Is it dangerous to purchase a graphics card off craigslist

[cadabri]

Hello. Other than the inherent risk of it just being broken, would it be possible to, as stupid as it sounds, get like a virus or something? Or somehow break your system otherwise? There is a EVGA 980 sc listed for 250 and I was of course interested in it.

 

Also, would there be any problem running this with a 980 from a different brand?

[blu4]

You can't get a virus from plugging in a GPU. It can't break your system unless it starts burning and takes out your PC with it

[Orangeator]

1 minute ago, cadabri said:

Hello. Other than the inherent risk of it just being broken, would it be possible to, as stupid as it sounds, get like a virus or something? Or somehow break your system otherwise? There is a EVGA 980 sc listed for 250 and I was of course interested in it.

Okay there is nothing wrong with purchasing used hardware from Craigslist. Just meet up with the guy at a public place and inspect the card. Make sure nothing is wrong with it. Have his contact number and when you bring it home immediately test it and see if it works. If everything is A-okay then you just made a great investment.

[SuperShermanTanker]

as long as its not a hard drive you have no risk of getting a virus and as long as your power supply is a high enough wattage for the card you want you should be good to go

[cadabri]

1 minute ago, Orangeator said:

Okay there is nothing wrong with purchasing used hardware from Craigslist. Just meet up with the guy at a public place and inspect the card. Make sure nothing is wrong with it. Have his contact number and when you bring it home immediately test it and see if it works. If everything is A-okay then you just made a great investment.

Yeah, he said he would have it plugged in to look at it, and I wont be going alone 

[cadabri]

1 minute ago, SuperShermanTanker said:

as long as its not a hard drive you have no risk of getting a virus and as long as your power supply is a high enough wattage for the card you want you should be good to go

Yeah, that is what I just recently realized, just started plugging it in to estimate the power

[nullbot]

Graphics cards don't come with any storage on them, the only thing you would have to worry about is downloading a faulty software driver for it to run with your system (which I have never heard of happening, but there's always the possibility) 

However, that inherent risk of it being broken is not only likely, but there goes $250 if it is. I guess I still can't say for sure since I've always bought new, but I've heard many horror stories of craigslist. 

[blu4]

2 minutes ago, Orangeator said:

Okay there is nothing wrong with purchasing used hardware from Craigslist. Just meet up with the guy at a public place and inspect the card. Make sure nothing is wrong with it. Have his contact number and when you bring it home immediately test it and see if it works. If everything is A-okay then you just made a great investment.

Inspect the card? Visually? When someone sells a GPU he needs to be prepared to show it in action.

[Orangeator]

Just now, cadabri said:

Yeah, he said he would have it plugged in to look at it, and I wont be going alone 

Yeah never go alone, always bring a friend. Just use common sense you will be alright.

[Goldensapling]

1 minute ago, cadabri said:

Yeah, he said he would have it plugged in to look at it, and I wont be going alone 

Then I don't see the issue here. Go ahead man, great card for extremely cheap

[DevilishBooster]

It could be dangerous. Dangerously AWESOME (if you get a killer deal)

Seriously though, no, you can't get a virus from a GPU.

I mean, yeah technically you probably could, but that would require someone having the knowledge and drive to actually write the coding to put the virus into the GPU's firmware in a way that it could somehow be read and applied to the system storage memory, but that would be idiotic IMO.

[Orangeator]

5 minutes ago, blu4 said:

Inspect the card? Visually? When someone sells a GPU he needs to be prepared to show it in action.

Well in my case I have bought only one used GPU before and the guy lived a good ways away. So he drove half and I drove half way to meet up with him at a McDonald's. I got him to take/bring a video of the card serial number and watch it run a stress test. Then I inspected it visually and gave him the cash. Always inspect it visually. There could be a faulty fan or something physically broken.

[Rob27shred]

No, there is no risk of messing your PC up with a used component. That said Craig's list is a fairly shady market with plenty of scammers on it.Getting ripped off would be the biggest risk of buying something off of CL IMO. You just have to use common sense & technical questions to determine if the deal you are interested in is legit or a scam. Good rule of thumb is, if the deal sounds too good too be true is most likely is.