What it is actually worth

How it is calculated. The starting prices are new prices, read on 2 September 2026 from Romanian shops and price comparison sites (price.ro, forit.ro, smart-pc.ro, compara.ro, compari.ro, shopmania.ro). Wear is subtracted from them, with a different percentage per category. Where we found real second-hand listings, we use that price directly, not the calculation. On 8 October 2026 the lists of motherboards, memory, SSDs, hard disks, power supplies, cases and coolers were extended with the most searched models on price.ro, at the lowest price shown there that day.

How reliable it is. The wear percentages are calibrated on real OLX listings for graphics cards, processors, motherboards, memory, SSDs, cases and coolers. They remain assumed for power supplies and mechanical hard disks, where we could not reach listings. Even the calibrated ones rest on small samples, from a single day, and on asking prices, not on prices things actually sold for. DDR5 memory has its own, smaller percentage, because the new price went up several times in 2026 and the second-hand market has not caught up: whoever sells a kit bought before the price hike asks roughly what they paid for it. There the figure is a stated judgement, not a measurement. That is why you see a range, not an exact figure. It is a starting point for negotiation, not an appraisal.

Why it asks about age. The same part at one year and at seven years is not worth the same money, and parts do not age alike. A computer is not one piece either: you swap the graphics card, add memory, and the case is from 2018. That is why the buttons above are only the starting point, and under each chosen part its own age appears, which you can set separately. Where we know which platform a part belongs to (the CPU socket, the motherboard chipset, the graphics card series, DDR4 or DDR5, the SSD's PCIe generation), the impossible steps are greyed out: an AM5 processor cannot be over five years old, whatever you select. Power supplies, cases, coolers and hard disks have no such reference in the data, so there we take your word for it. Memory practically does not wear, the processor even less. A power supply has capacitors that dry out, a hard disk has moving parts and running hours, and the pump of a liquid cooler dies in five to seven years. Each category therefore has its own curve, and liquid coolers have theirs, separate from air coolers. The middle step, 2 to 5 years, is the one we measured: that is where the listings sit. The ends are our judgement, made from how each part wears, not from listings. However new it is, a part does not exceed 80% of its new price.

When the price comes from listings, we take the median, not the average, and drop listings that do not sell the same part: processor plus motherboard bundles, lots, faulty parts. The median holds up better to one silly listing.