Anyone here ever purchased used computer hardware?

K12gamer

Member
Example: Refurbished from a store...or from a site like Ebay / Craigslist?
Or do you prefer to purchase new stuff only. Have you ever gotten ripped off?

I often get used stuff for friends and my job.

Ebay seems to be a good place to find PC mice. I try to get lots of 12 for under $30.
Monitors I normally get from Craigs List (to avoid shipping charges) Just picked up 2 really good 22 in wide monitors for $15 each.

Keyboards I normally get new ($12 can get you a good one on Amazon)
Towers (refurbished) from sites like Walmart or Amazon...seem to work well. I tend not to buy
towers off of sites like Craigs List...because I don't want to get burned by something someone
may have experimented on. (Did purchase a tower off of Craigs List once...It worked...but made weird
annoying noises).
 
My current main build has a used GTX 1080, used PSU, used SSD, and used custom cables. My HTPC is almost entirely pre-owned parts. You can definitely save hundreds of dollars and still get excellent-quality parts if you know what you're looking for and know what to buy used vs new.
 

Roa

Member
I'm guessing you purchased it new...? Is that the same one Amazon has for $369?
How long did you have it for?
maybe 3 months after launch. Its cheaper now because its depreciated. It was originally around 550-600 bucks when I got mine. Pretty much right around when GPU prices were starting to go up because the scarcity crypto mining caused.
 

TsukaYuriko

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Forum Staff
Moderator
I bought a used hard drive once. From a family member. Found... uh, censored people engaging not so censored engagement of an arguably fun activity on it. Didn't buy used hard drives ever since. :p

That aside, I try to avoid it, especially for "vital" components. Warranty is always messy here when you're not the one who originally purchased it - I'd have to contact the person who sold it to me, pray that they even gave me valid contact information, and that aside, I prefer to avoid social interaction whenever I can... so in cases where I would have to get a replacement fast (or be stuck with something unusable) in case the one I have breaks, I try to make sure to get it new to minimize the potential hassle.

Legal issues aside, if I'll end up touching it during daily usage, I get my own stuff. I don't want to touch something someone else has already been touching on a presumably daily basis for extended periods of time - I wouldn't be able to use a used keyboard because I'd have to run to the bathroom to wash my hands every few minutes I'm using it (due to disability reasons, not specifically/only hygiene reasons) or risk going insane.

Personally, it tends to be too much of a headache to bother with putting up with the constant searching for a new lowest offer, bidding and spamming refresh on sites like eBay, and in specific cases, daily usage. But that applies pretty much only to me and my medical spectrum. For others, used hardware can certainly be a good way to save money and still have a perfectly working fine end result most of the time - you just have to figure out which parts are fine to get used and which *cough* are better off being bought new.
 

K12gamer

Member
@TsukaYuriko How much did you pay for the Hard Drive? How much memory did it hold?

Hard Drives are so inexpensive these days ($32 for 1 TB)...I'd never buy a used one...(Could have a bunch of messed up sectors etc...)
It seems like the typical Hard Drive will last around 7-10 years. I don't think there's any way you can test a used one to see how much life it has left.

SSD drives have also come way down in price...but not sure if the lower price ones (Under $50)...are as reliable as a under $50 regular HardDrive.
 
I bought an open-box XFX 8800GT Alpha Dog Edition from Future Shop back in early 2008 for a savings of $30CDN. I didn't choose to buy used, they just didn't have any new ones and I was an impatient teen without a driver's licence to go check anywhere else. I'm not sure if it was used, but everything in the box seemed new and untouched. The thing lasted me until some time in late 2016. Surprisingly, it was my FPS that killed it as I didn't imagine that merely running it - even with all the bells and whistles either disabled or not implemented - was causing the card to quickly run at over 100 degrees Celsius, and I'd often leave the game paused while I either further worked on it, or even left my PC to do other things. I was due for an upgrade by then, anyway.
 
it tends to be too much of a headache to bother with putting up with the constant searching for a new lowest offer, bidding and spamming refresh on sites like eBay,
You haven't had to stress about bidding on eBay for years. Just type in the maximum you're willing to pay and let the site do the rest. It'll automatically up your bid whenever someone beats you until it reaches your maximum.

How much did you pay for the Hard Drive? How much memory did it hold?

