Opinion on refurbished products in general.

[Tairetsu]

What do you think? I don't have much experience with them personally, but what about you? have you purchased them before? have they turned out fine?

 

What's your general opinion on them? does it depend on the type of product? is it worth the risk for the, often big, savings? 

[jhurst117]

more of a gamble than the lottery itself and almost never come with great warranties or warranties at all you know you are getting something that didnt work at some point just general worries but hey their generally cheaper

[StevenSensei]

Depends on the product and the price I suppose. Years back I had a palm pilot that broke. Good warranty replacement from the company, they sent me a refurbished model. Had a little scratch in the finish but it worked great for years. In general the idea of refurbished is simply an item that was RMA and then inspected and repaired to like new condition. Would I buy a refurbished motherboard...probably not. Refurb phone....perhaps. Headphones, sure.  

[alright_MEATBAGS]

Typically refurbished products such as graphics cards, power supplies, or even cases are usually quite good and very close to new in box parts. I would avoid refurbished hard drives and motherboards as those seem to be finicky ( such as once it has broken it doesn't want to be fixed kinda thing). I have used both a refurbished power supply and graphics card in builds and those parts are still running today with no problems. In fact the only issue I've ever had has been with refurbished mechanical drives (every one I've ever purchased has been faulty). Just offering some insight from experience.

[Tairetsu]

2 minutes ago, VOLUNTEERbrowncoat said:

Typically refurbished products such as graphics cards, power supplies, or even cases are usually quite good and very close to new in box parts. I would avoid refurbished hard drives and motherboards as those seem to be finicky ( such as once it has broken it doesn't want to be fixed kinda thing). I have used both a refurbished power supply and graphics card in builds and those parts are still running today with no problems. In fact the only issue I've ever had has been with refurbished mechanical drives (every one I've ever purchased has been faulty). Just offering some insight from experience.

Makes sense, the more complex a product is, the hardest it is to repair. 

[adams]

3 minutes ago, VOLUNTEERbrowncoat said:

Typically refurbished products such as graphics cards, power supplies, or even cases are usually quite good and very close to new in box parts. I would avoid refurbished hard drives and motherboards as those seem to be finicky ( such as once it has broken it doesn't want to be fixed kinda thing). I have used both a refurbished power supply and graphics card in builds and those parts are still running today with no problems. In fact the only issue I've ever had has been with refurbished mechanical drives (every one I've ever purchased has been faulty). Just offering some insight from experience.

building up on this, but also disagreeing, refurbished power supplies i wouldn't trust, since they can blow up your whole pc

[alright_MEATBAGS]

3 minutes ago, adams said:

building up on this, but also disagreeing, refurbished power supplies i wouldn't trust, since they can blow up your whole pc

That is definitely the concern when buying refurbished products. That can also happen when buying new power supplies, (hence, where the refurbished ones come from). Usually if you buy a refurb from a reputable manufacturer such as corsair or evga, the product has been thoroughly tested and come with some sort of warranty. I know evga will warranty some refurbished components for a year.

[wolfsbane3083]

I got a refurbed GTX 780 back from EVGA a few weeks ago, looks brand spanking new and is rock solid stable, even the el-cheapo Elpida ram (which I though was a downgrade at first) clocks to 7Ghz..

[Dredgy]

Refurbished products here tend to come with at least a year warranty

 

While I wouldn't buy refurbished critical hardware (motherboards, CPUs, RAM, storage) I have bought refurbished peripherals, headphones and camera gear.

[Tairetsu]

1 minute ago, Dredgy said:

Refurbished products here tend to come with at least a year warranty

 

While I wouldn't buy refurbished critical hardware (motherboards, CPUs, RAM, storage) I have bought refurbished peripherals, headphones and camera gear.

Have they worked fine? 

[Dredgy]

Just now, Tairetsu said:

Have they worked fine? 

 

Yea never had an issue.With the headphones in particular - the new ones I bought failed and the product was then discontinued so I got a refund. Then bought a refurbished pair at half the price, and 2.5 years later, they're going strong.

[Tairetsu]

2 minutes ago, Dredgy said:

 

Yea never had an issue.With the headphones in particular - the new ones I bought failed and the product was then discontinued so I got a refund. Then bought a refurbished pair at half the price, and 2.5 years later, they're going strong.

