks beat him down on price (which fb market kids love to try to feel good) and not up dating the price to what happened in the chat aggreement.
I build like you. Give myself at least 10% profit over parts cost that’s my bottom. Also don’t get to hung up on the bottleneck calculator it’s a guess in total cpu throughput. A 2699 v3 cpu on it show as better than 5600’s but it’s not.
Use Techpowerups cpu reviews to help determine true bottlenecks. Also pay attention Intel had them omit some older gen on newer gen test. 5th through 11th gen didn’t change fps as much as everyone thinks 14++++++
Yeah it's true I don't know the true sale price, and people do love to low ball. I am going to try some more performance based builds just to see how they do.
@@CasualTechReview How much is really being wasted on aesthetics though? $15-20 on cable extensions? Maybe $10-20 more on a better case with more fans? $10-20 for a better looking cooler? Or is it not goin with 16GB’s of ram and a 512gb NVMe that’s causing a $50 increase? Sure there’s some fat that can be cut but that other guy is buying other peoples rigs for scrap prices then reusing that scrap to build. Luckily the guy in my area that does it never lets himself profit more than $50. Though it makes it difficult to sell my “new” builds of equal performance for $50 more at the $500-$600 price point but people recognize the quality and new or restored (GPU) components and eventually sale. His turn around time maybe better but I like knowing people are getting quality.
I’ve been playing around with the idea of offering minimum ram 16gb and ssd 512gb and noting in the ad that the purchaser can use their old storage device for games or they can upgrade through me. If price is too high many people just pass on by.
Kingspec has been good to me on NVMe and Apevia prestige gold rated non modular psu’s are my go to every time. I’ve loaded a 600watt down with 620watt at the wall with and oc’ed x58 Xeon at 4.66ghz and Rx 5700xt torture testing over night and it didn’t skip a beat with good noise levels for the extreme use case.
Also approaching the $1000 price point it has to be a fish tank.
@jayprosser7349 yeah I agree that aesthetics definitely don't add tons to the overall cost, but usually 50-100 bucks. He does also skimp on storage, using sata ssd's about half the time as well. Cable management is just a time investment so that doesn't factor into cost. Some of it is still a mystery, as I would happily pay a little extra for something that looks tremendously better, but obviously that's just not the case for my potential pool of buyers. I think that was my biggest surprise, just how successful he is.
@@CasualTechReview Yep hardcore pure gamers on a tight budget don’t care how things look or cool. Hell they likely already have what they need to finish guys builds. Paying him a finders fee for putting the scrap parts together basically.
Thanks for that bottleneck site! I've been building for 20 years and never had anything lay it out so simply, even with a games portion. LOL, and it appears all my home PC's are CPU-bottlenecked by a huge margin of 20% or more. Can't upgrade platforms right now, and am not going to downgrade GPU's, so they will stand as is. Good to know for future builds, though!
@NOLAgenX glad it was helpful. You will see alot of spirited opinions about the bottleneck calculator, but if kept in proper context it's a great tool.
The bottleneck calculator is not really all that accurate. I know my 7900X and 4090 says it is something like 25% bottlenecked and the 7800X3d and 4090 says something like 34% bottleneck yet it isn't.
Yeah, I use it as a guide and a starting point. I believe there is some validity to the concept.
Interesting vid, price to performance is king, nvidia gpu or forget it (know amd are good but ppl don't) and use a good PSU to avoid a nightmare.
@1Fracino yep, the gpu brand preference is really stark. I typically only buy Nvidia for flipping, but I've used a few amd. Personally I use amd graphics and love them. And yes, psu is important to get a quality product.
@@CasualTechReview yeah that's what I got from it and lookin at 2nd hand gpu prices etc. Lookin at lot's more of your vids, won't comment on every 1, just trying to learn if I can make it work for me. :)
@@1Fracino it's all good!
Rethinking things it might be a lot of these sales are low end Fortnite PCs, buyer doesn't care what it looks like just that it runs Fortnite and is preactivated Windows.
Yeah it was definitely eye opening to see how successful he's been, with the way he puts his builds together. I'm definitely going to start doing some builds more performance focused!
the bottleneck calc is meaningless garbage. it says a 7800x3d bottlenecks a 4080 super by 22.9% vs 7.7% with a 14900k which is absurd.
I use it as a guide, not an end all be all. It can give some insight if a cpu and gpu belong together.
@@CasualTechReview except it can't really as I just showed. It is so wildly inaccurate as to be worthless. Game avg fps from actual reviewers like techpowerup is more relevant. And even then, it depends on the type of games you play and the resolution/refresh rate of your monitor.
7:14 HEAD REVEAL !
D'oh! Luckily I just match every other bald guy out there.
@@CasualTechReview 😆
Those prices are nuts. I can barely hit $300 with what that seller is selling for $400 to $500 in my area.
That's really interesting, because I thought my market was tight. I've seen others sell builds for 100 dollars more than what I can get here. You can really learn a lot when you analyze open source data, and make adjustments.
How can someone possibily sell an f tier psu. that is just evil
I think there's really only 2 ways to look at. Either he is just unaware of the Tier list and does not know that it's an unreliable component (I hope this is the case), or he doesn't care and is more concerned with the profit. I'm careful to not use anything below Tier C in a budget build.
😒 Broh, its because people are Sheep 🐑🐑🐑🐑🐑😊
For sure, there is definitely an element of that involved I think.
I’ve loved following your videos but just a quick constructive criticism. You sound so salty that this guy is beating you in the market and are so salty, you’re sounding super jealous and exhibiting an “it’s my way or the highway; I know best” attitude. If he’s beating you, then you obviously don’t. Just take what he’s doing and tailor what you are doing with it and beat him at his own game 🤷🏻♂️
Thanks for the honest feedback. I thought I made it clear in the video, and in the comments, that I'm well aware he is beating me and I'm going to change some things to be more competitive, I'm always open to learning how to improve. But yes, that is my mindset.
@@CasualTechReview yeah... I got ya. Fully understand. I learned that in business, especially one like this, you can't be "jealous" of someone's success but instead, should take it and work harder and make them sweat. In PCs, as one other commenter mentioned, it's about margins and more people looking for budget items. I sold a PC with an R7 360 with a 256GB SSD, a 5400 RPM 500gb HDD, Intel Celeron G3900, and 8gb of RAM about a month ago for $300 which is nuts when you think about it. I just had those parts lying around with an old Focus G case. I was pretty shocked I got that much for it but people see the price, some benchmarks (which I don't think the typical FB Marketplace buyer cares about), and they jump at the cheapness as long as it will play some simple games and esports titles. That's what I target anyway. Good luck to you and keep up the vids... They are quite enjoyable
Much appreciated, I try to always be humble enough to accept criticism, it's what'll make you better! I was definitely surprised and realized I must have been existing in an aesthetics echo chamber. For folks with more disposable income, its great. For the average gamer, it's obviously all about performance.
Spot on with aesthetics when it comes to budget gamers which are what are mostly looking for PCs on Facebook
@@CasualTechReview I didn’t get the impression you were salty at all, in fact the opposite, I thought your observations were fair, you praised his builds and you were self critical 👍🏼