Another tip that always worked for me when purchasing in person used : bring your UPS + PC in your car and use your phone as your monitor with an OTG adapter. Always worked to quickly test for 5 minutes. That 5 minutes make you decide to leave or take the GPU.
Mm not really. Some people will give you a good deal and have no way to test it for you and that's why it's a good deal. There's no excuse for not looking under the hood but some people sell cheap because you can't test it
I went to MicroCenter brought a open box 3090 24GB @$600 insurance over 100 bucks. Running BO6 @67C setting at Ultra their server run at a refresh rate of pay to play @20 HZ down to free-play 10hz.
I bought used video card (RTX 3070) 2 years ago. I was forced to do it, since they were sold out everywhere else due to mining crysis. Visited seller at his job where he had computer where he showed me it worked. GPU works to this day without any issues. Just always, if you are buying used GPU please TEST (even with benchmark like furmark) it before buying it.
For sure, How in the hell can people just hand over that amount of cash and not go through the bare minimum of testing it. If I ever decided to buy a used GPU I'm telling them straight up when I get there, Im coming inside and we're gonna do some testing first. If they have a problem with that than they can go find someone else to sell it too.
@@Cwayne1989 1. if ur meeting at their house its obviously not a scam since scammers wont give you their info like their address 2. if its not at a house, how are you gonna test the card?
We used to buy older cards as they were cheap, usually around $50, and every single one we bought over 10~ years worked. However I would *never* buy an expensive used graphic card. Also the sites you use make sure they have certain policies in place to protect the buyer in case something happens, if the seller tries to pull some tricks then ignore them and move on with your life.
Ive been buying/selling used GPUs for over 2 decades. Not Once did I get a bad card. I only buy on Ebay, never had to get money back either... Trick is to Know what to look for, what to look At and when to Pass up what you think Might be a good deal. There are lots of great sellers, they arent on Marketplace. They are on more Reputable sites. When I sell on other sites I make sure the Customer sees it working before they leave my home. People need to be more Attentive when purchasing used items.
I have a 15 year old pc. I put new graphics and ram in it a year ago to upgrade it. still works, never had a problem. I agree that older components have a longer lifespan.
I have an old AMD FX desktop that still works 100%, Even works prefect on Windows 11 (using hardware compatibility work-around). Why change something that works prefect?
@@ghost-retro3733: because some day some developer will look at the minimum system requirements of Windows 11, and set the compiler options of his software projects to use the features of newer CPUs. As time goes on, more and more programs will either refuse to start on your computer, or just crash unexpectedly.
Did the buyer even read the description. I have had people buy parts and repair stuff and want a refund because it didn't work. did they read, NO they did not!!!!
Fb marketplace has a weird structure. First off, the annoying auto message of “hello, is this available?”. If it wasn’t available, I would be put it to pending or sold! Maybe they should have an option for seller to popup “did you read the description?” Or something…lol
@@azntactical4884 yea, me too... in fact, I'm selling a few used item on eBay. In the description of my items it states you're welcome to test it at my place to ensure it is working.
I can repair them, I've bought many without testing because I don't care to waste my time and they gave me a good deal on it. You can go by the energy and different factors before committing and you should be good. Point is, people will rip you off sure, but plenty of people wont
I’ve bought my 3070 off eBay. I did my research and the seller was reputable. As a regular eBay user, eBay favors the buyer. I feel bad for the seller sometimes because the buyer can scam them. Take the part they need and get a refund or give back the item incomplete. Anyways I knew the risk and got my 3070. It clearly showed that it was used for crypto. There was rust on nonessential parts. I took it apart and cleaned most of it and put new paste. It works so much better than before. Even after all that work, I still saved myself a ton. As far as the car, the car commonly has a salvage title, which is why you see very low price. At that point it’s a “as is” vehicle. You don’t know who did the repair and how much repair they actually did. Dealerships aren’t much different. They buy used cars and only do the minimal amount of work to sell it. Once it’s off their lot, it’s yours forever.
sent in a 3080 3 weeks ago to msi, got back a 4080. Had card two years and just started going black..Msi has the best warranty in my opinion. No questions asked, simple swap. Canada btw.
Electronics can last more than 2 years, but they require maintenance, which not many people know how to do, when to do, or what to do. I clean and change the paste on my own laptops personally. Did everything go well when I was messing around with them? NO, I scratched the plastic, broke some screws sockets, lost some screws, forget to put some screws, hit the boards a few times, etc. etc. etc. It takes time to learn.
HI Alex, really proud of you taking the time to make this video (and many others) to educate your community on being a smart buyer. Curious, in this case, is it safe to assume you did not charge a bench fee or was there disassembly work involved? Thanks and keep up the good work.
Nothing new under the sun. Years ago someone bought a car stereo to us, they had bought it from a market "cheap" and found it didn't work. We took the top off - the seller had removed most of the internals but made the effort to solder a couple of wires to power the front panel illumination so it looked ok! Damn scammers.
A big source of these scam 4090's are coming from is remanufacturing outfits in China that strip the AD102 dies and GDDR6x off the retail PCB's and slap them onto generic PCB's designed for blower coolers and high-density server installations. This is because sale of H100 and other datacenter GPU's are severely restricted in China, but gray market imports of AD102 RTX4090 boards is a lot more straightforward. Given the AD102 has 512 4th gen tensor cores, very competitive FP32 performance (relative to the datacenter products), it's a pretty good alternative even if it's lacking in FP64 perf, large VRAM or NVLink features. Once stripped, there's a bunch of coolers and PCB's with no RAM or GPU die packages, and so they're ending up on eBay, sometimes with hastily glued on fake memory and a GPU package, sometimes just bare.
i bought a used 3080 from eBay last year. Worked fine. I upgraded to a 4070 ti in January and sold the 3080 for $450 on FB Marketplace. The difference though is eBay will 99% of the time back the buyer over the seller so I knew if i got scammed, even though the seller didn't accept returns, that eBay would refund me if the card was bad.
