https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custo...odeId=15015721
Read for yourself. They'll take back just about anything, for any reason.
https://www.amazon.com/gp/help/custo...odeId=15015721
Read for yourself. They'll take back just about anything, for any reason.
Like I said. Amazon's CS is VERY generous. They take returns for anything and everything, but they keep track of it and will close your account for RMA abuse.
I already stated that you can get away with it at amazon. But you still have to lie. If you tell them that you have a bad OC'ing CPU in the return field in your account return settings, they don't even read it. But they have a fraud department which does automated checks of all returns - if you abuse it, and they WILL find out at some point - they will close all of your accounts based at your address, any CC you have ever used, and new accounts won't work.
Amazon's return process is nearly completely automated. But they do have a returns department that verifies returns. Eventually if you continue to abuse their policy, they will close your account.
This is aside from my point that i've already address. Anyone doing this and wasting 2-3 weeks with RMAs for 100mhz is an idiot. Period. What a waste of time for 3% more performance. I have better things to do than spend 3 hours verifying an overclock. I have better things to do than waste energy with 2 weeks of RMA reships. I think anyone doing such things, even if they can get away with it despite the unethical nature of such actions, is completely OCD. I'd just rather enjoy life and enjoy my PC rather than obsess over 100 more MHz for 3% more performance. What a waste of time.
Regardless, you do concede that someone could return a chip to Amazon that doesn't overclock well and not commit fraud by misrepresenting why they returned it.
Now dont you feel foolish over your temper tantrum?
What the heck are you talking about? I mentioned amazon.com BEFORE you did. I STATED it would work BEFORE you did. This is beside the fact that every other retailer will laugh at you for even attempting to do this. Fry's, NCIX, newegg (yeah you can LIE about it), Microcenter, etc. Amazon's returns are COMPLETELY automated. So yeah. You can get away with it. But once they verify returns at their return center, they will close accounts for repeated return abuse. If they look at your account and see questionable returns on working electronics, or see that X% of your purchases are all returns, they will send you emails from their investigation department.
So you can get away with it. Probably a few times. That doesn't change the fact that someone doing this needs a serious re-evaluation on what they get enjoyment from out of life.
Anyway, they will cancel your account for RMA and return abuse. Period. Not overclocking well doesn't constitute a faulty product, and anyone wasting 2-3 weeks of their life binning CPUs has issues. Period. I can't fathom how anyone would find the process of going through CPUs for 100 more mhz and 3% more performance enjoyable. Only someone with serious mental issues and OCD would find that enjoyable. Maybe it would make sense, like I said, for someone doing an overclocking competition with money on the line. MAYBE. For everyone else. What a waste of time.
Personally, PC's are a hobby that I enjoy. Once it becomes work, such as......dealing with stupid RMAs over a period of 2 weeks or more, it becomes a chore. Overclocking is a nice bonus. Most of the time I get pretty lucky with it. But if I don't? Eh. Oh well. I don't really care. Certainly not enough to waste time out of my day to get another chip that overclocks for 1-3% more performance.
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Wow, seriously?
There's nothing unethical about returning a chip that does not meet your needs but is not broken, whatever they may be. It is ethically questionable to RMA a chip that does not meet your needs but is not broken.
Stores detail their return and RMA policies pretty clearly, and nearly every retailer will allow you to return a product, in good working order, within X amount of days. They typically charge a "restocking fee" or "return fee" to cover their own costs of sending it back to the manufacturer for a replacement. This fee is typically a little higher on opened/used merchandise compared to unopened merchandise, and is waived if the merchandise is defective. The manufacturer then decides what to do with it, whether they test it and repackage it, sell it as a refurb, or just toss it and write off the loss.
As long as you are returning the CPU as per the return policy of the store you bought it from, and not misrepresenting yourself to avoid the fee, this is a complete and total non-issue. Plenty of overclockers are willing to eat the few bucks in restocking fees to play the chip lottery again. I've personally seen OCers buy 3 or 4 chips at a time, keep the best, and eat the return fees on the rest. It's up to the retailer to set their own return policies and the customer to use those policies to make an informed decision where to buy based on their needs. There is nothing unethical about honestly following a retailers return policy.
There's nothing unethical about returning a chip that does not meet your needs but is not broken, whatever they may be. It is ethically questionable to RMA a chip that does not meet your needs but is not broken.
Stores detail their return and RMA policies pretty clearly, and nearly every retailer will allow you to return a product, in good working order, within X amount of days. They typically charge a "restocking fee" or "return fee" to cover their own costs of sending it back to the manufacturer for a replacement. This fee is typically a little higher on opened/used merchandise compared to unopened merchandise, and is waived if the merchandise is defective. The manufacturer then decides what to do with it, whether they test it and repackage it, sell it as a refurb, or just toss it and write off the loss.
