Amazon "Renewed" for a PC - thoughts/reviews? (1 Viewer)

[Peter McM]

I'm shopping for a new desktop tower, as mine has been upgraded to its limits. I see some machines with good specs thru Amazon's "renewed" for decent prices. I've read their quality control and guarantee policies and they sound good; has anyone purchased a refurbished computer through Amazon? Can I expect quality?

 

[Malcolm R]

This might get more traction and attention if it was in the "Computers" forum. Perhaps @Robert Crawford can move it.

 

[jcroy]

With a lifetime experience of being given a lot of older machines, I have come to the conclusion that refurbished computers are largely a waste of time and cash. In addition to headaches of troubleshooting vagarities of older hardware.

Easier and less headaches just buying a new desktop machine.

 

[jcroy]

Also nowadays I wouldn't "build" my own machine anymore, unless you're a hardcore videogamer who requires the cutting edge best hardware performance.

 

[Sam Posten]

I went with iBuyPower rather than build my own. YMMV.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

I've bought two Dell refurbs, but through sellers at Newegg. Both have been really good deals - older models but with new Win 10 licenses. Dell support for older models is fairly good which is why I stick with them vs. HP et al. Both have been upgraded to Win 10 2004 without issues.

 

[jcroy]

(Speaking in terms of hypotheticals).

The only scenario I would ever buy a "refurbished" desktop computer, is if the hard drive is brand new.

I generally don't trust second handed hard drives under any circumstances.

 

[Dennis Nicholls]

Neither do I. I stuck a new WD Blue 1TB drive in the desktop for $45, and a new WD Black 500GB drive in the laptop for $35.

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

These days might as well just immediately replace the main HDD w/ your own SSD of choice and relegate the HDD to other less critical duties.

Also, do consider newer AMD-based (CPU) options, not just Intel-inside...

_Man_

 

[ChrisOC]

Also nowadays I wouldn't "build" my own machine anymore, unless you're a hardcore videogamer who requires the cutting edge best hardware performance.

To each his own. A few years ago I bought a new Dell mid-tower for my wife, and the Dell setup alone was more trouble than a fresh install of Windows 10. When I looked further into the specs, I found them minimal for the components on board, with some proprietary hardware that would be difficult to replace or upgrade. I took it back and for about $100 more I bought all the parts I needed for a BYO with better specs and performance, and more flexibility for replacements or upgrades.

 

[Scott Merryfield]

The HP Elite Desk mini tower unit I am using was a refurbished deal, and it's been working great for a couple of years now. I also purchased a refurbished "all in one" HP unit (system unit integrated with the display) for my wife a year or so before that, and it has also been fine. I was able to get more "bang for the buck" by going refurbished. Also, the two devices did not come with the glut of crap applications that a lot of new PC's come with that I normally need to uninstall.

I added a SSD to my mini tower, but the wife's PC is using the hard drive it came with.

 

[jcroy]

These days might as well just immediately replace the main HDD w/ your own SSD of choice and relegate the HDD to other less critical duties.

This is what I would do nowadays. My next desktop will likely end up like this. The old style hard drive will be largely a drive for backup of personal files and some system stuff (such as c:/windows).

Currently I use external hard drives to do periodic backups of personal files.

 

[quantumsnoga]

Rebuilt computers are rather like rebuilt cars. Fun if you are into that thing, aggravating if you are not.

Personally, I'm a modest "computer gearhead"; I have the time to mess with them. I have used newegg for the base machines, not Amazon, do i don't have an opinion on Amazon.

You can save a lot of money with them, but they aren't going to go as fast as a new one.

Over the last few weeks, I have rebuilt 2 factory refurb machines. Both were Zotac AMD machines refurbed by a company called Datto. relative low powered, they came out in 2013. One was built as a windows 7 SP1 machine, one was built as a windows XP PRO SP2 machine. Neither will ever be connected to the internet, both use old software I already have from the past. Both are 5 in x 5 in x 2 inch boxes. (I like little box computers. They are all hooked up to a 5 port HDMI and USB switchers Push a clicker and punch a button to swap the machine you are using.).