Micro Center That's the best that gives you a 3 year warranty i had a Sapphire 6700 xt that i fried by accident do to Some electrical issues that I was having in the house. This was like 2 months before my warranty was up and I got it replaced with a brand new one and had no issue at all. Maybe it's just a Sapphire thing. Which is also why any AMD card I get in the future will always be a Sapphire card. But Nothing beats Micro Center.
I recently had someone bring a Steam Deck to me that he purchased off fb marketplace, It would freeze after 3 minutes of being on. I asked if he tried to RMA it with steam first as it sounded like a GPU failure. Steam wouldn't take it as it was apparently a dev kit model. There's plenty of people out there who will purposely scam as many people as they can by buying junk electronics and sell them as working. This video is a perfect example of that.
I bought a used 3060ti off ebay still works fine to this day and a 3080 used off offerup ( didn't test , but the guy invited me to his house to purchase and I trusted his word ) still works.
Eye opening video ,Alex. I asked my older Brother one time how to people sleep at night ripping off people. He said they sleep like a baby. People who don't have a conscious will do just about anything to make a buck or in this case ,lot's of bucks!
Wow, incredible timing! I was just reading about this exact scam yesterday. I buy broken cards on eBay to fix and have noticed tons of listings for high-end money maker GPUs with no core/memory, just like that, and was wondering why that was and figured it had to be related to a scam of some kind. I was right and I'm glad you made a video of it. Shame on the people selling these on ebay as well, I think. I suppose you could use one for a legit purpose (donor board), but I have a feeling most of their market is NOT legit and they don't care. Law of the jungle indeed.
7:31 that’s just overprotective Honestly I have 2017 Mac book still working Only problem is fans are loud cause it needs a change of thermal paste and clean up of fans Also battery is hella degraded but that’s to be expected The “0” key kind of gone a bit in from the first week of purchase but still kicking strong it’s just a slight in so it doesn’t hurt function
Its not just grapicscards! I bought a UTi260A in europe, and when claiming a warranty case, they just said "We dont sell this Model in europe, so we cant give you warranty".
Anything you buy used , you are taking a huge risk . Doesn’t matter what it is . The best thing you can do is make sure you have a good working knowledge, and that they can show you it fully functions . If they can’t , don’t buy it .
Insurance is the same way, too. You have to read a bazillion pages to truly understand your policy before you sign it. If you went with a insurance company and you experience a problem. "I'm sorry, you don't have this option/rider in your policy that supports that particular type of damage". "I'm sorry, you live in Florida or California and your grass is too long or you didn't water your lawn and thus, a fire risk, so we won't be renewing your policy". "I'm sorry, we won't honor that claim of giving you $X per month for long-term care because the policy requires you to have (a 24-hour nurse or must be in this kind of facility or ...) for us to honor that claim" or something like that.
Also try to find close where to buy. I sold my two old gtx1070 cards for my coworkers when I updated to gtx1080ti. Also after long time I sold 1080ti to my coworker when he's card broke and I already had new gpu and 1080ti was collecting dust.
Counterpoint. If someone replaced the engine, then it is no longer an issue and does not need to be disclosed. If a door was repaired and you can't tell by looking at it, then it's a non issue. If you ask if it was in an accident and they don't disclose it, then they are being dishonest, but accidents happen all the time and things get repaired. You are not required to list every thing that has happened with the vehicle, as long as it looks good, passes your inspection, and is deemed road worthy by the municipality or state you are using it in.
I buy all my stuff from a local computer store. Yes I pay a lot more, but I'm getting a factory sealed new unit. For example my Nvidia RTX 2060 card I purchased new 6 years ago is still going strong. I would never install a used part in my PC, it could cause other problems in the computer. What good is money back guarantee, after you fried something in your computer.
I sold my working 3060 to someone on Facebook no issues because the card worked for me ok. With that money I purchased a 4060 brand new open box from someone on offerup not gonna lie I was scared but the card was new in box the tape wasn't even torn. Card works great so far I took a chance but it turned out ok the seller even sent me the order reciept for warranty purposes.
If you're dropping the kind of money for a 4090 (even if it's used) that kind of money requires ID and a verifiable phone number from the seller. If the seller doesn't want to show ID to prove an address or provide approval phone number walk away from the deal.
Its not really what this video is about, but I found a tossed out brother desktop printer perfectly working, and all it needed was a toner drum unit and toner which I got from somewhere cheap. The printer easily cost $300! I don't know why they tossed it out, but in IT I learn there are enough clueless people about technology sometimes who will decide the device is not working and straight up throw away perfectly working devices. I get the feeling now that PC building is more mainstreamed, you get the same types of people fail to read the manual and sell a "non working" GPU or CPU. Its a travesty sometimes. But you're right, a GPU is also easy to fake. If a price is too good to be true, it probably is.
Know what you're buying. Request a benchmark. Ebay is a buyers market. I got a bad card that was sold as working. In its picture, the same component was missing that I soldered on to fix the card. The seller refunded me and I kept the card. I sold a 2080 Ti recently for a friend. It needed new fans, I was extremely transparent in the listing. Saying it got new fans, and showing it running a benchmark with the serial number in the video. Thats the ideal listing. Guy bought it, told him to let me know if theres any issues and didn't hear a peep from them.