As long as you are returning the CPU as per the return policy of the store you bought it from, and not misrepresenting yourself to avoid the fee, this is a complete and total non-issue. Plenty of overclockers are willing to eat the few bucks in restocking fees to play the chip lottery again. I've personally seen OCers buy 3 or 4 chips at a time, keep the best, and eat the return fees on the rest. It's up to the retailer to set their own return policies and the customer to use those policies to make an informed decision where to buy based on their needs. There is nothing unethical about honestly following a retailers return policy.
Simple. I was picking the only word that mattered out of your wall of text.
Let me break it down for you.
You: returning for failed overclock is fraud.
Me: only if you misrepresent why you return it
You: blah blah blah Amazon might let you get away with it blah blah blah
Me: Amazon
You: bunch of posturing nonsense
Me: see? Your whole argument fell apart.
If there is ONE vendor where you can make this return without lying, then my point is correct that it is not necessairly return fraud. Via your wall of text, you conceded I was right (and tried to bury it).
You seem to be making a flawed assumption though: I dont participate in this practice. I have used Amazon's generous return policy before but not for a CPU. That said, you make a factually incorrect statement and someone is going to call you on it.
BonzaiDuck
Lifer
- Jun 30, 2004
- 16,325
- 1,886
- 126
Thought I would "throw in" on this one.
I think I began over-clocking around 2003 with Pentium Northwood processors. After that -- Conroes, Kentsfields and Wolfdales. Now, it's my Sandy Bridge. Usually, I'd build one or two systems a year for myself and the fam-damn-ily. Always or mostly, the OC system would be my own.
We've examined Intel's specs for several generations of processors here on the forum, using the specs to guide our OC exercises.
If course, Intel "bins" their own processors. They are guaranteed to run within spec, but VID varies among the production runs.
As someone already said, there are other voltages and tweaks that might make a difference between a good OC and either a "so-so" or disappointment. And also as someone else had said, people who publish their results -- often early in the processor life-cycle -- may either exaggerate or use a lower standard of stability out of sheer eagerness.
Me? I just buy the boxed processor new. I pick a motherboard in the mid- to high-end price range with useful features and good components. I always pick a board that has ample phase-power design, solid state components, and ample BIOS features. A low-end motherboard may come with a BIOS that only allows certain voltages to be tweaked. So if I OC'd my mother's system which has a E6700 Wolfdale and a $90 mATX Gigabyte board, I might only have bumped up the speed to 3.4 Ghz.
I've had decent luck with the Northwoods, E6600 and Kentsfield Q-6600, E-8400 and E-8600 -- and even the budget E2140 through 2180 C2D's. I skipped the first-gen I7/I5 cores (socket-1366). The Sandy system is the first and only I've fiddled with since LGA-775.
So while I feel compelled to overclock, tweak and tune, I build fewer systems less frequently than I did earlier. There's nothing like a good, fast, stable OC'd system with a long expectation of usefulness.
Even with my own cautious limitations and early stability tests, I learned from our colleague IDontCare that there are some minor voltage adjustments needed to clean up errors that lower the GFLOP results of LinX tests.
The long and the short of it: I've never returned a CPU.
I think I began over-clocking around 2003 with Pentium Northwood processors. After that -- Conroes, Kentsfields and Wolfdales. Now, it's my Sandy Bridge. Usually, I'd build one or two systems a year for myself and the fam-damn-ily. Always or mostly, the OC system would be my own.
We've examined Intel's specs for several generations of processors here on the forum, using the specs to guide our OC exercises.
If course, Intel "bins" their own processors. They are guaranteed to run within spec, but VID varies among the production runs.
As someone already said, there are other voltages and tweaks that might make a difference between a good OC and either a "so-so" or disappointment. And also as someone else had said, people who publish their results -- often early in the processor life-cycle -- may either exaggerate or use a lower standard of stability out of sheer eagerness.
Me? I just buy the boxed processor new. I pick a motherboard in the mid- to high-end price range with useful features and good components. I always pick a board that has ample phase-power design, solid state components, and ample BIOS features. A low-end motherboard may come with a BIOS that only allows certain voltages to be tweaked. So if I OC'd my mother's system which has a E6700 Wolfdale and a $90 mATX Gigabyte board, I might only have bumped up the speed to 3.4 Ghz.
I've had decent luck with the Northwoods, E6600 and Kentsfield Q-6600, E-8400 and E-8600 -- and even the budget E2140 through 2180 C2D's. I skipped the first-gen I7/I5 cores (socket-1366). The Sandy system is the first and only I've fiddled with since LGA-775.
So while I feel compelled to overclock, tweak and tune, I build fewer systems less frequently than I did earlier. There's nothing like a good, fast, stable OC'd system with a long expectation of usefulness.
Even with my own cautious limitations and early stability tests, I learned from our colleague IDontCare that there are some minor voltage adjustments needed to clean up errors that lower the GFLOP results of LinX tests.
