would you buy "loose" (tray) cpus?

[zassou]

so i just learned that, in southeast asia and some other parts of the world, small retailers often sell tray chips with a hefty discount. no box, no cooler, sometimes even no warranty ("no refunds after powered on").

some told me they call it "loose" cpu, as in loose leaves vs tea bags. these small sellers often bundle them with high end motherboards for a better profit margin, even tho sometimes it will make no sense at all.

 

for instance, some bundle a ryzen 5 3600 chip with an x570 board, personally i dont think people who buy 6 core would want pcie 4.0.

the point is they could sell the chip at a loss, and with high end boards comes with bigger margin, even it's slightly discounted, they can still regain some profit out of it.

often than not these sellers will be very unhappy if you ask them to sell you a single chip, or break up a bundle, like bundling a r9 3900x with a x470 board(which makes total sense). but if you insist, they will probably do it anyways.

 

in these parts of the world, often than not, retail box chips cost way higher than it should.

for example: the r9 3900x chip costs 420 usd in the us (newegg), but in my area, it cost as high as 500 usd, and it's sticker price on the biggest etailer, it will be much higher in brick-and-mortar stores, if they still exist at all.

 

if these sellers exist in your area, and box cpus do cost a fortune, will you take the risk and buy these "loose" chips?

[atxcyclist]

I bought an AMD K6-2 350mhz (back when those were new) in a broken-off section of the tray from a local shop, it worked fine. 

[GDRRiley]

tray chips are super common. I've though about tray.

intels K chips are basically a tray chip.

[zassou]

13 minutes ago, GDRRiley said:

tray chips are super common. I've though about tray.

intels K chips are basically a tray chip.

i really dont know how other places work tho, i only bought boxed cpus before. isn't it you have to order a real tray of chips (1000)? or you can buy retail tray cpus in your place?

 

and if you buy a threadripper, what if they dont give you the protective packaging and that rachet screw driver?

[GDRRiley]

1 hour ago, zassou said:

i really dont know how other places work tho, i only bought boxed cpus before. isn't it you have to order a real tray of chips (1000)? or you can buy retail tray cpus in your place?

 

and if you buy a threadripper, what if they dont give you the protective packaging and that rachet screw driver?

true tray chips would be sent in a tray. retail tray cpus are an option for some chips

[toasty99]

Yeah there's nothing wrong with tray chips if the seller is reliable. It's just a CPU without a box sold to OEMs. No different in any other way. 

 

The biggest risk is you might get sold a "new" tray chip that has been used before but even then as long as it works that's probably not a big deal. 

 

eBay sides with the buyer in so many cases that the high volume sellers do have to be mostly honest. 

 

I personally use an Xeon E5 1660 V3 QS I bought off eBay. The seller sold it clearly stating that the memory controller was bad and only half the ram slots would work which wound up being true. I was only using 2 of 8 possible sticks anyways so no big deal. Been using it a bit over 3 months at 4.5ghz without issues. 

 

CPUs actually "dying" normally require something stupid to happen like constant insane overheating, dropping them, or setting crazy high voltages when overclocking. 

[zassou]

1 hour ago, NZgamer said:

Unfortunately all the retailers in my area do not sell tray chips. I would have bought one when building my system if I could have. But, I still love my brand new 3200G.

totally

 

im thinking about upgrading my rig to r9 3900x with some serious ddr4 sticks. going back for a x470 board with solid power delivery. (is there any b450 board with overkill power too?)

but yeah, the price difference, if it exists, enough for a motherboard.