Where and How to Sell a Gaming Laptop?

Have an old gaming laptop you no longer need? Is it just lying around your home or in the garage waiting to be used again?

If so, why not sell your gaming laptop for cash and make some money?

Many people look to buy used laptops for various reasons. People who don’t want to spend money on an expensive new laptop often look for good deals on online selling platforms for used laptops and other electronics. Students and families buying first laptops for their kids often look for lightly used computers and laptops. Novices in gaming also search for used gaming laptops to practice their skills. So too professionals like computer support specialists at the start of their careers. Practice on a used laptop and get a nice one when you know what you’re doing.

By selling your device to someone who needs one, not only will you get money out of it but good karma too. Plus, the money can even supplement your new tech purchase if you are looking for a fancier machine. Used gaming laptops in nice conditions and optimal performance can go as high as $700 – $1.000. Pretty amazing, huh?

So what are you waiting for?!

Keep reading to learn all the details on where and how you can sell a used gaming laptop.

Top 5 Sites to Sell Your Gaming Laptop

Below we list the top 5 best places to sell gaming laptops fast and for good cash. Choose the right option depending on your laptop’s model, condition, how quickly you want to sell it, and other factors.

1. eBay

With over 170 million active users, selling on this giant selling site is fast and worth it. But the speed of selling items is not the only reason for choosing it. There’s also the option to set a fixed or minimum bidding price and let those interested in buying it bid for it. The bidding might get you more than you would’ve sold it for.

Moreover, the platform is incredibly easy to use, making it much simpler for sellers to list products. And, there’s a handy feature for setting a fixed price if that’s how you’re leaning.

2. Amazon

Amazon is the largest online retailer in the world. Being the largest makes it perfect for selling old gaming laptops like the HP Pavilion Gaming 15 Dk Gtx 1650 Series. First, it gives you plenty of choices for buyers as people from all over the world go to Amazon for reliable online purchases. Second, selling on it is simple for sellers; especially if a laptop you want to sell has already been sold on the site. But even if it wasn’t, setting up an account and listing the product is easy.

3. Facebook Marketplace

Facebook Marketplace is a lot like Craigslist but more reliable and global. Unlike Craigslist where you often have to wait longer periods for someone to get interested in your product, Facebook Marketplace is more instantaneous and has a shorter sales cycle. Plus, buyers can pay directly on Facebook via PayPal and credit or debit cards if they and the seller agree.

4. Swappa

Swappa is similar to eBay as they have a strong and easy-to-use platform. What makes them great for selling used laptops and other tech devices is that they give you an estimated selling price. Also, they don’t charge any fees per sale. Sounds worth trying!

5. Gazelle

Gazelle is similar to both eBay and Swappa in terms of giving an estimated price for your used device. It’s great for those who want to sell their laptop fast. However, compared to Swappa, this one offers a lower estimated price. But they claim they cover the shipping and send a shipping box to you. The good thing about this company is that they also have drop-off kiosks (depending on the location), which means you don’t have to go through the hassle of shipping. How convenient!

BONUS

Sell your laptop to us!

If you don’t want to bother with listing your product, cleaning it, servicing it, then shipping it and paying additional fees to sites like eBay and Amazon, you can sell gaming laptops online for cash to us.

We accept all kinds of gaming laptops, either working or non-working. Even if you’re selling a gaming laptop with broken ports or parts, we’re happy to accept it. We have the experts to fix and refurbish these devices and make anew. Plus, rest assured that none of your data (although hard disks are formatted, files can be retrieved sometimes) will be misused or shared with someone else.

How to Sell Your Gaming Laptop?

So, we’ve covered all the things related to where can I sell my gaming laptop, now, it’s time to look at how to sell it. This part includes two sub-sections, one about what you need to do before you sell it and the other about how to list your product online.

Let’s check these out!

Prepare Your Used Gaming Laptop for Selling

Selling a gaming laptop, or any other type of laptop for that matter, isn’t just “format it, turn it off, and that’s all” kind of a process. On the contrary, there are several things you need to consider to protect your data privacy and make sure none of your data falls into someone else’s hands. The ideal way is to clear your gaming laptop before selling or recycling it.

Back-Up Your Data

First and foremost, you need to make sure all your data is transferred to another device, such as a USB drive or an external HDD, so you can still access it after erasing your laptop’s hard disk.

