What parts can one buy used? What parts should one NOT buy used?
What sites, forums, and physical locations can one buy and sell parts?
How do you figure a fair price (or share a price guide) for what you're buying or selling?
Want to share other tips and advice?
Other urls found in this thread:
newegg.com
snopes.com
twitter.com
Pick one
>used mobo, near dead caps, near dead cmos battery, cummed on, dead stuff you won't notice until it is too late
>used hdd/ssd, near dead, unreliable, you don't know what workload, what temps and what shocks they have suffered, cummed inside
>used ram, voltage devastated due to OC, near dead, will bsod when you reach their top capacity, cummed on pins
>used cpu, completely voltage devastated, put on the oven for a bit before selling, will bsod in 2 days, cummed thermal comopound, cummed on pins
>used gpu, completely voltage devastated, put on the oven for a bit before selling, will bsod in 2 days, cummed thermal comopound, cummed on pins
>used pc case, cummed on, breadcums inside, missing parts, all pci slot covers gone, scratched paint, dust filters, if any, in crumbles
I want to make a media/backup system.
I know the basics of what I want:
i5 processor or i7 (for a sweet 8 core system) if I can find one for a really good price
8 TB of HDD storage
If I buy a business grade tower that has i5 in it like an Optiplex, there will be a maximum of two drive bays. So I am thinking I'll look for a bigger chassis, maybe a big tower or a U1 rack I can move the motherboard and drives into.
Will I have a bad time by buying used harddrives?
Buy used:
Complete prebuilt: You get a sweet deal and only have to replace a few pieces
Chassis: Cheaper than new and it doesn't do much.
CPU: Won't be too beat on usual workloads
RAM: Doesn't get too beat
GPU: Ask if it has been used to mine and for how long
Avoid:
Motherboard: If it's sold used alone something is off.
Monitors: Must have a dead pixel or something
NEVER buy used:
HDDs/SSDs: Obvious reasons
If you are planning to make a ZFS stack and are looking for a pre-gen 4 refresh Core CPU get an i3 because they are the only ones that have ECC.
And don't buy used hard drives if you don't hate yourself.
What if I buy parts that were from a business or government? They should be in better condition than ones from private individuals.
How are refurbished dealers, like ones found on Amazon and Newegg?
With a quick search, I found that I can get this Seagate Constellation 2TB 7200 RPM 64MB Cache SATA 6.0Gb/s 3.5" for $36. If I can get +2 years of running time on it would be better than buying new.
Dude don't fucking do it. Don't buy second hand storage ever. Would you buy used underwear?
As usual make sure they post photos and not use stock catalog photos. You want to know how beat it looks.
There are some hardware stores that sell used, it's mountains of perfectly fine ThinkCenter/Elite Desktop that sell for real cheap. It's basically the desktop equivalent of ThinkPads.
Have you had problems with buying used HDDs?
I almost never buy new.
Just bought some stuff yesterday for a gayming pc. All in I spent exactly $500 CAD and $30 in gas for:
I7 4770s
Gigabyte matx mobo
16gb memory
128gb ssd
2x 1gb hdd
Some crappy coolermaster case
Crappy apevia psu that will be replaced soon
RX480 8gb
Legit copy of W7 pro, ended up putting w10 though
Everything except the graphics card was an office computer I got for $300, then the graphics card got off a guy I knew for $200. May have ran 3 games it's whole life.
-They could be on the brink of dying (their life and cycles are limited)
-They could have been overused with heavy data traffic
-They could have bad sectors
etc.
Do what you want, but it is a gamble, better to put in the money and know that your new hdd will last you at least 5 years.
I haven't ever had a PC where all the parts are new. I've bought every PC part used at least once too, and sometimes owned computers with only used parts in them. In my current computer the case is the only thing I bought new (due to availability really).
Of course when it comes to certain parts I'm more cautious than on others (PSU, storage, fans mainly), but so far in all my years of buying used I haven't had too many bad experiences (literally one broken RAM DIMM due to poor packaging).
You will learn acceptable market prices as you continue browsing the market. Of course it's a good idea to also check what a comparable item costs brand new and figure out if the difference is worth the effort.
That's why you always ask the seller for a screencap of S.M.A.R.T info and make the judgement yourself. If you can't get that you just lowball your offer to cover the risk.
Do you realize how easy it is to fake screenshots?
>cum on everything
Who do you based that suspicion on, user? Is this normal in USA? I thought it was a christian country.
And then you'd realize what they did when testing the drive for the first time and confront them about it. Fake ads are usually quite easy to regocnize anyways, and I hardly ever see them where I'm from.
I think you can low-level reset the stats too, which is worse risk.
>And don't buy used hard drives if you don't hate yourself.
I've bought several refurb Hitachi 3TBs for $60 a pop. Can't beat the price per TB. Yeah you need some kind of redundancy (ZFS, Btrfs, or at least mdadm) because they might die, but the same is true of new drives.
I have four of them, and have for over a year. They're scrubbed weekly and have never once given me problems.
Nice hardware, and I hope it keeps working for you. That CPU alone today sells for $350 USD.
