Your standards for buying used PC components

[guest_999]

I usually avoid buying used pc components & if I do then I go by these rules:

1. 25% reduction in purchase price for every year of purchase calculated on actual purchase price(based on invoice) or latest purchase price whichever is lower. Only exception to this currently is RAM with invoice where I don't expect 25% discount for 1 year old ram.

2.From above,not spending more than 5k on any out of warranty(aka more than 3 years old) mobo or without invoice mobo.

3.Never buy used hdd(or RMAd sealed pack as they are still refurbished).

4.Never buy a gfx card used(or having suspicion of used) for mining unless considering a possibility of rejection of a future RMA within warranty.

I am curious about what others follow & if there is anything better than what I follow.

 

[RakaKaKaka]

1. Never buy used.

 

[6pack]

1. why the 25% figure? if something has 5 years warranty will you still take off 25% or 20% per year? if you find something good without any warranty will you feel like buying it?

3. i got brand new seagate hdd without any refurbished print on it when i rma'd my old seagate disk. i think seagate sends out new hdd's now as replacement drives. rma'd sealed pack still perform like new. only thing is there is very little warranty left on them. if you're going to use them only for dumping data like tv and movies and not using it 24/7 they are good disks.

4, i would have to agree. but how will you find out if the gpu has not been used for mining by the shop /distributor before sale? i've heard shops are selling old stock now at discount. if anything is older than 6 months it's probably been used for mining.

 

[nRiTeCh]

I usually avoid buying used pc components & if I do then I go by these rules:

1. 25% reduction in purchase price for every year of purchase calculated on actual purchase price(based on invoice) or latest purchase price whichever is lower. Only exception to this currently is RAM with invoice where I don't expect 25% discount for 1 year old ram.

2.From above,not spending more than 5k on any out of warranty(aka more than 3 years old) mobo or without invoice mobo.

3.Never buy used hdd(or RMAd sealed pack as they are still refurbished).

4.Never buy a gfx card used(or having suspicion of used) for mining unless considering a possibility of rejection of a future RMA within warranty.

I am curious about what others follow & if there is anything better than what I follow.

Totally illogical statements and perspectives.

1. 25% per yr, really? So after 5 years you will ask the seller for the product as free + 25% cash amount right coz logically in 4 yrs 100% reduction already got exhausted.

2. Your 5k fig spoiled the statment... If the mobos original cost itself was 5k many years ago then how come you again spending 5k after 3-5yrs on same used mobo?

3. Used hdd in warannty is always good and refurbished in warranty and refurbished but sealed pack and not in warranty too is good.

4. In first place who is going to announce that the gpu is a mining one?

 

[cute.bandar]

25% per yr, really? So after 5 years you will ask the seller for the product as free + 25% cash amount right coz logically in 4 yrs 100% reduction already got exhausted.

I think OP meant it like diminishing interest. If Rs 1000 is the initial price then first year reduce by 250, then next year reduce by 750-(750/4) and so on.

I have never bought anything used, mainly due to bad pricing by sellers. Buying second hand has lots of risks compared to new IMO. personally I expect a significant reduction is price to take that risk.

 

[guest_999]

I worked in accounts for some time & there is a concept called depreciation. Whenever some equipment is bought in a company its value does not remain constant over time but is reduced over time to reflect its current value to company over time. Once a depreciated value becomes 0 it means that equipment is due for replacement & if something happens to that equipment before replacement then in accounting books the loss to company is 0(as depreciated value is 0).

This 25% figure is based mainly on standard 3 years warranty for mobo,cpu & gfx card. Once 3 years are over any cpu,mobo,gfx card is out of warranty which means no protection from hardware failure. I believe 75% discount for something 3 years old & out of warranty is justified as the buyer is taking a risk. Also 25% of any pc component price 3 years ago will still fetch you a reasonably good new component. e.g. I see so many threads for used i5 2nd/3rd/4th gen selling for 5k(or above) which I think is wrong as these cpu were originally bought at ~12-14k so as per my rule they should be bought at ~3-4k.The latest G4560 sells for ~4k & is almost equivalent to these old cpu in single threads while a bit behind in multi threads.