You can do that in three ways:

• Transfer to another computer – If you have another computer, you only need a cable to transfer your files, apps, and games.
• Transfer to an external device – If you don’t have another computer but still want the safety of storing your data locally, transfer all your files to an external device. You can use a USB drive or an external HDD, depending on the amount of space you need.
• Back up to the cloud – The process is extremely simple. Select all files/apps/games you want to back up and choose the cloud platform. Remember that the exact backup method may vary from one cloud service to another.

Back-Up Your Game Settings and Data

After you’ve backed up your regular data, it’s time to back up your game data and settings. This is crucial if you want to be able to play your games on the next laptop right from where you’ve left off. The specifics of game settings backup will differ across apps and game clients.

For instance, Steam, Origin, and other game clients automatically back up your settings and other data to their cloud service. Hence, you don’t need to back up anything manually.

However, if you want to check if everything is synched, follow these steps before you sell your gaming laptops like the Asus Rog Zephyrus G14 Gtx 1650:

• For Steam, go to Steam > Settings > Cloud > Enable Steam Cloud Synchronization for Applications that support it and ensure it’s checked.
• For the EPIC Games Store, go to Settings and check Enable Cloud Saves.
• For Origin, hover over your profile picture > Application Setting > Installs and Saves > toggle Saves on under Cloud Storage.

Sign Out and Remove Your Accounts from the Laptop

Every gamer must take this step before selling gaming laptops like the Alienware 15 R3 Gtx 1080 Series. You have to sign out from all the accounts and remove them from this device to ensure no one accesses your gaming profiles. This will also allow you to use your profile(s) from your new laptop without any issues or interruptions during the game, which happens if someone else logs in and uses your account.

Let’s see how to sign out from most common accounts.

Microsoft/Xbox account:

• Sign in to your Microsoft account, if you aren’t already.
• Devices menu > Your devices
• Look for your laptop
• Click the Remove link
• Click “I’m ready to remove this device” > Remove
• When the confirmation page appears, click Back to Devices.
• Sign out of your account.

Delete your Xbox profile:

• Settings > System > Storage > All Devices > Gamer Profiles.
• Select the gamer tag you want to delete and click Delete.
• Select one of these:
  • Delete Profile Only – if you want to delete your profile but keep the saved games and achievements.
  • Delete Profile – if you want to delete everything.

Steam account:

• Steam > Settings > Account > Manage Steam Guard Account Security > De-authorize all other devices now.
• Sign out from your account.

Origin:

• Control Panel > Programs > Uninstall a program > Origin > Uninstall.
• When the warning appears, click Uninstall

If you use other apps, you’ll have to follow the steps for their de-authorization before you sell used gaming laptops like Razer Blade 15 Intel Core I7 10th Gen Rtx 2060.

However, the process is the same: access your app account, remove/de-authorize your device, and sign out from the account.

Wipe Your Hard Disk

Apart from deleting the accounts (email, apps, games) you’ve used on your gaming laptop, you should also delete all your personal data. You can do this by resetting/ formatting your hard disk. How you do that, depends on the operating system it uses.

Windows 10:

• Start > Settings > Update and Security
• Recovery menu > Reset this PC > Get Started
• Click Remove Everything> Change settings > Turn on the Data erasure toggle switch.

If you have more drives, check the “Data drives” option to erase all drives. If you have an external device connected, detach it, and then click Confirm > Next > Reset.

Linux:

• Press CTRL + ALT + DEL or click Restart from the Start menu to restart your laptop.
• Press Esc, Shift, F11, or F12 during the startup to open the GRUB Recovery Mode.
• Select Restore Ubuntu (the OS version) to factory state.
• Click Restore Ubuntu partitions > Continue.
• When the resetting is complete, you’ll see the System Configuration screen.
• After the process is completed, choose your language and click Continue.

How to Prepare a Broken Gaming Laptop for Selling?

Ok, so we’ve covered the most important parts of how to ensure no one accesses your data. But, what if your laptop doesn’t work? Suppose you want to sell an MSI GE65 GtX 1660 Ti Series laptop, the things we’ve mentioned above don’t count when you can’t turn on your device.

You may probably think “If it doesn’t work, no one will be able to access the data”. Wrong! Your data is still there, on your hard disk, and it doesn’t matter that your laptop is broken because the hard disk isn’t. When a computer malfunctions, it has nothing to do with the hard disk but the motherboard or the power supply. And, these things can be replaced or fixed in some cases. Therefore, YES, anyone who knows how to do it, can access your data.

So, how can you prevent this from happening? How can you delete all data from your broken laptop before you can sell your gaming laptop?