I'll always ask for S.M.A.R.T. when buying from people, and ask for it from the online dealers on Amazon and Newegg.
I'll have a redundant array where I shouldn't lose data should a harddrive EOL. However, I don't want to lose a lot of money from trying buying used. It would be nice to "break even" or save money compared to buying new.
Desktop equivalent of Thinkpads are more like lightly used Optiplexes.
It's a pretty common practice to do that sort of things to hardware you want to sell.
I once saw a thread on another website in which someone bought a second hand computer and whenever it got hot, it started to smell like urine and shit. Long story short, there were faeces smeared and dried up urine behind the mobo.
A friend I had literally cummed inside his 270x, let it dry, and sold it.
I probably won't use ZFS, but there will be some form of redundancy and error correction.
>this pc has become foreverial cummed on pc and it was completely voltage devastated with its caps and cmos battery and literally its whole mobo changed into a completely dead stuff with completely voltage devastated caps and a completely voltage devastated, cummed on, put in the oven before selling gpu. cpu is a completely voltage devastated cpu and has cummed thermal compound and two completely voltage devastated and cummed on ram sticks. Fully scratched paint like a dumpster, all pci slot covers gone and always bsod when reach top capacity with a completely voltage devastated, near dead, unreliable hdd clicking constantly ready to bsod under any workload, temps and shocks
Fuck, you made my day user. /r/ing original foreverial pikachu with fat lasagna tongue pic.
Your friend has problems. The worst I've had was a computer case with dried sauce/beer/cola stains all over it. I got it from a friend though...
>It's a pretty common practice to piss on, shit on, and cum on hardware you want to sell.
>you want to sell
You better not be lying so you can buy up the good used hardware. Or you are trying to scare people from used so they keep buying new.
>It's a pretty common practice to do that sort of things to hardware you want to sell.
This is how you know that it's not "common practice": human beings in general do not wastefully expend energy in ways that return them no benefit. A couple of weirdos might get enough of a kick out of "pooing" something they're going to sell, but they're a tiny minority roughly the same size as people who put HIV needles in theater seats.
>>
Lying user got BTFO.
Also...
Pin Prick AIDS Attacks
Rumor: Madmen are injecting HIV-infected blood into unsuspecting moviegoers?
False
NEVER buy a used PSU
R710 with 8 drive bays, 2x X5650s, and 64gb of RAM = $254 shipped in the USA.
>uh dude i just ran out of paper towels
>lmao ill blow my load on this, im gonna sell it anyway
>wastefully expend energy
I've got 48 4TB HDDs, all of which I bought used. They were originally purchased in 2008. I've had them running in 6 separate R710s for the last 1.5yrs without massive issues. One failed and was hot swapped and the RAID array was rebuilt without problem.
>What parts should one NOT buy used?
HDD
GPU
PSU
Tell your friend he is a disgusting shitter.
Is this right?
Used Motherboards:
Can go very wrong because if the power regulation malfunctions it could fry everything: CPU, RAM, Drives
Used PSU:
What's the worst could happen?
I've been running an used 450 watt OEM PSU that I bought for 10€ or so for several months now. It's constantly at around 50% load too. It's a Delta unit tough, so I'm not too worried.
Usually when buying an used PSU tough I like to ask a bit about how the PSU was used and for how long. Of course that isn't always possible, but so far I haven't had bad experiences with used PSUs (although I did blow the fuse on one that was literally picked up from the dumpster when trying to push it too hard).
The most probable mode of failure with both would in my experience be random instability or in the case of the PSU coldboot problems. Catastrophic failure isn't really something that you have to worry about with at least somewhat modern hardware of decent quality. Just my observation tough.
I can't find anyone selling a U1 server chassis. And I do not know if I can move a workstation motherboard (i5/i7/Xeon from Optiplex/Thinkcentre/Business)
Another thing I could do is run the SATA power cables and data cables from the workstation to a 4-drive or 8-drive enclosure but that will take up more horizontal space... as would a U1 chassis...
What number of drive bays are business workstation towers capable of holding? The most I can find is two bays...
I meant that I do not know if I can move a workstation motherboard (i5/i7/Xeon from Optiplex/Thinkcentre/Business) into something like a U1.
You mean 1U?
Standard mobos won't fit in a 1U rackmount chassis, a regular-height I/O shield is too tall. Also you have to cool the thing with 40mm fans, since those are the largest that fit. This is usually a very loud experience. Larger 1U systems often have odd form-factor mobos specifically matched to the chassis. Smaller commodity ones usually use ITX boards. You still oftehn have to match up the cases I/O area with the ports on the board though, or just do without the I/O shield.
For business desktops you basically have ordinary cheap desktops that have room for maybe two drives, and large workstations with lots, often in hot-swap trays. These cost a lot more money. (and can often be turned on their side to make a 4U or 5U rackmount system) There isn't a lot in between.
If you want eight drives in a rackmount case the cheapest DIY way is to get one of those 4U Rosewill cases. They take standard PC parts, though you can't use a 120mm tower cooler.
I got super lucky, I've been looking for months scouring ads for a good deal. Picked this up an hour after the ad was up.