What is the worst tech advice you've ever recieved?

[Vishera]

2 hours ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

What motherboard is that? That's not what it should be doing.

It's a Gigabyte B450 Aorus Elite.

[King of Memes]

20 hours ago, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Yeah. Aios don't buy used.

 

But anything solid state (ssd, ram, things like that) and silicon (gpus and CPUs) are great used buys.

cases would also be good to buy used, but they cost a lot to ship, so it usually isn't worth it unless you can maybe do a local pickup.

[dean_5234]

1 minute ago, King of Memes said:

cases would also be good to buy used, but they cost a lot to ship, so it usually isn't worth it unless you can maybe do a local pickup.

eh, unless its a really good deal i find that most cases are really cheap at some point on a sale. there are so many cheap options i personally dont find it worthwhile. however, i have once seen an 011dynamic used for 40 dollars. that was insane

[King of Memes]

1 minute ago, davemc said:

eh, unless its a really good deal i find that most cases are really cheap at some point on a sale. there are so many cheap options i personally dont find it worthwhile. however, i have once seen an 011dynamic used for 40 dollars. that was insane

yes, but id do local pickup for cases, cause shipping the 011 would cost a bit

[CerealExperimentsLain]

Just now, davemc said:

eh, unless its a really good deal i find that most cases are really cheap at some point on a sale. there are so many cheap options i personally dont find it worthwhile. however, i have once seen an 011dynamic used for 40 dollars. that was insane

I have to say, unless the case is specific to your needs or special, yeah, you can get 'A box' pretty affordably.  I couldn't imagine selling a used case for more than $20-$40 depending on the model of course.

[Kisai]

On 5/8/2021 at 2:26 PM, HelpfulTechWizard said:

Yeah. Aios don't buy used.

 

But anything solid state (ssd, ram, things like that) and silicon (gpus and CPUs) are great used buys.

 

Nah. Usually advice to buy used is often packaged with unhelpful reasons that are relative to the user's customer service experience rather than the technical experience.

 

The way to decide if something used should be purchased, is by looking at the original warranty. If it has an unlimited warranty (many RAM modules do), then buying used is perfectly fine. Most parts do not, and will have a warranty between 3 months and 3 years. SSD's I would never buy used because they can be significantly worn out. Any other drive should look at the SMART data to make a determination. Like you can have drives with 10 years worth of spin up time that are perfectly fine, and also drives that have 1000's of spin-up/down cycles because of aggressive power management that are in a worse condition after 3 months than that 10 year old drive.

 

If a part has a heatsink and fan on it, it's probably isn't a safe buy, so usually the Motherboards are OK but the higher-end CPU's are not, unless you're looking for a piecemeal upgrade/crossgrade. Like moving from an i3 to an i7 on the same motherboard with an after-market cooler you already have is a better option than getting a bare CPU and using the existing factory cooler from the i3.

 

So if a part only had a factory warranty of 3 months (90 days), that is a red flag that the part is highly disposable, and should not demand an above-retail price in any situation. If the warranty has already expired, then it should be below retail price (usually anything used (as in "open box" (store return)) demands at least a discount off the retail price.)

 

Then there is vintage hardware.

 

Most vintage computer hardware is worth 0$. There are a couple parts that this doesn't apply to because the original part was expensive and rare in the first place (such as the Roland MT-32) and has a dual-purpose (music and computer music), but most cheap parts were produced in such high quantities that the cost should reflect a little more than the shipping cost. Sometimes "secret secondary use" parts demand a higher price because they are useful for making backups or making recordings from, where emulating the hardware doesn't quite achieve perfect input. Such examples include vintage ISA and PCI VGA cards that have functionality (eg s3 virge, 3dfx, reelmagic mpeg) that is either unemulated or the emulation is a poor experience.

 

[Andreas Lilja]

Recommendations back then to clean and/or compress the registry. Snake oil.