Hard Drives are so inexpensive these days ($32 for 1 TB)...I'd never buy a used one...(Could have a bunch of messed up sectors etc...)
It seems like the typical Hard Drive will last around 7-10 years. I don't think there's any way you can test a used one to see how much life it has left.

SSD drives have also come way down in price...but not sure if the lower price ones (Under $50)...are as reliable as a under $50 regular HardDrive.
SSDs are theoretically more durable than HDDs due to the lack of moving parts, but in practice they last about the same.

If you're on a budget (or heck, just in general), the best plan is to go for an SSD for OS + games + often-used programs and HDD for mass storage. You can get a used 256GB high-quality SanDisk or Samsung SSD for around $35 nowadays. You can get NEW entry-level 500GB ADATA SSDs for about $50 when they go on sale (i.e. often). Going from No SSD -> SSD is so cheap and is such a massive upgrade that there's absolutely no reason to not have an SSD in your system. The only problems you'd have with buying used SSDs are 1) scammers selling dying drives and 2) dealing with idiots that don't wipe the drive before getting rid of it like Tsuka. Both are rare and easy to deal with. With potential problem 1, never buy from anyone who won't show you drive health in a program like Samsung Magician or CrystalDiskInfo. With 2, just ask the seller to make sure to wipe the drive before sending it.
 

chance

predictably random
Forum Staff
Moderator
I bought a used hard drive once. From a family member. Found... uh, censored people engaging not so censored engagement of an arguably fun activity on it. Didn't buy used hard drives ever since. :p
@TsukaYuriko How much did you pay for the Hard Drive? How much memory did it hold?
Whatever she paid, I suspect the entire episode holds painful memories.

@TsukaYuriko: I hope you didn't need therapy. o_O

I buy used electronics occasionally -- mostly vintage stuff for parts. But I generally don't purchase used computer equipment. I share Tsuka's aversion when it comes to keyboards and mice.

I purchased a couple of monitors in the past for security systems. But new prices are so reasonable, it's hardly worth buying used.
 

TsukaYuriko

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Forum Staff
Moderator
@TsukaYuriko How much did you pay for the Hard Drive? How much memory did it hold?
It was either 80 GB or 120 GB - the other one was the internal one I had at the time, and I was running out of space... and now that I think about it, my back-then maximum capacity is as much space as a single recent MMORPG takes up nowadays, if not more. Wow. I don't remember exactly how much I paid for it, but it was around the time where capacity in GB = cost in EUR, probably less because it was used. The contents weren't worth upping the price for, to say the least.

Hard Drives are so inexpensive these days ($32 for 1 TB)...I'd never buy a used one...(Could have a bunch of messed up sectors etc...)
It seems like the typical Hard Drive will last around 7-10 years. I don't think there's any way you can test a used one to see how much life it has left.
Please introduce me to one of those mythical 10 year-lasting HDDs. I've never had the pleasure to meet one. Without exception, all HDDs I've owned aside from my current Barracuda (4 years lifetime now... PRAY!) has died within three to four years. :/
That's the core reason why I now store anything remotely important on at least two HDDs and a cloud drive.

SSD drives have also come way down in price...but not sure if the lower price ones (Under $50)...are as reliable as a under $50 regular HardDrive.
SSDs are one of the few things I'd actually buy used now. They're less vulnerable to wear than their limited rewrite counts would lead you (and a few years ago, led me) to think.

I remember when SSDs were just starting to become more common and I had barely even heard of them... back then, my setup consisted of 2x500 GB HDDs in RAID 0, and I was planning to get an entirely new PC. A 500 GB SSD was basically top of the line, and the aforementioned "capacity in GB = price in EUR" was once again the rule for them. I made a fuss about this very drive on the old GMC because I was worried that GM compiling test runs to it would kill its life span... :D

I remember holding it and basically treating it like porcelain (even though it could probably stand more shock and wear than any hard drive I had ever owned). That was back in 2013. It's still going strong and is in use 6 years later - no longer as my system drive, though.

After initially panicking over a bunch of test run compiles... believe me, I've tried to kill this thing. I can't.
For a while, I used it as a cache for video recording and processing (eventually superseded by an NVMe 500 GB SSD that also was my system drive for a while).
Currently, it's used to hold multiple virtualized instances of a game client and has the pleasure of having its entire capacity written to once per week due to patches of all of those clients and, on an almost daily basis, having a new instance copied over from a backup when one of the active ones starts throwing hissy fits - around 25 GB per instance with around 20 instances total. By now, I can almost hear it going "oh god, this again??" on patch days...