I have very good exp with buying used gpu's. Seldem encountered issues. When buying an expensive card always test it at their place or look at Ebay and other sites where you have real reviews of people. I typically buy every second gen a new card. Have a 4080 super atm and will wait till the 6000 series Nvidia. My card has still over 2 years warranty left so i feel safe. Also undervolted my card and limited the perforance a bit but using way less power due to that. So my Asus tuf gaming 4080 super works as good a card can be.
that's what I always told to my customer if you want a GPU just earn/save more to buy brand new one with the best or max warranty year that they could offer to you even you pay more than the SRP card and I also told them to keep those boxes and receipt because some company won't accept without it
Heck I bought a used, supposedly "good condition" video card on Amazon from a 3rd party seller once and it wouldn't post, plus the card was bent. I don't know if it was bent during shipping or not and was why it didn't post. What I did was repaired the bent part so I wouldn't get the blame for it and returned it back to Amazon for a full refund. Only took a few minutes to bend it back in shape. That was the only and last time I'll ever buy used video cards. Yeah I got my refund but only because Amazon had my back. If I purchased it from anywhere else it would have been my loss. I have however purchased a used motherboard from marketplace once too and the seller told me it wouldn't post but it was so cheap I couldn't pass it up. Turned out all was wrong with it was one bent CPU socket pin and one missing jumper. Had that board for over a couple years until it finally started acting up again so I retired it... by then I had another build.
i must admit I’ve never bought a gpu. however almost all my it lit is secondhand, however i always choose ex commercial kit that is of an age where its clearly the result of cooperate upgrades rather than warranty repairs etc. from a local vender, on ebay or now taobao as i am in hk. i have very rarely had a problem. i must admit i was thinking of getting a gpu for number crunching rather than gaming, thanks for your food for thought.
🙂 video cards seems to be the most fragile pc part, its not always the sellers fault, it could be on its last legs, when buying used videos cards try to avoid buying the real expensive ones, you have to hedge your bets and gamble, the risk is safer when its a lower cost budget card, but yeah keep that in mind if your dealing with used video cards thats its kinda normal for them to go out at any moment, every time you turn on a pc your wearing something out.
With the price of GPU’s it’s not something I would gamble with second hand unless I knew the person and even in still doing my due diligence. The problem is people see what things cost new and don’t want to pay those prices but they have no problem gambling almost that amount with Randoms on marketplace. Rather downgrade your expectations and get something more within your budget new for piece of mind. Later when new tech comes out and you can upgrade again within your budget.
i myself have only bought a used GPU once in my entire life, it was from CEX in uk, they are a reputable trusted company with many branches all over the region and they also give you 24 months warranty with it so if anything happens to go wrong during that time you can return it and they will either replace or refund. never ever have i bought used cards from ebay or facebook or any other untrusted marketplaces . i never buy used cards but at that time however i purchased a gtx 970 was because to replace the generic gpu that was in my old basic media player setup for the living room that we had and it was very old anyways so it didnt really make sense to buy a brand new card as i might be getting rid of the media player itself very soon anyways, and eventually i did, when smart tv's became affordable enough to run most apps such as netflix etc.
This case is really sad, but also shows a big negligence on the buyer side: Everybody can see that there are very important components missing. Chip and cooler are not there. Every of my kids will immediately recognize the fraud. Still it could have been avoided even without knowledge if the card would have been tested.
i buy used on amazon you get 30 days to return it. my last card was a 1080ti at $1027.00 on amazon when mining was jacking up prices. i got the 3 year warranty. 2 years the card went bad and amazon gave me back the full price back. i was out the $50 for the extended warranty
Dell is bad for warranty it starts at purchase not possession. When screen cracked after 3 days of possession it was beyond their 30 day workmanship warranty. they said it was accidental . I opened lid to use laptop and screen cracked due to flex in lid and improper amount of padding also tight hinges. I fixe issue with duct tape and screen from aliexpress for 121 usd dell wanted 500 usd .
It's also terrible with second-hand printers. "It would work great...100% OK" but if you insist on a test print on location, it won't work and the seller have to explain. "But yesterday it was still going"... who would believe it.
I bring my own small pc in my car, i go to the person, and ask to test it, not that i buy a lot of secondhand graphics cards, but if i do, the card gets tested. 5 minutes furmark does the trick normally. But, i buy mostly buy new cards if they are for personal use.
It's becoming a new normal now sell a card without chips... I sell a car with repairs, and the buyer had a problem with gearbox : a noise i'm serious but no luck for the buyer
I see comments like, “yo, you have to test it at the seller’s place.” But come on, as they just said, might work for them, but when you bring it home, it doesn’t on your pc! People will do anything for money, as you can see from this video, and when it comes to GPUs, where there are 101 variables, it gets complicated. Sure, you can test it at the seller’s place, but someone who isn’t an expert wouldn’t know if the GPU temperature during a stress test is too high, if it’s been underclocked to prevent crashes, or if in certain games show artifacts on the screen. Too many variables.
You should NEVER buy items if there are no protections / warranties offered from the one who acts as the market place. The other issue if where you are contacted and asked to leave the market place to sell your item privately or to purchase an item out of the protections of the market place. On ebay and with Amazon, your covered if you buy a faulty item Paypal also offer protection by using them, but ALWAYS check before you buy that you are covered. iTS GUARANTEED that if you are careless with your cash, then someone will part you from it. With Ebay ALWAYS check feedback of sellers.
1:30 thats why u only buy with protection from paypal or ebay... and with shipping protection. If u buy anything without protection, its ur own bad. Especially when prices are to good to be true, its 95% of the time a fake. And if u buy something, record urself of unpacking it and directly put it into the PC while recording. Make urself safe from any questioning. Or best case try to find something that u can pick up and test personally... But personally, when buying high end stuff, i rather buy brand new. If u have money for a 4090, then u also have money to buy it new. i bought many cards and other things used.. especially budged stuff and it always worked great for me. but i never buy any high end stuff.
Amen! Such warranties are as worthless as a 4-dollar-bill. Never buy a component that you cannot test or see working before you pay for it (when buying from on-line marketplaces).
I bought mine brand new with a 3 year hardware warranty from microcenter. Going into an AI server and it needs to be reliable. I came to the same conclusion and am willing to pay more for reliability.