For mobos it is even more justified to apply this rule. The reason being I have seen many cases where service centre people just rejected RMA cases citing physical damage(aka some scratch or dent with no relation whatsoever to mobo not working), I once even saw a friend Intel mobo RMA get rejected because the ram clip was a little damaged though in reality ram was still safely secured in slot & only way one can notice the clip damage is by touching it). Who is to say that a 2.5 years old mobo is in pristine condition with not a single scratch or dent or that it will reach you without a single scratch or dent via courier. The 5k figure is upper limit because as per my rule 5k is the price one should pay for a 3 years old mobo that was originally purchased for 20k. Now 5k is also the price point at which one can get a reasonably good current mobo so there is no point buying a 24k mobo 3 years later at 6k because at that time 6k will get you a decent enough new mobo with latest features & 3 years warranty.

I didn't know that Seagate is sending new hdd as replacement. Maybe external but not internal. How do you know its new,did you run any tool to confirm it?

For mining yes it is true that there is no definite way & hence the risk. If you think logically why would any gamer want to sale his 1 year old 1060 now when he knows it is not possible to get a similar card at similar price. Even if one assumes that person has stopped playing games even then why would he sell something for which he is not going to upgrade anything else in pc. After all people upgrade by buying gfx card or replacing gfx card not by removing & selling gfx card unless it is very old.

For hdd it depends on person. For me the value of data is much more than the hdd that holds it. I would rather take my chances with a new hdd than a refurbished/old one so if something happens I wouldn't have a reason to blame myself. Of course if one can live with data loss or has a fast enough internet connection to rebuild any lost collection in no time then its fine.

 

[nRiTeCh]

Facepalm! Being a commerce student doesn't mean you start depreciating everything around. Its at industry and commercial level the depreciation you were taught in class.

Btw I'm a sensible commerce graduate.

 

[Party Monger]

Im a little harsher than the OP. I use current prices & performance of hardware to value original price.
Say buyer got it at 40k. But if the same performance is available at 20k now, I will value it at 20k brand new.

Now deduct value for the amount of time it was used. I assume warranty life to be 60-80% of total life (80 in case of stuff like laptops that conks off anytime and very costly to repair)
Post this, deduct for condition, usage it has gone through previously etc. So the product above, if its life is 5 yrs, with 3 yrs warranty, and seller is selling at 2 yrs, I'll buy it max at 60% of 20k (3/5 life left of 20k), ie 12k. I'd bargain hard for 50%. But thats just me

So I generally end up starting at 50% of purchase value and go lower. Needless to say I don't end up buying much second hand. But My logic is sound and possibly as practical as it can get, as the comparison is always between a new product and used one. Original buying price rarely has any use. And in most cases prefer to buy new. Blame it on spending ages learning costing and finance professionally

OP- Your depreciation model of valuation is pretty outdated

 

[6pack]

In my opinion, people selling should value it properly according to performance and the condition in which the hardware is.
Buyer should as usual do his job - look for price - value/ performance and do his study on the item he's going to buy based on his budget.

Anyone buying second hand items should know that 3 year old items have no upgrade path to them. If you're looking for items to upgrade, buy new. If you're looking for items to replace items in your old computer, then buy old to save money if the new ones are not compatible to your system. Ssd, Hdd, dvd writer, can be upgraded easily since they are compatible in almost all systems. Problem is mainly with CPU, GPU and RAM.