The long and the short of it: I've never returned a CPU.
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Don't you get a week to decide if you want to keep any purchase you make online? In the UK I can return absolutely anything I buy online so long as I do it within a week or two, no questions asked. So if I get a bad chip (I once bought a dual Phenom II that didn't unlock to a quad) I just send I back without even having to give a reason. The only cost is the postage back.
here is a quote from the the thread starter-
"Do you guys just happen to get a good overclocker or do you return CPU's until you get a good one?"
That is unethical as heck. Doing crap like this what drives prices up for reasonable people.
Is it more unethical than companies seeding cherry picked chips to review sites and giving a false impression of what to expect in the first place?
No it isn't and no it doesn't. Amazon sells it for $5 less through Warehouse deals and everyone wins.
No it isn't. In fact it's a far smaller offence in my mind and the minds of many so don't bother forcing your "ethics" on us.
I had a really golden 2500K that would stably do well over 5 GHz on air at very reasonable voltages. Sold it, made a bit of a profit in the process, and got my current 2700K which also happens to be an excellent overclocker.
So basically... luck
So basically... luck
Consider the following scenario.
Persons A and B read a CPU review where the CPU gets a 5GHz overclock with ease. Both would like to get this CPU, but only person A intends to overclock it.
Person A buys the chip, installs it then quickly realises it's a really bad overclocker. Great idle power draw and the rest, but just can't overclock near 5GHz. So he takes it back and gets another one. Person B comes in behind him and buys his first chip, and gets a nice CPU with low power draw, which is just what he wanted.
Everybody wins.
The percentage of people who are overclocking CPU's is tiny in comparison to those who aren't - so the chances of a person who intends to overclock getting a chip that has already been returned due to poor overclocking is minuscule. And if he can return it anyway, what's the problem? Eventually some person who has no intention of overclocking will get it, and they'll be perfectly happy with it.
It's a no-lose situation. Who is being harmed here?
Persons A and B read a CPU review where the CPU gets a 5GHz overclock with ease. Both would like to get this CPU, but only person A intends to overclock it.
Person A buys the chip, installs it then quickly realises it's a really bad overclocker. Great idle power draw and the rest, but just can't overclock near 5GHz. So he takes it back and gets another one. Person B comes in behind him and buys his first chip, and gets a nice CPU with low power draw, which is just what he wanted.
Everybody wins.
The percentage of people who are overclocking CPU's is tiny in comparison to those who aren't - so the chances of a person who intends to overclock getting a chip that has already been returned due to poor overclocking is minuscule. And if he can return it anyway, what's the problem? Eventually some person who has no intention of overclocking will get it, and they'll be perfectly happy with it.
It's a no-lose situation. Who is being harmed here?
You're arguing with walls here. In their minds, it's unethical. But then again, it seems like they don't know what the definition of Ethics is. (Morality has nothing to do with RMAing an item, if the item is 100% functional)
MrSquished
Lifer
- Jan 14, 2013
- 26,040
- 24,351
- 136
indeed it is a lottery. i got a great Q6600 that oc'd very nicely. sold it on amazon stating it's 24/7 OC. i remember there were some steppings on this chip. don't remember exactly but it was liek B1 vs something else. one of those steppings oc'd much better. people were posting where they got the better stepping chip from what seller and i got lucky and ordered from one and got the right stepping. so there is a bunch of luck involved.
my next chip the i5 3570K oc'd easily to 4.4ghz running stable for the last year.
just gotta win the lottery.
my next chip the i5 3570K oc'd easily to 4.4ghz running stable for the last year.
just gotta win the lottery.
When you pay more for the K version, I'm sure you expect an overclock. Otherwise you'd just get the 4770.
Hmm, could this be retail versus press sample variance? Trying to manipulate reviews with press samples that perform and clock better than actual retail products? I don't believe intel has ever done such a thing. I can think of a company that has, however. :whiste:
EightySix Four
Diamond Member
- Jul 17, 2004
- 5,122
- 52
- 91
I've always just stick with what I get, luckily pretty much every chip I have even owned has been at least around an average clocker with a few above average examples. Even with video cards I have only gotten one dud that I can remember, a HD 6950 that struggled to OC much, but it unlocked and was in crossfire, so it did not matter.
Gillbot
Lifer
- Jan 11, 2001
- 28,830
- 17
- 81
So you have no problem with paying the same new price for a used CPU that someone else did who knows what to it trying to achieve a max overclock?
You won't get through to anyone. The original poster said this-
"or do you return CPU's until you get a good one?"
Do you RMA 10 working cpu's till you get one that reaches your overclocking expectations? I am not ragging on the thread starter because he didn't say he ever did that type of thing. That type of behaviour is unethical and I can't believe anyone would condone it. The end result is higher prices for everyone.
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