I was genuinely considering buying a video card off of facebook marketplace until this video dropped in my sub box... simply mad. No words. I usually avoid Amazon simply because I don't like using Amazon because of working condition and (blah, blah, blah) but because of scammers like that, I don't even want to bother putting my hope and trust only to be scammed out or a card that will waste my time. some people even test it, or watch the seller test the card and still get scammed apparently. Frustrating, man.
I can guarantee you the working conditions of any Amazon worker here in the US is better than the Asian employees' working conditions who made the card new at a factory in China or Taiwan.
Sellers have to be careful also, Take pics of card working, take pics of the board showing the id numbers etc, Some buyers will buy electronics and try and return their bad electronics and keep the one that you sold them and that is good.
Ebay and Paypal give you some protection. Checking out the ratings help some. But there's always some risk when buying used. Also if it's really cheap, stay away.
I always completely test any video card I sell in front of the client. Client buys it if he or she thinks is a good card. After that moment, it's not my responsibility anymore. Sometimes, 6 months later or a year later, some client is coming back because the video card he was buying from me isn't working no more but the client thought it's a good idea to take the card apart and try to find reasons to feel entitled to a refund. There are a million reasons for a broken video card and in half of that million is not card's fault. I know not everybody is like this but some are really annoyingly stupid. Anyway, those who seek a bargain, reap only whatever they were looking for. I'm not saying it's OK but maybe they should already know that if something costs a penny then probably worth a penny.
It's a bad time to build an PC, chips can't be much better anymore and therefore the way is a higher and higher voltage. Pretty sure that PCB has a similar quality as in the past, but high-end GPUS are 3+ slot monsters. Easy to damage. And expensive ones. People seek used stuff more and this will happen.
I remember that l've seen some annonce on eBay which they sell "GPU" without chip and RAM. Maybe that's why it's like this. And people are bad to read descriptions!
To add to your rules about buying used cards - Not only do I stay to eBay (and pay with PayPal against a credit card) I also explicitly do not buy GPU models I know are used for mining, AI, etc where they've been under full load 100% of the time. Instead I stay with cards mediocre enough certain classes of GPU abusers would have no interest... More likely the card really was used by an actual person who simply wanted to upgrade. There could still be issues of course - Merely trying to limit them as much as is possible. If the board does arrive bad I want as many ways as is possible to challenge the charge and get my money back.
used card ok. but in warranty , no problem, but this type of scam, no warranty covers it. and big true. allways test test test... there is no other way. at least in europe, 2 or 3 years warranty for electronics like cpu gpu mobo etc. we had no problem with warranties for now, if its gigabyte asus or another. if ofc, product is not physicaly damaged.
i purchased a brand new asus rog strix 4090 from amazon (sold & dispatched by amazon), opened it to find entire pcb is missing, someone had removed it and just returned the heatsink + fans
Damn... that was cruel👀😓 i still buy 2nd hand gpu's in marketplace, two cards i have still works 3 years and going ❤ now i need to add "remove cooler to check chips" in my memo to avoid getting scammed 😅
Another tip that always worked for me when purchasing in person used : bring your UPS + PC in your car and use your phone as your monitor with an OTG adapter. Always worked to quickly test for 5 minutes. That 5 minutes make you decide to leave or take the GPU.
Omg. I seen it all now. 😮 It's like buying a car, and not looking under the hood.
Mm not really. Some people will give you a good deal and have no way to test it for you and that's why it's a good deal. There's no excuse for not looking under the hood but some people sell cheap because you can't test it
I went to MicroCenter brought a open box 3090 24GB @$600 insurance over 100 bucks.
Running BO6 @67C setting at Ultra their server run at a refresh rate of pay to play @20 HZ down to free-play 10hz.
Not many people will renove the plates and fans and heatsinks from a GPU.
Don't forget to kick the tires!
I bought used video card (RTX 3070) 2 years ago. I was forced to do it, since they were sold out everywhere else due to mining crysis. Visited seller at his job where he had computer where he showed me it worked. GPU works to this day without any issues. Just always, if you are buying used GPU please TEST (even with benchmark like furmark) it before buying it.
For sure, How in the hell can people just hand over that amount of cash and not go through the bare minimum of testing it.
If I ever decided to buy a used GPU I'm telling them straight up when I get there, Im coming inside and we're gonna do some testing first. If they have a problem with that than they can go find someone else to sell it too.
@@Cwayne1989 1. if ur meeting at their house its obviously not a scam since scammers wont give you their info like their address
2. if its not at a house, how are you gonna test the card?
We used to buy older cards as they were cheap, usually around $50, and every single one we bought over 10~ years worked. However I would *never* buy an expensive used graphic card. Also the sites you use make sure they have certain policies in place to protect the buyer in case something happens, if the seller tries to pull some tricks then ignore them and move on with your life.
@@bmxscape pc and generator :)
You have to test it in a demanding game or using a software that does a stress test. Many cards fail only after getting hot.
Ive been buying/selling used GPUs for over 2 decades. Not Once did I get a bad card. I only buy on Ebay, never had to get money back either... Trick is to Know what to look for, what to look At and when to Pass up what you think Might be a good deal. There are lots of great sellers, they arent on Marketplace. They are on more Reputable sites. When I sell on other sites I make sure the Customer sees it working before they leave my home. People need to be more Attentive when purchasing used items.
@fetus2280 Even on Ebay there is scammers.
"Not once did i get a bad card" ohh buddy don't jinx it
Another tip: If it's too good to be true, It IS too good to be true, so pass it up.
Won't buy anything used unless it's somewhere I'm guaranteed a refund incase of fuckery 😁
I have a 15 year old pc. I put new graphics and ram in it a year ago to upgrade it. still works, never had a problem. I agree that older components have a longer lifespan.