For mobos it is even more justified to apply this rule. The reason being I have seen many cases where service centre people just rejected RMA cases citing physical damage(aka some scratch or dent with no relation whatsoever to mobo not working), I once even saw a friend Intel mobo RMA get rejected because the ram clip was a little damaged though in reality ram was still safely secured in slot & only way one can notice the clip damage is by touching it). Who is to say that a 2.5 years old mobo is in pristine condition with not a single scratch or dent or that it will reach you without a single scratch or dent via courier. The 5k figure is upper limit because as per my rule 5k is the price one should pay for a 3 years old mobo that was originally purchased for 20k. Now 5k is also the price point at which one can get a reasonably good current mobo so there is no point buying a 24k mobo 3 years later at 6k because at that time 6k will get you a decent enough new mobo with latest features & 3 years warranty.

Even items from amazon in boxes come dead on arrival brand new. I've got 4-5 hdd's that came dead from amazon. had to run around seagate centers for getting them RMA'd.

Damage can happen anytime, not only in courier. What if during unpacking the item from the box, you accidentally nicked it with a screwdriver while installing it or put too much pressure and damaged the item? You still lose money if the rma people reject it. Brand new or old, 5k or 20k you still lose money in such cases.

I didn't know that Seagate is sending new hdd as replacement. Maybe external but not internal. How do you know its new,did you run any tool to confirm it?

All the internal drives I got from Seagate as replacement - both desktop and laptop were brand new. The refurbished drives have a text Refurbished on them. In my case no such text and yes you can check in crystaldisk info or in other smart tools available for power on count, start stop count, etc and other parameters to check if its new.

 

[guest_999]

^^Some interesting methodology. However I still prefer my method.

Anything 3 years old having no upgrade path is true but depending on your usage & current market prices you may not have to. e.g. If someone is having a 2nd gen i3 & system is only being used for web browsing,multimedia etc & the only time user feel the need for a faster cpu is when playing some high bit rate 10bit h264 files(these don't have hardware acceleration as 10bit h264 was never adopted commercially by device manufacturers though these files are only used by anime fansub groups) then simply getting a 2nd gen i5 for ~3k is good enough. Surely one can get a G4560 system which will match 2nd gen i5 in single thread & ~25% slower in multi threads but that would mean spending extra 4k on mobo & more importantly extra 6.5k on 8gb ddr4 ram. There may be similar other scenarios too. Mainly one needs to upgrade when one is hitting ~90% or above cpu usage frequently or is unable to install/play certain software/video because of 2 cores/2 threads cpu(or a slow 4cores/4thread cpu).

Amazon has a very good return policy on many items. If an item is returnable under Amazon's product details page then one can simply return it in case of DOA with no questions asked. Damage can happen by oneself too but at least in that case you will blame your luck not yourself(there is a difference).

I checked Seagate India site & warranty statement still says the same "Seagate may replace your product with a product that was previously used, re-certified and tested to meet Seagate specifications".I also haven't seen anybody recently getting a new hdd as replacement. When did you replace those hdd?

 

[Lord Nemesis]

^^ So, if a product cost 40k originally, you would buy it for 30k after one year going by your 25% logic even if it costs 20k? Also, what if the market price is jacked up to 80k?

If you have been in accounts, you should also know that things don't work that way.

1. All products don't depreciate in the same manner or with a static percentage.
2. Depreciation does not happen in a straight line in practice.. So, it doesn't make a product value 0 in 4 years like by reducing 25% of original value each year. It may gracefully degrade over time. In some cases, it may depreciate only 10% in 3 years and in other cases it may depreciate 75% in one year and take years for the rest of the rest 25%. A product an have value even after it becomes obsolete.
3. A product does not necessarily continue to depreciate over time. There are situations where scarcity and demand can cause increase in value. DDR4 RAM is costlier than it was earlier.. Forget DDR4, DDR2 module today costs a lot more than they did many years ago. If somebody has a old machine that serves their purpose, they might prefer to buy a used DDR2 RAM module for double the price of what they spent years ago in order to replace a failed RAM than necessarily go and buy a new machine for a lot more. The point being depreciation is also dependent on supply and demand rather than on just age.

 

[6pack]

Amazon has a very good return policy on many items. If an item is returnable under Amazon's product details page then one can simply return it in case of DOA with no questions asked. Damage can happen by oneself too but at least in that case you will blame your luck not yourself(there is a difference).

