Advice on buying used hardware?

[Thedreadlord]

I'm trying to scrap off by looking at old and used hardware. However some of these look really sketchy. Like different color, little burned or even yellow. 

 

Even when they look completely normal. It's not possible to test it at the exchange spot to know if it's legit or not.

 

And also a side question. Which performance improvements matter the most when it comes to CPU?

[Vishera]

56 minutes ago, Caroline said:

If it's gonna be for daily use my rules are no used power supplies or graphics cards.

 

My HD 6970 is used and it works like brand new and even overclocks very nicely.

The ways i determine whether the sellers lies or tell the truth are:

1.Bad reviews do a pretty good job in outlining issues .

2.Is it a business or a private person selling stuff it doesn't need?

Sellers that sell a lot of things generally more likely to last less compared to people that sell small amount of stuff.

The guy that sold me the HD 6970 is a very nice German guy with 100% positive reviews.

[whm1974]

I would only buy Refurbished Notebooks online. Or maybe the same with Rigs, but in either case it cannot so old to be entirely useless...

[Thedreadlord]

1 hour ago, Vishera said:

My HD 6970 is used and it works like brand new and even overclocks very nicely.

The ways i determine whether the sellers lies or tell the truth are:

1.Bad reviews do a pretty good job in outlining issues .

2.Is it a business or a private person selling stuff it doesn't need?

Sellers that sell a lot of things generally more likely to last less compared to people that sell small amount of stuff.

The guy that sold me the HD 6970 is a very nice German guy with 100% positive reviews.

What are the chances the cpu will contain hazardous element's? If the cpu is from 2010. And There's some chemical reaction to time. I'm kinda scared to plug that into power. 

 

2 hours ago, Caroline said:

If it's gonna be for daily use my rules are no used power supplies or graphics cards.

 

what's "different color"? green, red or blue PCBs? those are normal in older/not gaming parts

little burned is def a red flag unless the item is listed as broken/for parts only and super cheap

 

UNTESTED parts should be sold like that, if I get a monitor for $5 because it's untested the odds of it working are... slim to none, and I know I'll have to work on it, but I paid $5 for it and know how to fix it.

 

yellow-ish tones are common in old cases, monitors, keyboards and other things made out of plastic, that can be fixed with some chemicals though, those items should be cheaper than similar in better condition or NOS

 

Mainly IPC but it depends on what kind of workloads you'll throw at the chip, multicore is also important. If you're looking at older CPUs then instruction sets will matter as well, sometimes certain OS or software won't install or work without a specific set, it's not a performance improvement though.

IPC for programming. Multicore for photo and video editing. 

[Vishera]

9 minutes ago, Thedreadlord said:

What are the chances the cpu will contain hazardous element's? If the cpu is from 2010. And There's some chemical reaction to time. I'm kinda scared to plug that into power. 

The chance is 0%,unless you put acid or water on it...

 

If the CPU looks fine then you don't have to worry about it.

The CPU is made of fiber glass,silicon,copper and nickel plated copper - All of those materials will stay pretty much the same chemically as they were new and are safe.

It may have degradation but if it passes 1 hour of Prime95 Small FFTs then it's fine and within spec.

[Thedreadlord]

11 minutes ago, Vishera said:

The chance is 0%,unless you put acid or water on it...

 

If the CPU looks fine then you don't have to worry about it.

The CPU is made of fiber glass,silicon,copper and nickel plated copper - All of those materials will stay pretty much the same chemically as they were new and are safe.

It may have degradation but if it passes 1 hour of Prime95 Small FFTs then it's fine and within spec.

Okay thanks.

[Vishera]

1 hour ago, Caroline said:

And remember:

And i will add one of my own: Every wire can turn into a light bulb if the current is high enough.

After all incandescent light bulbs are just red hot wires

[Dundee]

The only thing I would definatly avoid buying used are electronics with batteries. Unless the seller can prove that the battery is still relatively good capacity, it would be a pain when you buy it and find out the batteries lifespan is trash. 

[8tg]

I speak as someone who almost exclusively bought used everything for years. Dozens of completed systems, 50+ individual video cards, tons of most other components.

Beyond just the normal criteria of researching the seller, fully reading the details of the listing, and comparing price options, there are some things that are almost always a safe buy and some things which you should never buy used, as well as stuff that varies in a lot more specific situations.

 

Processors are almost always fine to buy used, they don’t really “degrade” in the conventional sense in any reasonable timeframe to use them. Generally avoid stupidly high wattage processors like an FX9590 or something just because the number one killer of components is heat cycles.

 

This also applies to gpus to an extent, gpus you really want to see what condition the card is in when they’re selling it. If they bothered to clean the thing spotless, they took care of that hardware 9/10 times because they’re not dumb people. “But Gwyn, how does cleaning a gpu make someone not a complete idiot?” you may ask.

You’ll see a lot of listings for computer parts that are still super dusty and nasty, and those people didn’t even think enough that they should brush the damn things off before publicly listing them, they absolutely do not have the mental capacity to have ever cleaned their hardware while they were using it. Don’t buy anything dirty.

Read the full details, if they repasted it or something they probably know more about it’s condition than the average user.

And never buy anything that was known for being a housefire. IE don’t buy a used R9 Fury X with an AIO because they tended to run at 90c+ all the time. Don’t buy a GTX 480 with a dusty blower cooler because that card probably rivaled the surface of the sun at some point.

Super common lower wattage gpus that weren’t common for mining are usually safe buys. Think 750ti, 970, 1060, etc.

 

Ram is always a safe buy, ram failure is stupidly rare, it happens but I’ve encountered a DOA used stick of DDR3 once over maybe 30+ kits of ram ordered.

 

Never buy used storage drives. Drives are one of the more failure prone components in a pc, especially mechanical drives or older SSDs. They’re so cheap these days it’s just never worth buying a used drive anyway. The biggest issue is that most people will never show you a power time on or cycle count of their used drives because they probably don’t know what that is. Drives have a finite life span, they don’t last forever. I personally consider them almost “consumable” in a long term pc build since you’re gonna want to replace them after some point simply because they’re old and it’s not worth risking your data.

 

Motherboards are a mixed bag, look for boards that were high end or super low end options from their respective time. Buying the cheapest possible Z170 board and having to deal with the second hand god awful VRM cooling that someone beat to death with a 5.2ghz 7700K OC for years is just asking for trouble.

Either buy into board options that wouldn’t have ever worked outside of their normal operating conditions, or get a super high end board someone took care of.

 

Coolers and cases have the same criteria as any item when it comes to “is it clean”. If the seller didn’t bother to clean it, they probably never took care of it.

 

Never buy a used power supply, it’s just not worth it ever. Half of what you’re paying for with any PSU is it’s warranty, you won’t have that with a used model. For the price of the average used psu you should just spend the extra money and buy a new one you don’t have to worry about. Power supplies are another component prone to failure, it’s pretty rare, but it gets a lot more common the worse that component is treated. You don’t know how that psu was handled before you had it, if it spent it’s whole life coated in cat hair it’s likely not holding up too well having been hot as balls all the time.

 

Never buy used peripherals unless you’re looking at high end business monitors.