I have an old AMD FX desktop that still works 100%, Even works prefect on Windows 11 (using hardware compatibility work-around). Why change something that works prefect?
Mine is from 2012 and still works nicely. I3 3rd gen and motherboard H61M-H still original, but ram and graphic was upgraded over time.
@@carloscollomps1552 We have similar configurations..
@@ghost-retro3733: because some day some developer will look at the minimum system requirements of Windows 11, and set the compiler options of his software projects to use the features of newer CPUs.
As time goes on, more and more programs will either refuse to start on your computer, or just crash unexpectedly.
Did the buyer even read the description.
I have had people buy parts and repair stuff and want a refund because it didn't work.
did they read, NO they did not!!!!
Fb marketplace has a weird structure. First off, the annoying auto message of “hello, is this available?”. If it wasn’t available, I would be put it to pending or sold! Maybe they should have an option for seller to popup “did you read the description?” Or something…lol
@@Dot12 You don't realize how much people "forget" to clear a listing after a product is sold. Either that or they just plain don"t care to do it.
@@lamikal2515Eventually it will time out and they have to renew the post if they want it active.
@@Dot12 Take if from soneone that has been a seller on many platforms... It is very common.
If you purchase used, go to the sellers house and test it there. If they refuse, you refuse.
I was tempted on buying a big ass battery and bring a test bench for used pc stuff.
@@azntactical4884 yea, me too... in fact, I'm selling a few used item on eBay. In the description of my items it states you're welcome to test it at my place to ensure it is working.
Probably only feasible with Craig's list...
Plot twist : the seller agreed and he's a serial killer
I can repair them, I've bought many without testing because I don't care to waste my time and they gave me a good deal on it. You can go by the energy and different factors before committing and you should be good. Point is, people will rip you off sure, but plenty of people wont
Ethics and honesty died long ago.
Smart advice Alex. Have a good week.
Your an honest man wish there were more people like you this world would be a better place🇬🇧
Exactly. Many repair shops are the worst for honesty.
I’ve bought my 3070 off eBay. I did my research and the seller was reputable. As a regular eBay user, eBay favors the buyer. I feel bad for the seller sometimes because the buyer can scam them. Take the part they need and get a refund or give back the item incomplete.
Anyways I knew the risk and got my 3070. It clearly showed that it was used for crypto. There was rust on nonessential parts. I took it apart and cleaned most of it and put new paste. It works so much better than before. Even after all that work, I still saved myself a ton.
As far as the car, the car commonly has a salvage title, which is why you see very low price. At that point it’s a “as is” vehicle. You don’t know who did the repair and how much repair they actually did. Dealerships aren’t much different. They buy used cars and only do the minimal amount of work to sell it. Once it’s off their lot, it’s yours forever.
I bought an EVGA 3080 TI off Ebay that was still under warranty. Guess i got lucky.
Stuff like this is what happens when a video card like the 4090 goes for $2000... if video cards were cheaper, the profit would be far less.
No, there are 4090s for under 1000 bucks with this issue.
Normally legid cards go for 1600 to 2000 bucks.
sent in a 3080 3 weeks ago to msi, got back a 4080. Had card two years and just started going black..Msi has the best warranty in my opinion. No questions asked, simple swap. Canada btw.
That's awesome, did you have to show the original purchase order ?
Probably a Canada thing, in the US it isn’t that way. All the manufacturers fight tooth and nail to deny warranty’s.
Electronics can last more than 2 years, but they require maintenance, which not many people know how to do, when to do, or what to do. I clean and change the paste on my own laptops personally. Did everything go well when I was messing around with them? NO, I scratched the plastic, broke some screws sockets, lost some screws, forget to put some screws, hit the boards a few times, etc. etc. etc. It takes time to learn.
Buy thermal pads, they last longer than the graphics card/cpu is a reasonable choice for gaming.
I bought my 4080 used a couple of months after it came out. Still working fine. Just be sure to SEE THE CARD working before you buy it.
There's a special place in hell for scammers.
HI Alex, really proud of you taking the time to make this video (and many others) to educate your community on being a smart buyer. Curious, in this case, is it safe to assume you did not charge a bench fee or was there disassembly work involved? Thanks and keep up the good work.
Nothing new under the sun. Years ago someone bought a car stereo to us, they had bought it from a market "cheap" and found it didn't work. We took the top off - the seller had removed most of the internals but made the effort to solder a couple of wires to power the front panel illumination so it looked ok! Damn scammers.
Tech repair and listening to life advices is the perfect combo!
Perfect. You are a great guy. Best regards from Brazil.
Your videos are amaze.
A ton thanks for this advice! I was almost get scammed. This saved me loosing money.
If you register your 4090 from Gigabyte in the first 30 days you get an extra year which would equal 4 years
A big source of these scam 4090's are coming from is remanufacturing outfits in China that strip the AD102 dies and GDDR6x off the retail PCB's and slap them onto generic PCB's designed for blower coolers and high-density server installations. This is because sale of H100 and other datacenter GPU's are severely restricted in China, but gray market imports of AD102 RTX4090 boards is a lot more straightforward. Given the AD102 has 512 4th gen tensor cores, very competitive FP32 performance (relative to the datacenter products), it's a pretty good alternative even if it's lacking in FP64 perf, large VRAM or NVLink features. Once stripped, there's a bunch of coolers and PCB's with no RAM or GPU die packages, and so they're ending up on eBay, sometimes with hastily glued on fake memory and a GPU package, sometimes just bare.
It started back in 3090. However there are way too much recently, as much as exporting to all over the world.
Yeah mined Rx 580 and Rx 570 are also seller like this as brandnew
😨
i bought a used 3080 from eBay last year. Worked fine. I upgraded to a 4070 ti in January and sold the 3080 for $450 on FB Marketplace. The difference though is eBay will 99% of the time back the buyer over the seller so I knew if i got scammed, even though the seller didn't accept returns, that eBay would refund me if the card was bad.