Looks like all your info is outdated to me. Sorry to say, amazon stopped replacing dead hard drives months back for some reason.
Just look at all seagate/Wd hdd reviews who have got bad disks.

See this link - https://www.amazon.in/Seagate-Laptop-2-5-inch-Internal-ST1000LM048/dp/B01LY3Q201
Just look at how many have complained there is no return option on the drive.

I checked Seagate India site & warranty statement still says the same "Seagate may replace your product with a product that was previously used, re-certified and tested to meet Seagate specifications".I also haven't seen anybody recently getting a new hdd as replacement. When did you replace those hdd?

I rma'd the drives 2 months back. Maybe i'm extremely lucky and i got brand new hdd's. btw, seagate and wd both have given out brand new drives as replacement for dead hdd's from years. it's nothing new. I remember almost all the drives except 1-2 i got as replacement from seagate were new, i got one refurbished from WD and from toshiba i got a different series drive all together.

Whether you want to believe it or not I don't care one bit. It's funny that you're still stuck on arguing about the drive replacement being new and forgot about the main purpose of your thread.

 

[nRiTeCh]

To clarify on rma and replaced drives in query of getting used refurbished or a brand new disk. Since past 3 yrs whenever I received any replacement drives, have kept those drives for core data recovery overnight and for days on corporate enterprise level data recovery tool and never found an ounce of data from any previous owner.
Also ram couple of firmware level commands and everything came clean.
So manufacturers offering used drives during replacements is a myth.

 

[Lord Nemesis]

Looks like all your info is outdated to me. Sorry to say, amazon stopped replacing dead hard drives months back for some reason.
Just look at all seagate/Wd hdd reviews who have got bad disks.

See this link - https://www.amazon.in/Seagate-Laptop-2-5-inch-Internal-ST1000LM048/dp/B01LY3Q201
Just look at how many have complained there is no return option on the drive.

They do have replacement option, but selectively. It was there for the WD Red Pro drives that I purchased, but not there for the seagate drive that you linked.

https://www.amazon.in/Red-Pro-Hard-Drive-WD8001FFWX/dp/B01H33VQDG

 

[6pack]

Its replacement only. Not return item back and get your money back type of return.
Amazon stopped returns for such items because their staff package the items badly leading to large amount of doa items.

I did try a replace item option once, and the second drive was more badly packed than the first drive i got. It was faster for me to go to Seagate RMA center and give them the drive than to beat my head on Amazon cc wall. I got replacement drives from seagate in 2 days packed in cardboard box and anti static foam.

 

[guest_999]

^^ So, if a product cost 40k originally, you would buy it for 30k after one year going by your 25% logic even if it costs 20k? Also, what if the market price is jacked up to 80k?

If you have been in accounts, you should also know that things don't work that way.

1. All products don't depreciate in the same manner or with a static percentage.
2. Depreciation does not happen in a straight line in practice.. So, it doesn't make a product value 0 in 4 years like by reducing 25% of original value each year. It may gracefully degrade over time. In some cases, it may depreciate only 10% in 3 years and in other cases it may depreciate 75% in one year and take years for the rest of the rest 25%. A product an have value even after it becomes obsolete.
3. A product does not necessarily continue to depreciate over time. There are situations where scarcity and demand can cause increase in value. DDR4 RAM is costlier than it was earlier.. Forget DDR4, DDR2 module today costs a lot more than they did many years ago. If somebody has a old machine that serves their purpose, they might prefer to buy a used DDR2 RAM module for double the price of what they spent years ago in order to replace a failed RAM than necessarily go and buy a new machine for a lot more. The point being depreciation is also dependent on supply and demand rather than on just age.

I believe you didn't read my opening post at all(it usually happens in long threads like this so no problem).I specifically mentioned

"calculated on actual purchase price(based on invoice) or latest purchase price whichever is lower"

This is not an exam,it is a subjective topic where anybody can choose any methodology. Btw I also specifically mentioned

"Only exception to this currently is RAM with invoice where I don't expect 25% discount for 1 year old ram."