It is the longest-lasting component of my old PC that's still in use nowadays (sharing 1st place with my old monitors that are now part of a three-monitor setup that looks a bit like a mind control center), and I guess I won't find a solid reason not to use it anymore anytime soon. I probably wouldn't be able to sell it for more than a tenth of its original price nowadays, anyway... but I have no doubts it would continue to last for years to come. Ironically, the one component I thought was going to die on me in a matter of years... just didn't, while pretty much everything else, from hard drives to keyboard and mouse, which I thought would last for years, died. :'D


You haven't had to stress about bidding on eBay for years. Just type in the maximum you're willing to pay and let the site do the rest. It'll automatically up your bid whenever someone beats you until it reaches your maximum.
... thanks, now I feel old. :S I guess I'm extremely out of the loop here... I can probably count the amount of times I've actually used the site in the past decade on one hand.

I remember the times where who won the bid was more or less decided by who had the faster connection and managed to outbid the rest by 1€ a few seconds before an auction closed... including the various shady and not so shady automated tools that merely wanted your account credentials in order to automatically do the bidding for you (pun not intended). Camping for weeks for happy hours where listing new items was temporarily free, or you didn't have to pay additional fees to set the starting price or a minimum price to anything higher than 1€... and preying on those unfortunate souls that didn't wait for them and ended up having a single 1€ bid on their not so popular video game auctions. That was always fun. :D

Whatever she paid, I suspect the entire episode holds painful memories.

@TsukaYuriko: I hope you didn't need therapy. o_O
I've seen enough to not need therapy over that, to say the least. ._.'
Kinda made me look at my not so step-dad a bit differently for a while, though.
 

MissingNo.

Member
I don't often buy used of anything really but if I did my own rules are that I would never buy a PSU, Drive or motherboard used,
unless it's for a computer you won't use much as I feel buying parts like that used is playing with fire. I would buy RAM, Graphics cards
and maybe even fans used but not a heat sink.

But if you do buy used make sure the price is worth the risk. So for example let's say you see a listing for a GTX 1080 that is 100 dollars off used, in that scenario
it's not worth it in my opinion as its not worth the risk. So make sure the price is worth it.

I can probably count the amount of times I've actually used the site in the past decade on one hand.
I wonder where your buying from? Because 9 times out of 10 I find that Ebay has better prices for new things then most other places,
especially Amazon. I never understood the obsession people have with Amazon nowadays as I usually find things are far more expensive there
then with Ebay when I compare prices, especially when it comes to electronics, movies and video games. Although one exception I have found is books,
for whatever reason Amazon tends to have better prices on books. Only other places that I seen that can sometimes beat Ebays prices are Best Buy and Walmart.

SSDs are one of the few things I'd actually buy used now. They're less vulnerable to wear than their limited rewrite counts would lead you (and a few years ago, led me) to think.
Yeah I can understand but for my own sanity I wouldn't ever touch a used storage medium with a 10 foot pole. I'm too paranoid for that. Plus I don't think it's worth the risk if it's going to be a
main drive for years to come but that's just me.


But in closing for anyone that buys anything online please compare prices with other places. This may seem obvious but you don't know how many people I know who blindly use
Amazon for everything and don't realize they could be getting prices used or new.
 
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Jabbers

Member
There is nothing wrong with buying used hardware as long as the person selling it is reliable and you understand the risks where warranty and shipping is concerned. I wouldn't buy old hard drives personally but the rest is fair game, although I'd avoid going for anything that was overclocked or used for mining or other "intensive" tasks. Memory wouldn't bother me at all especially since companies like Corsair have "lifetime" warranty.
 

K12gamer

Member
@TsukaYuriko I work in a computer lab (Grade 1 to 6) with 46 computers. The PCs run practically all day...and are around 6 years old.
Only had to replace around 3 or 4 hard drives. Would be a nightmare if I had to replace 46 hard drives every 3 to 4 years.
Note: I turn all the PCs off at the end of the day. I notice some teachers leave their PCs on...even when we have week long vacations.
That probably leads to unnecessary wear.