Micro Center That's the best that gives you a 3 year warranty i had a Sapphire 6700 xt that i fried by accident do to Some electrical issues that I was having in the house. This was like 2 months before my warranty was up and I got it replaced with a brand new one and had no issue at all. Maybe it's just a Sapphire thing. Which is also why any AMD card I get in the future will always be a Sapphire card. But Nothing beats Micro Center.
thats why when you buy high end gpu. its better to tell the guy you want to see it working and check the gpu name and model
I recently had someone bring a Steam Deck to me that he purchased off fb marketplace, It would freeze after 3 minutes of being on. I asked if he tried to RMA it with steam first as it sounded like a GPU failure. Steam wouldn't take it as it was apparently a dev kit model. There's plenty of people out there who will purposely scam as many people as they can by buying junk electronics and sell them as working. This video is a perfect example of that.
I bought a used 3060ti off ebay still works fine to this day and a 3080 used off offerup ( didn't test , but the guy invited me to his house to purchase and I trusted his word ) still works.
Yeah unfortunately there are lots of scammers out there. There are always risks when buying used stuff what ever it is.
Eye opening video ,Alex. I asked my older Brother one time how to people sleep at night ripping off people. He said they sleep like a baby. People who don't have a conscious will do just about anything to make a buck or in this case ,lot's of bucks!
Best FREE advice you will receive today. Thanks Alex
People will always be people and if anyone forgets people lie this is the lesson that should remind them
3080 since launch in '20 still going strong. Changed the thermal paste and pads and keeping it clean.
please teach how you use continuity on your board? where to touch etc. i really hope can learn that
I love buying all my stuff new because I know how I take care of it
Always - TOP ! Best Regards from Bulgaria , East Europe .
Love your wisdom! I love your lessons. Thank you for sharing.
Wow, incredible timing! I was just reading about this exact scam yesterday. I buy broken cards on eBay to fix and have noticed tons of listings for high-end money maker GPUs with no core/memory, just like that, and was wondering why that was and figured it had to be related to a scam of some kind. I was right and I'm glad you made a video of it. Shame on the people selling these on ebay as well, I think. I suppose you could use one for a legit purpose (donor board), but I have a feeling most of their market is NOT legit and they don't care. Law of the jungle indeed.
7:31 that’s just overprotective
Honestly I have 2017 Mac book still working
Only problem is fans are loud cause it needs a change of thermal paste and clean up of fans
Also battery is hella degraded but that’s to be expected
The “0” key kind of gone a bit in from the first week of purchase but still kicking strong it’s just a slight in so it doesn’t hurt function
Its not just grapicscards! I bought a UTi260A in europe, and when claiming a warranty case, they just said "We dont sell this Model in europe, so we cant give you warranty".
Anything you buy used , you are taking a huge risk . Doesn’t matter what it is . The best thing you can do is make sure you have a good working knowledge, and that they can show you it fully functions . If they can’t , don’t buy it .
I only buy broken gpus. thanks to you and others, every one of them still work perfectly to this day. better than factory! 😛
Insurance is the same way, too. You have to read a bazillion pages to truly understand your policy before you sign it. If you went with a insurance company and you experience a problem. "I'm sorry, you don't have this option/rider in your policy that supports that particular type of damage". "I'm sorry, you live in Florida or California and your grass is too long or you didn't water your lawn and thus, a fire risk, so we won't be renewing your policy". "I'm sorry, we won't honor that claim of giving you $X per month for long-term care because the policy requires you to have (a 24-hour nurse or must be in this kind of facility or ...) for us to honor that claim" or something like that.
I must be lucky. I have a 100% success rate with used GPU's. Just make sure you buy from known sellers and not from any newly created accounts.
You’re a normal person who buys used stuff using his mind, I don’t understand people expecting honesty from %0 feedback sellers.
Also try to find close where to buy. I sold my two old gtx1070 cards for my coworkers when I updated to gtx1080ti. Also after long time I sold 1080ti to my coworker when he's card broke and I already had new gpu and 1080ti was collecting dust.
So would you still charge the scammed customer a bench fee ??
Counterpoint. If someone replaced the engine, then it is no longer an issue and does not need to be disclosed. If a door was repaired and you can't tell by looking at it, then it's a non issue. If you ask if it was in an accident and they don't disclose it, then they are being dishonest, but accidents happen all the time and things get repaired. You are not required to list every thing that has happened with the vehicle, as long as it looks good, passes your inspection, and is deemed road worthy by the municipality or state you are using it in.
thank you for putting it out there for people. i think - i hope - it does some good
I buy all my stuff from a local computer store. Yes I pay a lot more, but I'm getting a factory sealed new unit. For example my Nvidia RTX 2060 card I purchased new 6 years ago is still going strong. I would never install a used part in my PC, it could cause other problems in the computer. What good is money back guarantee, after you fried something in your computer.
I sold my working 3060 to someone on Facebook no issues because the card worked for me ok. With that money I purchased a 4060 brand new open box from someone on offerup not gonna lie I was scared but the card was new in box the tape wasn't even torn. Card works great so far I took a chance but it turned out ok the seller even sent me the order reciept for warranty purposes.
I miss EVGA, they had the best warranty support. The one issue I had in a past with an EVGA card, they replaced it with a new one, no problems.
No they haven't.
If you're dropping the kind of money for a 4090 (even if it's used) that kind of money requires ID and a verifiable phone number from the seller.
If the seller doesn't want to show ID to prove an address or provide approval phone number walk away from the deal.
Its not really what this video is about, but I found a tossed out brother desktop printer perfectly working, and all it needed was a toner drum unit and toner which I got from somewhere cheap. The printer easily cost $300!
