Buy broken ps5 to fix ?

[eliotth]

GTA 6 is coming as you know and I want to have a ps5 to play it when it comes out I'm planning to buy one a year's time probably

 

But I saw a deal on a "broken" one and that got me thinking how hard are they to fix and troubleshoot idk how there built is the GPU CPU everything soldiered on and the motherboard is one piece? If so can't be that hard to find a spare to buy and put into the console. 

 

Idk educate me lol 

 

 

Thanks 

[MarkPol88]

If your name is TronicsFix - sure!

If not - probably not a good idea

 

More seriously - is is all soldered and no 3rd party debugging tools exist for common user. And pretty much no source of replacement parts - only used parts on the eBay and such sites.

[da na]

You could buy a new motherboard, sure, but at that point buying both the broken PS5 and new motherboard will be about the same price as a used (working) PS5...

[manikyath]

buying something broken without a clear idea of what is most likely wrong with it is essentially buying someone else's e-waste.

[Spotty]

Even if you have the skills and tools to repair it depending what is wrong with it some broken units may simply not be cost effective to repair. You might get lucky and find it just needs a replacement fan, or you might get unlucky and find that it needs a new mainboard.

I have a theory that the majority of the broken/parts only devices that end up on places like ebay are items that other people have tried repairing and already determined that it isn't worth the cost or time to repair hence why they're selling them as broken. If it was a cheap and easy fix they would have fixed it themselves and sold it as refurbished/working for a much higher price.

 

GTA VI won't release until 2025 (or later if it gets delayed). Just start putting away a little bit of cash and save up to buy the PS5 when GTA VI releases. Maybe you'll come across a good deal of somebody selling their working PS5 in that time or maybe retail price for the PS5 will come down a bit, holiday sales, price drop since the PS5 Slim was released, so on.... Maybe the PS6 will be out by the time GTA VI comes out.

[Lunar River]

1 hour ago, eliotth said:

how hard are they to fix and troubleshoot

entirely depends on what the broken part is. there is no way to answer just a broad question. "how long is a piece of string" comes to mind.

 

1 hour ago, eliotth said:

can't be that hard to find a spare to buy and put into the console.

hard? no. but again, it's a matter of what is broken.

 

honestly, just save up your money and buy a new one, or a working used one.

[Blue4130]

With the way tech depreciates in value, why the heck would you buy now for a game that isn't coming out for nearly 2 years?

[zaprqn]

Its not worth the risk, unless you buy it for like under 100$ and more importantly you can verify that it wasn't worked on previously, which mostly happens if you buy from someone you know.

 

Because a lot of people get the idea you have right now, watching all the videos on youtube of people fixing stuff and thinking it looks easy. And often you only see the success stories, and not the failures so it creates the perception of being easy. The problem with that is that when they buy it and start "experimenting" without knowing how to properly diagnose it they usually do more bad than good, and eventually reach that one person that thinks "well lets reflow the cpu, see if that works" and end up destroying beyond saving when it could have been fixed prior. And they do that with the knowledge that they can then just toss the hot potato to the next wanna be technician selling it "broken, as is, no refunds" and offload most of their losses.

 

So the chance of getting a "broken" console that has passed several people already and rendered unfixable is pretty high at this point, and this goes for GPUs and most tech in general, yes you can get lucky with something easy, but even a thing like a broken HDMI port requires some soldering skills and tools and if you don't know what you are doing you can end up ripping pads and components.

[Poinkachu]

Only if you have enough tools & knowledge, and the broken thing is cheap enough to atleast offset the cost or repair and parts.

[IkeaGnome]

11 hours ago, Poinkachu said:

Only if you have enough tools & knowledge, and the broken thing is cheap enough to atleast offset the cost or repair and parts.

This. I’ll very rarely buy anything broken/for parts unless it’s a seller I have worked with before that I know doesn’t try their own repairs or the cost makes sense to where it can just be a parts unit for other repairs. 
 

I’ve got a stack of Radeon VIIs in various stages of cracked dies/ other misc issues that make for good donor dies as I’ve got time.