Thinking about trying a SSD for my home PC...but some of the negative comments on Amazon scared me away (Example:)
"I bought 2 of these - 1 failed within 4 months, the second one lasted about 1/12 years. These were in different computers and just running
windows, not on servers or doing any massive read/write.
"

"BUYER BEWARE! I received a new hard drive that failed within hours. I initiated an RMA with Sandisk and explained that it was being used in a
home server (Plex server). They immediately denied my claim stating that they do not cover "server deploys" for their retail SSDS.
"

"Using it for a backup drive. It worked flawlessly for 4 months then died. Not buying another."
 

TsukaYuriko

☄️
Forum Staff
Moderator
You see pretty much the same reviews on just about any drive's page, whether SSD or HDD. There are always a couple of black sheep among the good ones.

Backups to the rescue every time. For an extra safety net that will not result in a total outage in the event of a failure, get a pair of two and put them in RAID 1. If one fails, the other one will still work and you can continue working.

Also, the genius that uses an SSD for backups deserves a kick from behind.
 
I have purchased use computers and easily regret it. Like things that don't turn on out of the box, so it's $50 to ship it back.

I was sent on a scavenger hunt in the days of Wii U to find a Wii. A lot of them had broken fans, so they would work fine for 20 minutes then blink off for 2 hours like the XBox 360's red ring of death. A few people told me to just keep it and not send it back. Gamestop takes back what they sold.

I managed to buy the same broken copy of a game 3x from my local Gamestop over the span of 2 years.

I've been to auctions to buy used PCs from municipalities, which unfortunately for me there's always a dude that buys everything.

Now it's just best to buy refurbished. There are some great deals on that stuff and seems to all work great.
 
S

Sam (Deleted User)

Guest
My macbook pro i bought used. It's a 2010 model to the newest OS it can do is High Sierra. It'll go obsolete rather quick in the realm of being able to publish to the app store and it already can't update Xcode to the latest version anymore. With Catalina around the corner, it'll then be two major OS versions behind. Haven't been able to use the GMS2 IDE once on it because of a bug YoYo has done absolutely nothing to fix which prevents the IDE's run, debug, and create executable buttons from doing anything other than error saying "my modules are not enabled" when it works just fine on the Windows IDE. Another game engine I intended to use with my MacBook, GameMaker 7.5 for Mac only builds 32-bit apps which are obsolete on Mac as of the next version after Catalina (1 year from now). Can't even use the IDE for that version of GM either because it is so darn old it won't show anything other than a blank window. I can technically load and export apps using the menubar alone, but I can't actually edit any GMK's/GMX's without needing to resort to Java + LateralGM on my Mac which is a pain. LateralGM doesn't and never will support YYP it has been announced by the current maintainer... LateralGM has a plugin allowing it to be used for another game engine similar to GameMaker but i can't use that on my Mac either because I lost the installation instructions and the Mac maintainer is refusing to give me the setup instructions again for that engine.... So I am literally 100% out of options and will never be able to trash Windows and use my mac for mac related game dev until I buy a newer mac because of all these issues. I bought it for $175, sometimes it boots up with a mouse and keyboard that won't connect (it uses bluetooth internally which is strange because it's all atteched to each other so there is no excuse for any wireless connections which run into problems like this and it drains the battery). The Macbook when i first bought it had a gigantic chunk of fossilized gum on it i literally had to chip it off with a butterknife because it was rock solid and super gross.

Overall, couldn't be any more regretful for ever buying a used mac. It has been the most useless chunk of hardware I have ever spent that much money on. Also couldn't be any more unhappy with YoYoGames for providing the crappiest support on the planet. I've never successfully built, debugged, or even test ran a single GameMaker Studio 2 game on my mac due to an IDE that doesn't work on my machine at all. 0% functional, and a helpdesk, QA team, and bug tracker that doesn't do anything but crap in the toilet all day. The crap itself being the GMS2 mac IDE, and its ability for me to use it at all being flushed down the drain with all money I've invested in the software along with it. Selling unusable software should be illegal. I feel very robbed. Sure, I could use Windows instead, but what if I didn't have Windows? What if I was a die hard mac and apple fan? I would've bought something I never would've been able to use once from the moment I bought my mac to the present. It has been two years now since then. The whole reason I bought the Mac to begin with is so I could game dev on it. Hasn't even happened once yet, without also being 100% dependent on Windows for exporting.

TL;DR ween
 
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