10 Overpriced Used Gaming PC Ads You Shouldn’t Fall For

Whether it’s due to outdated knowledge about the latest PC components or a sheer lack of awareness about what their PC builds are worth, used gaming PC sellers sometimes post the most outrageous, hilarious, and downright predatory ads on sites like Craigslist and Facebook Marketplace. This article will cover just 10 of the hundreds of such overpriced ads for used gaming PCs.

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Someone actually put a price of $6,000 on this PC with a straight face. Sure, the build looks absolutely stunning and has top-of-the-line components, as the seller claims. But even an RTX 3090 and Ryzen 9 5900X gaming PC with a custom water cooling loop isn’t worth a staggering $6,000. Suprisingly, it’s much, much less than that.

Without the custom loop, this build will not be worth anything over $2,000. Once you consider the monoblock, distro plates, and all fittings required for the loop, the asking price shouldn’t cross $2,400-$2,500. So the seller is asking for at least double of what this used gaming PC is worth.

Just because a PC looks complex and high-end doesn’t always mean it’s worth what the seller is asking for, or even remotely close to that.

I really need to know where these people come up with these numbers. You might think that the price is justified when you see parts like the RTX 3080 Ti and Ryzen 9 7900X. But, even after adding the cost of one of the best CPU coolers, RAM, and storage, the build is nowhere in the vicinity of $5,000.

The RTX 3080 Ti is trumped by an $800 RTX 4070 Ti Super — and that’s the price for a new card. A used Ryzen 9 7900X should cost no more than $250. The RAM, storage, and CPU cooler are worth no more than $300 to $350 together. Even with the high-end gaming monitor, keyboard, mouse, wireless headphones, the quoted price is way too inflated.

At best, this setup should cost no more than $3,200, all-inclusive. For the same price, you can build a comparable machine with all-new components. That alone makes the ad hilariously stupid.

The seller here doesn’t even list the complete configuration of the PC. Except for the Ryzen 9 5950X and RTX 3080, you have absolutely no clue which parts make up this “insane” gaming PC. “32GB RAM” and “3TB+ storage” don’t really tell you much about the performance of the memory and storage.

Besides the lackluster description, the seller doesn’t even put in the effort to post decent images for buyers to get an idea of what they’re paying “$4,500” for. Based on the images and the likely parts used by CLX Gaming, I don’t think this should be worth any more than $1,200-$1,300. The seller is easily marking this up by at least $2,000 – ouch!

This outdated “gaming” PC is probably the worst entry on this list. The Intel Xeon Silver 4215 processor (from 2019) and Radeon VII (2019) & Radeon VII Pro (2020) graphics cards are professional, server-grade parts that wouldn’t be considered high-end even in their prime. Besides, the seller is clearly misleading the buyers by positioning this HP Z8 G4 workstation as a gaming PC.

The Radeon VII Pro workstation graphics card is equivalent to an RTX 2060 or Radeon RX 5700 at best. Plus, the Xeon chip in this workstation is only a 2.50 GHz, dual-core processor. The only “epic” aspect of this PC is the 128GB RAM (that too is only DDR4 2666 MT/s).

You can easily find refurbished workstation PCs with these specs for around $1,400-$1,500. Or you can buy this “EPIC Desktop” for a reasonable $4,000 — your choice.

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The asking price for this RTX 4070 Ti and Intel i9-13900K gaming PC is soaring in the stratosphere. To the seller’s credit, there are no hilarious statements here, and the description is exhaustive. Plus, the RTX 4070 Ti is one of the best graphics cards you can buy today. But for a used PC with the listed specs, the price quoted should have been way lower.

The processor and graphics card together are worth only around $1,000. The 28″ 4K monitor and the rest of the parts together can add up to $700-$800 to the cost, but that’s about it. Essentially, this gaming PC is worth only $2,000 and the seller is asking for double the amount. I don’t think slashing the price by half would be something they’d be able to stomach.

