Refurbed motherboards at newegg...worth the risk?

[Wolfchild]

Right now I need a KT333 board...bought one for the wife's computer from someone on the For Sale forum a while back and it's been very flaky

I'm also low on money right now...was just about to order an Abit KD7-E from newegg when I got to looking at the refurbished items and the
price is tempting. Any opinions on whether these are worth the gamble or not? If it's iffy I'd rather just spend the money on a brand new board -
all of the screwing around with questionable hardware is costly timewise too.

 

[magomago]

well, you area taking a risk.

I would do it (providng if there is a problem you call them QUICKLY)

but remember, except ONLY the mobo to come...anything extra is luckiness

 

[caboob]

i recently bought a refurbed A7N266C (Asus nforce1) and it worked just fine though the audio riser card that would normally come with it was not included. i've had no problems with returning defective items from them anyways.

 

[v1rtuoso]

I am actually contemplating buyin a refurb motherboard from newegg myself.. whats the RMA process like for exchanging a defective refurbished motherboard at newegg? Will they nail you with a 15% restocking fee and charge you for shipping? If so, I'd say the risk is pretty high as an original 39$ purchase may balloon up to 60$ not to mention hours of your wasted time. That said though, if you get a working mobo the first time around, it seems like a sweet deal. Does anyone with experience in exchanging refurbed mobos at newegg want to give us some more details? My Asus P4S333 died recently and I urgently need a replacement

 

[Wolfchild]

Yeah I don't know, like I said it's tempting, the prices are so good, like $39 and free shipping, but I wish I knew more about the criteria for these boards. Like what if one appears to work fine but was genuinely flaky when the customer had it running in a system with an OS loaded. I've owned a couple of boards like that, and if they weren't thoroughly tested in a working system then who knows what evils may lurk?

 

[DAPUNISHER]

It's a crap shoot, I have a buddy that has gotten 3 perfect refurbs from them making a 100% success, but from reading many other posts on the topic the usual rate tends to be approx. 60% good 40% bad, so the question you have to ask yourself Punk, is "do I feel lucky?" well...do ya Punk? do you feel lucky? Just kidding about the punk part for the quote effect of course and Newegg is excellent about RMAs but the return shipping cost does start eating the equity of the refurb a bit

 

[RickH]

NEVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!! You could spend hours trouble shooting a hopeless problem. Life is too short to spend it saving a buck on a motherboard. If you can't afford your "dream board", get a new, board with less features. You will be better in the long run. R

 

[Texun]

DAPUNISHER is right about it being a crap shoot. I went for one recently and so far all is well, but I have been known to root for the underdog once in a while. For $39 shipped it has been a great deal. I got just the board in a plain white box with a 15 day warranty. Downloaded what I needed from the ASUS site and had it running in about an hour on Win2K without a problem. It's still pretty new. Only been running for a week now, but after running Burn In Test Pro overnight, SETI, and then a dose of Sandra it hasn't hiccuped once.

I actually took a step back. Went from a 333 back to the A7V266C due to some odd and very random problems with the 333. I still have an XP1700 and PC2100 RAM so it wasn't that much of a step in terms of performance. But the A7V actually feels snappier than the 333 that I pulled out.

If I had no other working PC's or parts to bail me out in case it went TU then I would probably go full pop and get one new in the box. The RMA process is a pain no matter how good the company may be.

 

[Don66]

I've bought 2 and they are 100% one is running in my uncles machine and the other in mine.
I don't think it's anymore of a gamble than buying one from a trader or even a new board for that matter, as a new one can be
fvcked up too..