refurbished motherboards???

[picardal]

What do u guys think of refurbished motherboards>>??
Is it a good buy usually?

 

[bozo1]

Some people here have bought them without problems, others have had problems. Usually what you get is nothing that was 'refurbished', just something that was returned by a user and tested good by the store. Most mobo's that are returned actually have nothing wrong with them (user error) but the store can't sell them as 'new' anymore. That being said, if the board was returned due to an intermittent problem, testing sometimes doesn't reveal those.

 

[Byte]

If your the kind of guy who likes to play around with hardware, they are pretty good. I use to ONLY buy refurb mobos from newegg. So far, no one has complained to me about any problems yet. Also you can always return it. Once i got a Plextor 12x10x32S from newegg, man was it crap. Looked likt it was thrown out a window. It was dirty and it made LOUD noises when spinning. I returned it, and since they didn't have anymore, i got a brand new one, yay! So if the board has problems just return until you get one that works.

 

[VBboy]

I would definitely stay away from refurbished mobos. Buying one is definitely like asking for trouble. What do you save? $30 at most? The only refurbished part I'd buy is a CD-ROM drive. Not RAM, mobo, CPU, heatsink, videocard or anything else. Better safe than very, very sorry and crying.

 

[KevinMU1]

I would stay away from refurbished motherboards too. For example, the board I'm using now has bad voltage regulators, but they only cause problems (read: BSODs and lock-ups) if I'm running at full clock with 100% CPU load. If I clock down, I don't have the problem. So I could conceivably pass off my board to some vendor, and they could sell it "refurbished" without ever finding ithe problem, and then you'd have my bad voltage regulators. That's why I would avoid refurbs, due to problems like these that can be very hard to detect.

 

[jamarno]

"Refurbished" is a term being used very loosely and usually means "barely repaired and tested." So don't be surprised if one of the less-used parts of a refurbished motherboard is nonfunctional, such as a mouse or serial port. I would not buy a refurbished motherboard unless it was sold with a money-back guarantee, including shipping costs both ways.

 

[Bovinicus]

I would never buy a refurbished part that is detrimental to system operation. I might buy a refurbished DVD-ROM drive, or CD-RW drive. However, I would never buy a refurbished motherboard or power supply.

 

[Atlantean]

Personally I wouldn't buy a refurbished mobo, but thats just me. Personally I would go for a new mobo just because then I don't have to worry about potential problems, and I wouldn't have to waste time checking to make sure it works properly. It isn't like you really save all that much money if you are buying a refurbished mobo rather than a new one, and the time that you would waste fiddling around with it would probably make it so that you paid more for it (time=money). Thats just my opinion of course.

 

[Byte]

what makes a refurbished different from a new one? How do you know new ones don't have the same ones as refurbished? I mean a refurbished was new before, the chances of a refurbished and a new one working are pretty much the same.

 

[QTPie]

Try to avoid if you can.

On the other hand, NEVER NEVER buy an open box from Fry's.