This seller is trying to sell off a clearly overused and underpowered PC for way more than it’s worth. But reading the ad description, you’d think they’re giving you a bargain for a Ryzen 5 2600X and RTX 4060 Ti. The 26GB (somehow) of DDR4 RAM, ramshackle gaming chair, dual monitors, and spare motherboard can’t save the deal from being a total scam.

This streaming setup also includes a microphone, webcam, headset, mouse, and keyboard, but even after adding the current value of all of these extras, you’d find it hard to value this build over $1,500. And that’s even if you wanted everything that’s being offered. The worst part about this ad is the blatant lie that “the graphics card alone is worth $1,200.”

I think this seller thinks they can get back every penny they spent buying this Ryzen 9 5900X and RTX 3070 PC. The CPU and graphics card here are decent, but the rest of the choices in this build are just a mess. That’s not how you build a gaming PC. There’s no SSD, the 32GB RAM is only 3,200 MT/s, and the second monitor looks like a cheap 60Hz Acer model.

Pricing it out, I don’t think anyone should pay more than $1,200-$1,300 for this setup, and that’s me being generous. For that money, you can build a much more powerful system today — all new and with full warranty. The trend of sellers inflating the price of their gaming PCs by 100% or even more is both funny and frustrating.

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Some gaming PCs have high-end specs, others have great aesthetics, and yet others are value-for-money builds. This gaming PC is none of those things. Rocking an Intel i5-11400 and RTX 3060 (VRAM unknown), this PC is shrouded in mystery. The seller makes no efforts to describe the specs in detail, or even offer a decent look at the PC.

There’s 16GB of unknown RAM, a cryptic 512GB SSD, and dual 165Hz gaming monitors. The 24-inch monitors are far from enough to raise the price of this setup to $2,000. The Blue Yeti mic and Razer keyboard and mouse are good extras to have, but can hardly convince someone to shell out two grand for this underpowered and unimpressive PC.

The seller’s claim that the PC can handle “any AAA title with no problem” makes me question my entire PC building career.

This one is a bit different. It looks cool, feels pretty high-end, and the seller claims to be an expert builder. But, the price is yet again not justified. The Ryzen 9 7900X, RTX 3080, and the open-style Thermaltake case with “liquid cooling” can’t magically propel the value of the PC to $2,000.

There are no details on the motherboard, 32GB RAM, or 1TB SSD — no chipset, manufacturer, frequency, latency, or PCIe generation are specified. You can bet the seller would have mentioned those things if they were impressive. Even the graphics card model is unknown. No one should be paying over $1,200-$1,300 for this thing, let alone $1,950.

Seemingly from the same seller as the above entry, this “water cooling” gaming PC is apparently worth $1,700. Some people might be impressed enough by the RGB lighting, clean aesthetics, and neat cable management to believe that, but you shouldn’t. The Intel i9-11900 and AMD RX 6800 are not new parts at all, and certainly not powerful enough to command this price.

This time, the seller does specify the RAM speed but it’s just a 32GB, 3600 MT/s DDR4 kit. The 1TB NVMe SSD is not clear in the images, and there’s no info on the motherboard, case, or power supply either. At best, I’d be willing to pay a little over $1,000 for this build, everything considered. The 60-70% markup by the seller is just baffling.

The cost of gaming PCs can easily get out of hand, especially when you’re building a custom PC. But, people often tend to overprice their PCs when it comes time to sell them. You should always examine every used gaming PC ad closely and price it out to assess the quoted price. And if you’re building a new PC, there are some gaming PC building mistakes to avoid.

Image credit: Unsplash. All product photos via Craigslist.

After a 7-year corporate stint, Tanveer found his love for writing and tech too much to resist. An MBA in Marketing and the owner of a PC building business, he writes on PC hardware, technology, video games, and Windows. When not scouring the web for ideas, he can be found building PCs, watching anime, or playing Smash Karts on his RTX 3080 (sigh).