I don't know why they tossed it out, but in IT I learn there are enough clueless people about technology sometimes who will decide the device is not working and straight up throw away perfectly working devices. I get the feeling now that PC building is more mainstreamed, you get the same types of people fail to read the manual and sell a "non working" GPU or CPU. Its a travesty sometimes.
But you're right, a GPU is also easy to fake. If a price is too good to be true, it probably is.
الله يعطيك العافية
My Motto- "I trust two people in this world, and I haven't met the other person yet"!
Know what you're buying. Request a benchmark. Ebay is a buyers market. I got a bad card that was sold as working. In its picture, the same component was missing that I soldered on to fix the card. The seller refunded me and I kept the card. I sold a 2080 Ti recently for a friend. It needed new fans, I was extremely transparent in the listing. Saying it got new fans, and showing it running a benchmark with the serial number in the video. Thats the ideal listing. Guy bought it, told him to let me know if theres any issues and didn't hear a peep from them.
I have very good exp with buying used gpu's. Seldem encountered issues. When buying an expensive card always test it at their place or look at Ebay and other sites where you have real reviews of people. I typically buy every second gen a new card. Have a 4080 super atm and will wait till the 6000 series Nvidia. My card has still over 2 years warranty left so i feel safe. Also undervolted my card and limited the perforance a bit but using way less power due to that. So my Asus tuf gaming 4080 super works as good a card can be.
that's what I always told to my customer if you want a GPU just earn/save more to buy brand new one with the best or max warranty year that they could offer to you even you pay more than the SRP card and I also told them to keep those boxes and receipt because some company won't accept without it
I hope you didn’t charge him to take the fan off and see it was done for …
Heck I bought a used, supposedly "good condition" video card on Amazon from a 3rd party seller once and it wouldn't post, plus the card was bent. I don't know if it was bent during shipping or not and was why it didn't post. What I did was repaired the bent part so I wouldn't get the blame for it and returned it back to Amazon for a full refund. Only took a few minutes to bend it back in shape. That was the only and last time I'll ever buy used video cards. Yeah I got my refund but only because Amazon had my back. If I purchased it from anywhere else it would have been my loss. I have however purchased a used motherboard from marketplace once too and the seller told me it wouldn't post but it was so cheap I couldn't pass it up. Turned out all was wrong with it was one bent CPU socket pin and one missing jumper. Had that board for over a couple years until it finally started acting up again so I retired it... by then I had another build.
good advise but will they listen and learn ,,,,,,,, thanks for posting
i must admit I’ve never bought a gpu. however almost all my it lit is secondhand, however i always choose ex commercial kit that is of an age where its clearly the result of cooperate upgrades rather than warranty repairs etc. from a local vender, on ebay or now taobao as i am in hk. i have very rarely had a problem.
i must admit i was thinking of getting a gpu for number crunching rather than gaming, thanks for your food for thought.
Alex well said, best advice on the video card
🙂 video cards seems to be the most fragile pc part, its not always the sellers fault, it could be on its last legs, when buying used videos cards try to avoid buying the real expensive ones, you have to hedge your bets and gamble, the risk is safer when its a lower cost budget card, but yeah keep that in mind if your dealing with used video cards thats its kinda normal for them to go out at any moment, every time you turn on a pc your wearing something out.
With the price of GPU’s it’s not something I would gamble with second hand unless I knew the person and even in still doing my due diligence. The problem is people see what things cost new and don’t want to pay those prices but they have no problem gambling almost that amount with Randoms on marketplace.
Rather downgrade your expectations and get something more within your budget new for piece of mind. Later when new tech comes out and you can upgrade again within your budget.
i myself have only bought a used GPU once in my entire life, it was from CEX in uk, they are a reputable trusted company with many branches all over the region and they also give you 24 months warranty with it so if anything happens to go wrong during that time you can return it and they will either replace or refund. never ever have i bought used cards from ebay or facebook or any other untrusted marketplaces . i never buy used cards but at that time however i purchased a gtx 970 was because to replace the generic gpu that was in my old basic media player setup for the living room that we had and it was very old anyways so it didnt really make sense to buy a brand new card as i might be getting rid of the media player itself very soon anyways, and eventually i did, when smart tv's became affordable enough to run most apps such as netflix etc.
This case is really sad, but also shows a big negligence on the buyer side:
Everybody can see that there are very important components missing.
Chip and cooler are not there.
Every of my kids will immediately recognize the fraud.
Still it could have been avoided even without knowledge if the card would have been tested.
If you buy GPU at least, turn torch on your phone and look sideways, underneath GPU cooler, to see if chip and RAM is there!
i buy used on amazon you get 30 days to return it. my last card was a 1080ti at $1027.00 on amazon when mining was jacking up prices. i got the 3 year warranty. 2 years the card went bad and amazon gave me back the full price back. i was out the $50 for the extended warranty
Is that the reason those stickers are located in spots to easily noticed it was open?
Dell is bad for warranty it starts at purchase not possession. When screen cracked after 3 days of possession it was beyond their 30 day workmanship warranty. they said it was accidental . I opened lid to use laptop and screen cracked due to flex in lid and improper amount of padding also tight hinges. I fixe issue with duct tape and screen from aliexpress for 121 usd dell wanted 500 usd .
It's also terrible with second-hand printers. "It would work great...100% OK" but if you insist on a test print on location, it won't work and the seller have to explain. "But yesterday it was still going"... who would believe it.
Is it weird i love this guys accent.
Trust no one. OK. I don't trust you! :)
I bring my own small pc in my car, i go to the person, and ask to test it, not that i buy a lot of secondhand graphics cards, but if i do, the card gets tested. 5 minutes furmark does the trick normally. But, i buy mostly buy new cards if they are for personal use.
I've been one of the lucky ones that have bought countless used graphic cards and never had a issue, my day will come hahaha
It's becoming a new normal now
sell a card without chips...