 

[guest_999]

Looks like all your info is outdated to me. Sorry to say, amazon stopped replacing dead hard drives months back for some reason.
Just look at all seagate/Wd hdd reviews who have got bad disks.

See this link - https://www.amazon.in/Seagate-Laptop-2-5-inch-Internal-ST1000LM048/dp/B01LY3Q201
Just look at how many have complained there is no return option on the drive.



I rma'd the drives 2 months back. Maybe i'm extremely lucky and i got brand new hdd's. btw, seagate and wd both have given out brand new drives as replacement for dead hdd's from years. it's nothing new. I remember almost all the drives except 1-2 i got as replacement from seagate were new, i got one refurbished from WD and from toshiba i got a different series drive all together.

Whether you want to believe it or not I don't care one bit. It's funny that you're still stuck on arguing about the drive replacement being new and forgot about the main purpose of your thread.

I am not stuck on anything,you said you got new hdd in RMA then good for you but like you said & as per their warranty statement it is not guaranteed that one will get a new hdd so let's leave it at that.Also as mentioned earlier Amazon do have a return policy on selected pc components & even if in reality it is not helpful for hdd it should be helpful in case of mobo & gfx card.

 

[Lord Nemesis]

I believe you didn't read my opening post at all(it usually happens in long threads like this so no problem).I specifically mentioned

This is not an exam,it is a subjective topic where anybody can choose any methodology. Btw I also specifically mentioned

The point being it is a subjective topic (as you said) which means that you can't define a generic methodology as you described. You may write it down all you want, and tell us that is how you do it, but in practice, it won't work like that. Every context will have its own treatment depending on the circumstances.

 

[guest_999]

^^Exactly but I never said to follow my standards as some kind of universal benchmark. These are just basic guidelines for fixing my upper limit for any 2nd hand purchase but that does not mean I won't take any deal not following these rules under any circumstances.

 

[foruamit2004]

I usually buy used, only when I'm pretty sure that I won't be using them longer time(exception in certain cases).

though I do have certain rules -

1. Never buy used Motherboard (unless, you just need it for a couple of months during the transit period for very low cost less than 1.5 - 2k, till you plan to get something better, like in case, where your mobo has conked off, and you want to upgrade the whole setup in a few months or so).

2. Never ever buy 'Non-SSD' used HDDs, no exceptions, however good the HD tune report or what so ever.

3. SSD can be bought, if still in warranty period(or may be not) but with good HD tune reports. ( have bought once intel 80 GB, 2.5 years back for almost 35% of original price at that time, without any warranty, it ran good for more than 1 year in desktop, then moved it to external USB case for photos/videos backup purpose after getting newer higher capacity SSDs).

3. RAMs can be bought, depending upon the warranty/price offered (I bought once transcends DDR2, and they never gave any issues for years and still lying somewhere).

4. GFX Card - Low end once can be bought, preferably something having atleast a few month of warranty remaining, if you want to get into some decent gaming and are on very low budget (especially the once, which can not be overclocked, are these kind of GFx cards still around?). I have bought once very cheap for 1.2k, when my costly once died and I was not playing any high-end games anyway that time. It also ran fine for a few months, but was heating a bit around 70-75 degrees, though It did not fail, but performance was not satisfactory, so bought a new better one after 7-8 months.

5. PSUs, trusted brand can be bought if warranty is still there, but personally I would say, buy a new good branded one and most cases it will be good for next 15 years. My Corsair 460W, is now almost 11 years old, still going good (only components from my first proper build along with CPU casing, which is still there in current setup also).

6. Who buys used CPUs unless you are buying the whole used setup. As they usually never go wrong anyway, I would say these are probably one of the most safest component to buy in used market. Non overclock able are safest bet, but other also are good as such depending on your budget.