![](\"http:\/\/pic.obilesky.com\/game\/2720\/mk0jrkz111b.jpg\")
<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Comments <\/p>\n
We\u2019ve all been tempted by it. There\u2019s a full priced graphics card next to one that\u2019s available for a fraction of the price. The catch? It\u2019s a refurbished GPU. Cue some intense mental wrangling as we try to justify spending hundreds of dollars on a graphics card when there\u2019s one that\u2019s pretty much identical but tarnished with the knowledge that\u2019s it already been used by someone else.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s weird, because I wouldn\u2019t think twice about buying a second-hand car. In fact, I think buying a brand new car is probably one of the fastest methods in existence of wasting money. Seriously, hand over \u00a340K for a car and it\u2019s worth \u00a325K after you\u2019ve driven it off the forecourt. But obviously there have to be people who buy new cars, or how else would we even get a second-hand car market.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/p>\n
Yet despite functionally being much the same conundrum in my head, buying second-hand PC components is a bit of a stumbling block for me. There\u2019s no MOT or test drive, we\u2019re just sort of taking someone\u2019s word for it that their graphics card is in tip top condition. They\u2019re probably none the wiser than we are as to its actual health. No doubt official refurbs and other tart ups of the sort have their testing methodologies before they\u2019re sent out but are we honestly to know whether that cut price GeForce GTX 1080 Ti has been sat crunching Bitcoin 24\/7 for two years? We just can\u2019t tell, we\u2019re taking a bit of a leap of faith.<\/p>\n
Which is why folks pay more for new PC components. There\u2019s a certain reassurance to getting that AMD Ryzen 3700 out of its sealed box and knowing it hasn\u2019t been sullied by someone else. There\u2019s also the comfort of warranties, and guarantees, and all the other consumer protections which come with a product purchase. Some of this applies to second hand products of course, but it\u2019s all very hit or miss knowing where you stand if you\u2019re RTX 2060 breaks eight months after you bought it off someone on eBay.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/ins><\/p>\n As you can probably guess, I don\u2019t particularly lean into buying second-hand or refurbished hardware, I\u2019d honestly just rather go without. But I also suspect I\u2019m actually in the minority; that I\u2019m worrying about nothing and people have scooped up all sorts of bargains by picking someone\u2019s cheap RAM they\u2019re trying to flog. It\u2019s not just about money either. Buying second-hand or refurbished hardware is better for the environment, and there\u2019s also a sort of logic to refurbished hardware being knowingly better than buying new – it\u2019s been stress tested and those with manufacturing defects have probably already been discarded.\u00a0<\/p>\n There\u2019s pros and cons then, to all of it this, although I\u2019d imagine there\u2019s still a few mental hurdles for some folks to jump before they think about buying a second-hand processor.\u00a0<\/p>\n But taking it all into account, are you for or against buying refurbished PC components? And is there anything that could be done to change your mind? Get voting and, as always, be sure to let us know why below!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Comments We\u2019ve all been tempted by it. There\u2019s a full priced graphics card next to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3608,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[1144,1636,249,280,1635],"class_list":["post-3607","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-game-news","tag-buy","tag-components","tag-debate","tag-pc","tag-refurbished"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/game8k.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3607","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/game8k.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/game8k.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/game8k.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/game8k.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3607"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/game8k.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3607\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/game8k.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3608"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/game8k.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3607"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/game8k.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3607"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/game8k.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3607"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}