Very interesting, it does seem like peripherals are the best things for this from everyone's comments. 

[Gazereths]

As has been said I'd stay away from refurbished stuff that can damage other components like PSU's, AIO water coolers etc. I've had a few refurb hard drives and they were temperamental at best. Ram either works or not in my experience, I've used plenty of second hand ram with no problems, just stay away from anything that says 'for AMD only' or states that it's for a specific motherboard, it's usually crap from China/HK that has only been tested minimally if at all.

[aisle9]

If the OEM did the refurb work, sure. If Philip's Electronics employees tossed a warrantied-out laptop up on a workbench, got it to the point where it was stable enough to reinstall the OS and wipe the HDD, then put the thing on the sales floor as a refurb...no thanks.

[scottyseng]

1 hour ago, Tairetsu said:

-snip-

I've bought refurbished components, so far motherboard and CPUs are okay. The refurbished Corsair AIO coolers are good too (Installed two so far, no issues).

 

However, I would stay away from refurbished PSUs, SSDs, and Hard Drives. Those are kind of sketchy. I bought two refurbished Corsair AX860i PSUs from Newegg, and you can see my review here (Scotty S.):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16817139130

 

It was a nightmare...took two RMAs, the PCs were unstable as hell (Would shut down after 5 min...or up to 4 hours), I lost a lot of time and labor having to redo work due to power loss / had to reinstall Windows because it turned unstable from way too many hard shutdown from the PSUs, and I had to do express RMA because once you change over to Corsair PSU's cables, you're kind of stuck having to either unwire the whole PC and rewire it with your existing PSU, or pay up the temp credit to do express RMA. It did give me to appreciate the advice of others and getting a RAID card with a onboard battery backup...my poor LSI MegaRAID 9260-8i got a workout having to recover and restore data from the Cachevault every time the PSU went nuts (Cachevault is LSI's onboard RAID battery solution). Also, do note that Corsair refurbished PSUs only have a year warranty.

 

My cousin bought the Corsair AX850 and that died soon after the one year warranty. He's now using a Seasonic PSU. But yeah...wasted money on that PSU.

 

But yeah, I greatly regret not paying up the $50 more to get the Cooler Master V850 at the time (Though I would buy the EVGA 850W G2 now but it didn't exist at the time).

 

For me, it does depends on the product if I do refurbished. I usually will shy away from storage media because too much can go wrong and PSUs for the above time I lost with the AX860i. I think solid stuff like CPUs / motherboards / coolers are alright. It also depends where the refurbished product is coming from too (Newegg vs some sketchy retailer). I do not play with open box stuff because too much can go wrong.

[xentropa]

Speakers are the only things I would probably buy refurbished.  As long as the membrane isn't torn, those things are like tanks.

 

HDDs is probably a no go since all it takes is 1 drop to drastically shorten its lifespan.

[JimmyGuilbault]

I bought a refurbished GTX 960 from MSI and got it for around $50 cheaper than normal. I've been using since summer without any problem.

[Dyelon21]

Refurbished components are fine to buy as long as you do your research. It's more about getting information about it rather than doing it or not. Ask these questions when buying a refurbished product.

 

1) Who refurbished it? If OEM, probably okay. If Jon's Electronic store down the street, probably not.

2) Does it come with any type of warranty? Most refurbs, especially OEM ones will have some kind of warranty, but not many have the 1 year manufacturer warranty like a new device.

3) Is it significantly less expensive than buying it new? This all depends on your budget and what you're willing to spend. For me, I paid $80 US for my 16GB of RAM that was $130 at the time. If it was only $120 I probably would have just bought it new, but the deal was right and it was refurbished by Kingston themselves.

 

I think all in all, buying refurbished things is your choice. Is it a risk? Yes. Is it a bad decision? No, not particularly. Just make sure you do your research before making that decision.

[AshleyAshes]

The Corsair TX750 in my workstation is fine, been running 2 years without issue.  Are we counting 'used' items?  I swapped the dual core in my laptop for a quad core CPU that I got off eBay like three years ago and it's still running strong.

[Ben_Upde]

My Asus Z170-A is a factory refurbished unit. Works perfectly. Runs happily at 4.6ghz with no hiccups. 

I buy refurbished stuff all the time. Great way to save money. Most items come with a year or so of warranty. If it lasts a year, chances are it's going to last as long as any other unit.