There are 2 ways:

Remove the Hard Disk

If your laptop doesn’t work, you have to take out and connect it to another, working computer using a USB or SATA cable. Once you do this, just follow the steps we’ve already described above. However, this doesn’t guarantee that your data can’t be retrieved, which is why you need to use a third-party hard disk eraser app. Some of the most popular are DBAN, Kill Disk, and Eraser.

And while this works if you have an additional computer to connect the hard disk to, it doesn’t work if you don’t have one. In this case, you have to use a standalone hard disk eraser.

Use a Hard Disk Eraser

Let us tell you immediately that these standalone hard disk erasers are expensive. So, if you don’t service computers, it’s not worth investing in something you will use once or a couple of times in your life. Therefore, it’s better to borrow one from a friend if you want to do this yourself. Otherwise, you can simply take your laptop to a PC service and let them do the work for you.

But, if you want to do this yourself, either by buying an eraser or borrowing it, some of the best ones are Drive eRazer Ultra, Eraser Dock, and StarTech’s USB Hard Drive Duplicator. And, although it sounds complex, using this type of hardware is simple. It’s the easiest way to completely wipe the hard disk of your laptop.

Check Your Laptop

Now that we’ve covered all the technical stuff you need to do before you sell a gaming laptop, it’s time to look at the things you need to check.

Check the Display

The display is one of the first things a user notices on a device. That’s why you need to check to see if it’s ok. If there are some dead pixels, discolorations, scratches, blemishes, or other spots, know that some of these can’t be fixed. Take care of what you can and if they are minor scratches or blemishes, just let them be.

But make sure to mention them when you list the product for sale.

However, if these display issues affect the image or its quality, you can either replace the screen with a new one or sell the laptop at a much lower price, probably to a PC service or a person who services laptops.

If the screen has spots, dirt, and or other blemishes that can be removed, make sure you clean them well. You just need a wet wipe to clean them and make your gaming laptop look almost new.

Test the Hard Disk

The hard disk is the core of the laptop, so you must check it and test to see if it works well. Usually, you can hear a weird noise coming from the hard drive if it’s not working properly, especially if your laptop is older. However, it’s best to test it with an app like HDDScan, Seagate SeaTools, DiskCheckup, and similar.

Test the Memory

Speaking of the hard disk, you should also test its memory to know exactly how much free space your laptop has so that you can include that info in the listing. You can do this very easily on your own by using free apps like Memtest or the Windows memory diagnostic tool.

Test the Connections and the Ports

Laptops rely on Wi-Fi and Bluetooth as main connection methods. No laptop today functions without Wi-Fi since every user wants to be connected to the Internet, and this goes for gamers too. So, make sure you test these and other connections to see if they work properly.

Also, you need to check if the USB, audio, and video ports work. You can test them by plugging in an external device, like a USB or a cable to connect your laptop to a monitor.

Check the Charger and Test the Battery Life

These two things go hand in hand, so we have to mention them together here. After all, you can’t check if they both work unless you use them both. So, plug in your laptop to a power plug to check if the charger is working and the laptop is charging. Also, check if the power jack loses connection when you move the laptop around or not. And, if the battery or the charger doesn’t work, it’s best to replace it to get a higher price.

Delete the Passwords

These passwords have nothing to do with your accounts but refer to the passwords you’ve used for the BIOS and User/Administrator. If you don’t delete them, your laptop will be useless.

List Your Gaming Laptop

Regardless of which site you’ve chosen to sell your gaming laptop on, you should write a good product listing. It should include:

• Heading – containing the laptop’s name, series, and OS.
• Product description – containing all specifications, such as OS version, apps that it supports, gaming features and accessories (if there are any), and its condition.
• Good-quality photos from the laptop and its serial number.
• Shipping information – including that you ship only to confirmed addresses and don’t accept delivery trucks from the buyer.
• Shipping information – including that you ship only to confirmed addresses and don’t accept delivery trucks from the buyer.

Sell Your Gaming Laptop to Recycle If It Doesn’t Work

If you don’t feel like waiting for someone to get interested in your product or your laptop is broken, you can sell your gaming laptop to us for recycling or refurbishment. We accept laptops of all brands, types, and conditions. And, we pay a fair price based on the laptops’ type, performance, and condition.

Hence, you won’t have to create accounts on sites like eBay, read their seller guides, write a product listing, and wait for days, weeks, and even months for someone to buy it. You can simply contact us, let us know briefly about your laptop (but be honest!), and we’ll let you know about the price. If everything’s ok, we’ll take care of the rest!

Did we accept broken computers and pay you for them?! Yes, we do!

Plus, you don’t have to worry about your privacy because we ensure everything is wiped out and never restored.