Should you sell a gaming PC whole or part it out?

Parting out a gaming PC almost always produces a bigger total on paper than selling it complete. Whether it leaves you with more money depends on fees, shipping, the parts nobody buys, and how much your time is worth. Here is how to work it out.

The short answer

Part it out if the PC is a custom build with standard, recent, desirable components and you are comfortable running five or six separate sales. Sell it whole if it is a prebuilt with proprietary parts, if it is more than about four years old, or if you want it gone in one shipment.

There is a middle route that often beats both: sell the graphics card and processor, which carry most of the value, and do not spend effort on the rest.

Why parting out looks better on paper

People shopping for a whole used PC want a discount for taking on someone else’s build, and they compare it with new prebuilts on sale. People shopping for a specific graphics card or processor know exactly what they want and what it goes for. Individual components therefore sell closer to their market price than a complete machine does, and the sum of the listings comes out higher.

What parting out actually costs

• Fees on every sale. Marketplace final-value fees on computer components typically start around 13%, charged on the sale price including shipping. Five sales means five sets of fees.
• Shipping, several times over. Each part needs its own box, anti-static bag, padding, label and insurance. A graphics card is the expensive one to send safely.
• Parts that do not sell. The case, fans, power supply and cooler are slow to move and cost nearly as much to ship as they fetch. Most part-outs end with a pile of these left over.
• Risk multiplied. Every sale is a separate chance of a return, a claim that the item arrived damaged, or a payment dispute. Graphics cards attract the most of all three.
• Time. Disassembly, cleaning, photographing, writing listings, answering questions, packing and posting. Allow most of a weekend plus the weeks the slower items take to sell.
• No way back. Once the graphics card has sold, the rest of the machine is a much harder sale as a unit.

How to do the sum for your PC

1. List the graphics card, processor, memory, drives and motherboard. For each, look up recent sold prices, not asking prices, for the exact model in used condition.
2. Take about 13% off each for marketplace fees, then subtract what it costs you to box and ship that item.
3. Value the case, power supply, cooler and fans at zero unless you have a local buyer. If they sell, treat it as a bonus.
4. Add up what is left. That is your realistic part-out figure.
5. Compare it with a whole-machine offer, such as the one our gaming PC form gives in about a minute. Then ask whether the gap is worth the hours and the risk.

When parting out wins

• A custom build with a recent high-end graphics card, an X3D processor, a current-socket motherboard and DDR5. Every major part has eager buyers.
• You can sell locally for cash, which removes fees and shipping.
• You already have the original boxes for the graphics card and motherboard.
• You have sold hardware before and have a seller rating.

When selling it whole wins

• Prebuilts with proprietary parts. The motherboard, power supply and case from an Alienware, HP Omen or Lenovo Legion do not fit standard builds, and their OEM graphics cards sell for less than retail versions. Parting one out leaves more unsellable pieces than usual. See our pages for Alienware, HP Omen and Lenovo Legion.
• Older machines. When the graphics card is worth $150 and the processor $60, fees and postage take a large share of each small sale.
• Compact and liquid-cooled systems. Machines such as the Corsair ONE use custom cooling that makes the parts hard to reuse.
• Faulty PCs. If you do not know which part has failed, you cannot honestly list any of them as working.
• You want it done. One box, one label, one payment.

How it works if you sell to us

RebootSemi prices a complete PC from its graphics card, processor, memory and storage, and pays about 10% more for the assembled machine than for the same parts sent in individually. There are no fees, shipping is prepaid and insured, and payment follows within 24 hours of inspection. A prebuilt with proprietary parts receives the same offer as a custom build with the same four components.

We also buy the parts separately, so the middle route is open too: sell the GPU, sell the CPU, sell the RAM or sell the SSD on its own and keep or recycle the rest. To see what complete builds pay today, read how much is my gaming PC worth.