I Got Scammed Out of My $1000 Rig.

What I lost.

Recently I figured I needed a laptop for work, be it working at my grandma's club or as an IT professional, I knew I needed something portable, so I decided to trade my $1000 machine for a good laptop. After looking around on Facebook marketplace, I found one that seemed quite interesting. The advert specified an i7 and a GTX 1050Ti. That was lower end than my PC, but considering that laptops usually cost more, I felt that it was an interesting proposition and went ahead with the trade.
At first the seller refused, that was until I offered him my monitor for sale at a fraction of the cost I bought it for ($200).

The trade happened, and a couple of days later I had the laptop in my hand.

First Sign of Trouble

The specs were a complete lie, the laptop was running an i5 and a GTX 1050 non-Ti variant. I brought this up with the seller and he said he got confused and wrote out the wrong specs. I kept "pestering" him about it, but to no avail. I eventually gave up and decided to just use the laptop as is...

It Gets Worse

I kept using it and I was actually having a good experience. That was until the screen started to glitch out. After some testing I assumed it was just a flat cable issue and something I could fix later on. But then the laptop simply stopped working.
Would not turn on, nothing I did helped. Brought it in to a repair shop, the whole motherboard was dead - and the repair cost more than a brand new laptop.
At this point I reached out back to the seller, where he stated that 'my computer was not worth as much as the laptop so he'd be keeping it and would not pay for the monitor', he said he had no idea the laptop had a defect and therefore it was not his problem.
I got blocked.

So now I had this piece of junk lying about, I decided to sell it for parts and move on with my life.
I'm still holding back tears, it's really hard to know I'll never have that PC again. I worked really hard to buy it a midst the pandemic where prices were even more expensive. It's hard not to cry.

I'm not without a computer, but I am without a good one. One where I could do video editing, programming, gaming, and much more.
I'm having to do things with a $40 PC my dad bought for me that's running ancient (but sealed, at least) parts.

I don't know when I'll be able to afford another powerful computer, my focus right now is on making this one better.
First I need a new PSU, then a GPU and maybe a CPU upgrade later down the line - after that I plan on selling this and going for a Ryzen build and just sticking to integrated graphics. I can't spend much though, as I only make $10 per week.
Overall, this is a really terrible situation and I hope no one has to go through the bullshit I went through. Be careful on your deals online kids, else you may be as stupid as I was.

This is my current setup. It looks kinda nice from the outside, but the insides... Oh boy. It's an old motherboard that can't even do SATA 3 speeds, running an i5-2310 with 8GBs of single channel RAM.
The consolation is it has an SSD, I guess.

The few things I can run on it, have to run at 720p, even simple games like Sonic Mania or Celeste.

And the "monitor" is this broken TV with lines running across it. Nothing compared to my 180hz monitor. Just seeing the lines make me eyes swell up with tears remembering what I had.

I'll forever miss this rig. Who knows what's being done with it now. It was powerful, it was pretty and I was stupid.
Who knows how long will it take for me to get a new one? I'm still looking for a fixed job, but for now I'll have to be content with the measly $10 a week I'm getting and just saving up to maybe make this thing a little more tolerable. Tolerable enough to where Steam doesn't lag on the library screen.

It's a bloody tragedy, that's what it is.