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Are Refurbished parts a bad deal?

C

Cryption

Member
I want to get some horror stories and maybe a bit of a consensus to demystify or prove the bad rep. refurbished parts have on this forum.

What parts in particular should you never get refurbed? Have any of you guys ever bought refurbished parts?
What is your overall opinion, if you can save 15-20% on the part refurbished, do you save the money?
 
I've gotten refurbished parts, and never really had any problems with them. Just don't expect them to look brand new or anything. Things like motherboards may not come with everything a new one comes with, such as backplates, or cables. It depends a lot on where you are getting it from too. Make sure the place has a good reputation before buying referbed parts from them.
 

Well about the only 2 parts most commonly found in home pc's that are worth reparing are certain monitors and some high end printers.

It all depends on what the refurb consisted of. A lot of times a monitor can be repaired by changing a burnt capacitor. If the tech's soldering skills are good , that isn't a big job.

If you're buying a refurb part though , you never know what was done on it. And if the salesman tells you , you can't take his word for it🙂

I think you have to look at the warranty and price to see if it could be a good deal.

 
Don't get them. Even though they may be a little cheaper than retail doesn't mean you should.

Over time, they can wear out and the warranty IMO isn't as good as a retail one.

If you get a retail one, you're insured a long time that it will work. However if you get a refurbished, it's questionable.

I would rather get retail unless you're sure the refurb has a good warranty.
 
refurbs come bare, especially from newegg as I found out, which means for motherboards, no backplate, which is very important IMHO.
 
I bought an ausus P4P 800 SE motherboard from Newegg refurbished. Looked great came with everthing cables, drivers disk, back plate even sata cables. You pay your money and take your chances I guess.
 
I wouldn't buy refurbed: monitor, optical disk drives, hdd's, motherboard.

I would buy refurbed: Keyboard, mouse, fdd, ram.
 
ive only bought 2 refurb vid cards both from newegg, both turned out bad (doa)... althought they came in their nice boxes and stuff not barebone
 
A lot of the stuff Newegg sells as "refurbished" ISN'T. It is just returns from dummies that either couldn't make it work, "bought the wrong thing" or got a case of buyer's remorse. The closer the price is to retail, the more likely it will have all the accessories. I bought some of their A7V600-Xs at about half price and they didn't come with anything and were in a white box. But I was able to get some I/O shields out of Asus after about a month of wheedling - everything else can be had by DLing or from 3rd-party sources. They all worked just fine.
. They had some A7V880s that were only $7 or 8 off regular price - I'm guessing they would have all the accessories and the original box.
. When they say "factory recertified" relative to hard disks, you have to ask "Which factory?".
.bh.
 
The monitor I'm using now was used. It's a Dell P780 (17"; 1600x1200 max @ 60Hz) that I got for $30; however, I bought it from the people I worked for (I did trade shows with a small computer store) so if I were to have a problem, I would have been able to go to them. The monitor's working great.
 
I will never buy refurbished. I have known to many people that have bought refurbished hardware to save a few $, but it ends up costing them more because they have to replace them/get them fixed alot more than they would have if they bought it new.

Esp. anything like a harddrive, I'd never buy refurbished.
 
I have had no issues buying a number of viddy card refurbs. The last one had a TVO jumper in the PAL rather than NTSC position for North America which lends support to the notion that some buyers may return schtuff thinking it is defective when it ain't. Of course that would also call into question newegg's process for dealing with returns if the user couldn't get TVO to work but newegg either didn't test the card at all or only tested the VGA.
 
Dell (yes i bought a dell at one point lol) sends out refurb parts as warranty replacements. I have had many things replaced, most of which re-broke in the same fashion as before.

If the item has a known defect and they attempt to fix it and send a new one, its gonna happen again. However if its something thats decently rock solid in the first place I usually dont have a problem.

IE. Samsung 12x DVD-Rom... stopped reading DVDs after a while, got it replaced with another of the same model, died within a year of the same problem...

However a replacement monitor I got is still around, 5 years later.
 
The only refurbished part I've ever purchased was a refurbished Zip100 parallel drive. I bought it in 1999, and it's still in service today. It gets serious daily usage and frankly with as much as I've used the darn thing, I wouldn't be surprised if it was new and had crapped out by now.

Caveat: It was a mfr. refurb, not a 3rd party refurb.
 
things i've gotten refurb:

ATI TV Wonder USB- newegg, costs about 30% less. comes with everything and works fine.
dlink 802.11b USB adapter- newegg, costs 25% less. qualified for rebate!
ATI 7500LE- newegg, about 40% less. works fine. includes everything.
MSI gforce3 Ti500- compgeeks, about 40% less? i'm still using it daily.

that is all i can think of. basically i'd buy anything refurb if the price is right. maybe except hard drive...
 
For me I guess it comes down to reputation of the company, I get advise on forums like these also before I buy. Ive bought everything from PC parts to AV receivers and never once had a problem with refurbished.
 
i have bought a lot of refurb items over the years. (not only pc parts)
all of my radar detectors have always been refurbed, (save half price on them and they work perfect)
my logitech mx 700 is refurb and works perfect
my viewsonic monitor is refurb and works flawless
my home dvd player is refurb and has never given a problem!

the way i look at refurb items is that if they are defective when they go back to the manufacturer they
get fixed and inspected & tested more then a new item. most new items dont get tested, and when they
do test, its a random pick off the assembly line to test. (maybe 1 out of 100 or 1000 gets tested) but every refurb item is checked out.

but as for newegg. i would probably stay away from any of their refurb stuff cause they just turn around
and resell what gets returned to them!
 
Well, a lot of thing in favor or against.

Newegg is saying things come bare, which means cables, adapters etc. missing but I know they usually come anyway. It's just a "don't complain" thing they do.

Must "refurbished" stuff is actually only "tested" from a running time standpoint.

Often there is only a short warranty. That's a killer IMHO.
 
Dunno if this has already been said, but some "refurbished" CPU's are CPU's that failed to overclock to expected levels so were returned by the original owner, and now are being sold with the "refurbished" tag.

So if you're looking for a good OC'ng CPU, don't look into a refurbished (at least that's my suggestion).
 
Cpu's and Motherboards don't necessarily have moving parts, but still are very risky to buy refurbed. A bad mobo or cpu can kill one another. A motherboard is also not the simplest thing to replace if you get a bad one. I think sometimes motherboards are returned because a simple thing like a port works intermittently. Just not worth it for me.
 
Here are some of the referbs I bought from Newegg:

Gainward GeForce TI4200 for $100:
Lasted 10 months, then no monitor signal (bad caps)...replaced caps myself and got it working again. A month later the fan died...replaced that too...

Epox 8RDA+ Motherboard for $40:
Lasted 11 months, then would not power on (bad caps)...replaced the caps myself and it is still working today...

Sapphire Atlantis 9700 Pro Ultimate Edition for $179:
Would occasionally give screen corruption during BIOS POST screens, but pushing reset would usually fix things. Lasted 11 months, then started artifacting really bad in 3D apps...heat pipe cooling is quiet, but card always did run hot...currently trying to RMA with Sapphire


IMHO, referbs are not worth the hassle. If you buy referb, plan on RMAing it in about 10 months (IF you actually get a warranty!!).




 
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