I sell a car with repairs, and the buyer had a problem with gearbox : a noise
i'm serious but no luck for the buyer
I see comments like, “yo, you have to test it at the seller’s place.”
But come on, as they just said, might work for them, but when you bring it home, it doesn’t on your pc!
People will do anything for money, as you can see from this video, and when it comes to GPUs, where there are 101 variables, it gets complicated.
Sure, you can test it at the seller’s place, but someone who isn’t an expert wouldn’t know if the GPU temperature during a stress test is too high, if it’s been underclocked to prevent crashes, or if in certain games show artifacts on the screen. Too many variables.
You should NEVER buy items if there are no protections / warranties offered from the one who acts as the market place. The other issue if where you are contacted and asked to leave the market place to sell your item privately or to purchase an item out of the protections of the market place. On ebay and with Amazon, your covered if you buy a faulty item Paypal also offer protection by using them, but ALWAYS check before you buy that you are covered. iTS GUARANTEED that if you are careless with your cash, then someone will part you from it. With Ebay ALWAYS check feedback of sellers.
1:30 thats why u only buy with protection from paypal or ebay... and with shipping protection.
If u buy anything without protection, its ur own bad.
Especially when prices are to good to be true, its 95% of the time a fake.
And if u buy something, record urself of unpacking it and directly put it into the PC while recording.
Make urself safe from any questioning.
Or best case try to find something that u can pick up and test personally...
But personally, when buying high end stuff, i rather buy brand new. If u have money for a 4090, then u also have money to buy it new.
i bought many cards and other things used.. especially budged stuff and it always worked great for me.
but i never buy any high end stuff.
Amen! Such warranties are as worthless as a 4-dollar-bill. Never buy a component that you cannot test or see working before you pay for it (when buying from on-line marketplaces).
Thanks for the tips !!
I didn't know Anatoly is into computers.
Probably the customer did not read the description very well. The seller might be selling it as a swap board.
I bought mine brand new with a 3 year hardware warranty from microcenter. Going into an AI server and it needs to be reliable. I came to the same conclusion and am willing to pay more for reliability.
I was genuinely considering buying a video card off of facebook marketplace until this video dropped in my sub box... simply mad. No words. I usually avoid Amazon simply because I don't like using Amazon because of working condition and (blah, blah, blah) but because of scammers like that, I don't even want to bother putting my hope and trust only to be scammed out or a card that will waste my time.
some people even test it, or watch the seller test the card and still get scammed apparently. Frustrating, man.
I can guarantee you the working conditions of any Amazon worker here in the US is better than the Asian employees' working conditions who made the card new at a factory in China or Taiwan.
Well - I bought a second hand RTX 3090 in 2021. Still working great. I guess I was lucky :-)
Sellers have to be careful also, Take pics of card working, take pics of the board showing the id numbers etc, Some buyers will buy electronics and try and return their bad electronics and keep the one that you sold them and that is good.
Ebay and Paypal give you some protection. Checking out the ratings help some. But there's always some risk when buying used. Also if it's really cheap, stay away.
USB-C lasts longer then Type-B
i think you mean micro usb, USB B is a tank, you will rip it off the board b4 you damage the port itself
I have a test bench that I bring to a café to test any potential purchase.
I always completely test any video card I sell in front of the client. Client buys it if he or she thinks is a good card. After that moment, it's not my responsibility anymore. Sometimes, 6 months later or a year later, some client is coming back because the video card he was buying from me isn't working no more but the client thought it's a good idea to take the card apart and try to find reasons to feel entitled to a refund. There are a million reasons for a broken video card and in half of that million is not card's fault. I know not everybody is like this but some are really annoyingly stupid. Anyway, those who seek a bargain, reap only whatever they were looking for. I'm not saying it's OK but maybe they should already know that if something costs a penny then probably worth a penny.
It's a bad time to build an PC, chips can't be much better anymore and therefore the way is a higher and higher voltage. Pretty sure that PCB has a similar quality as in the past, but high-end GPUS are 3+ slot monsters. Easy to damage. And expensive ones. People seek used stuff more and this will happen.
1:11 I already see a black square at the right that´s not straight, like it fell. The card was manipulated.
Yeah, i saw this in Poland too. Idk how people can buy 4090 for 1/4 of the price.
I remember that l've seen some annonce on eBay which they sell "GPU" without chip and RAM. Maybe that's why it's like this. And people are bad to read descriptions!
To add to your rules about buying used cards - Not only do I stay to eBay (and pay with PayPal against a credit card) I also explicitly do not buy GPU models I know are used for mining, AI, etc where they've been under full load 100% of the time. Instead I stay with cards mediocre enough certain classes of GPU abusers would have no interest... More likely the card really was used by an actual person who simply wanted to upgrade. There could still be issues of course - Merely trying to limit them as much as is possible. If the board does arrive bad I want as many ways as is possible to challenge the charge and get my money back.
in europe : refuse warranty if not original packaging is illégal :p , they try too
These manufacturers need the original packaging BECAUSE THEY CAN THEN RESELL THE DEFECTIVE PRODUCT AS NEW.
used card ok. but in warranty , no problem, but this type of scam, no warranty covers it. and big true. allways test test test... there is no other way. at least in europe, 2 or 3 years warranty for electronics like cpu gpu mobo etc. we had no problem with warranties for now, if its gigabyte asus or another. if ofc, product is not physicaly damaged.
i purchased a brand new asus rog strix 4090 from amazon (sold & dispatched by amazon), opened it to find entire pcb is missing, someone had removed it and just returned the heatsink + fans
Damn... that was cruel👀😓 i still buy 2nd hand gpu's in marketplace, two cards i have still works 3 years and going ❤ now i need to add "remove cooler to check chips" in my memo to avoid getting scammed 😅