How much did they cost? Each "barebones" cost $32. I already had several leftover 500 Gig HDD drives gathering dust. Cost free. Memory sticks were expensive because they are obsolete, 8 Gig for $37.50 per. OSes were free, I keep all my old software disks and related info. Net $60 per machine. I have leftover slower memory sticks, but I couldn't use them.

The time consumer was searching the internet for them old drivers for the machines. Windows 7 SP1 was no problem, but XP was. (I'm still unable to find USB controller for the the Chipset and XP, it limits my USB usage. Still I have 2 working USB 2.0 ports, it's Ok as is. Just like finding parts for a 1947 Chevy. Half the fun is the search. . .)

 

[ManW_TheUncool]

My somewhat recent new-ish PC (from last Dec) was a DIY build (taking over for a then-6-yo, 4th gen Core i7, baseline Dell XPS 8700 w/ a few solid upgrades), but that's mostly because I wanted it for video editing and such and (also) wanted to go w/ AMD instead of Intel. Yeah, I did also go w/ a (moderately advanced) gamer's video card running nVidia RTX2070 Super, but that choice was mostly for video editing -- I'm not a gamer... though I was OUAT and do sorta fancy the idea of getting more casually back into it, but still haven't at all so far even though my AMD CPU purchase (of Ryzen 7 3800x) actually came w/ a couple free games and promo trial subscription.

Most of the workout this build has gotten came from running Folding@home (to help battle Covid-19) pretty much 24/7 since early March (mostly w/ the GPU apparently running at circa 95% utilization)...

The old Dell XPS 8700 is still very functional for regular stuff and used as the shared family/common machine now (w/ a new, bargain priced, 37" ultrawide 21:9, 1440p Dell screen) replacing a dead(?), ancient-ish Dell OptiPlex (that was repurposed from my old employer way back). Briefly considered upgrading it some more w/ an nVidia GTX1660Ti GPU (partly to run Folding@home), but never got around to it -- it's currently only using Intel's integrated graphics (as the ancient, low-end AMD card Dell used doesn't seem to play nice w/ the ultrawide 1440p screen)...

_Man_

 

[jcroy]

Rebuilt computers are rather like rebuilt cars. Fun if you are into that thing, aggravating if you are not.

Personally, I'm a modest "computer gearhead"; I have the time to mess with them.

Same here.

Most of my "rebuilt" desktops, is putting together scrap parts I have accumulated over the years from old computers given to me.

I usually end up running Linux or one of the BSDs as the operating system on these rebuilt units, and not m$ windoze nor maco$

 

[John Dirk]

These days might as well just immediately replace the main HDD w/ your own SSD of choice and relegate the HDD to other less critical duties.

Also, do consider newer AMD-based (CPU) options, not just Intel-inside...

_Man_

Completely agree on point #1. Personally, I don't buy AMD processors as I've had some weird compatibility issues over the years. By now this may no longer be an issue but I just don't like chancing it.

 

[John Dirk]

I'm shopping for a new desktop tower, as mine has been upgraded to its limits. I see some machines with good specs thru Amazon's "renewed" for decent prices. I've read their quality control and guarantee policies and they sound good; has anyone purchased a refurbished computer through Amazon? Can I expect quality?

I don't know about Amazon. Personally, I need to see and touch a PC before I buy. I picked this one up just a few days ago from Micro Center and it's a beast! I bumped the RAM up to 32GB for something like $85.00 extra but 16GB is more than enough for most.

If you have Micro Center or a similar option in your area I would highly recommend this route.

 

[Sam Posten]

If anyone is looking for a PC that 'just works' out of the box and has enough oomph for light gaming including decent FPS scores I highly recommend this HP Omen from Best Buy.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-omen-gaming-desktop-intel-core-i5-10400f-8gb-ram-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660-super-512-ssd-black/6416475.p?skuId=6416475

It's 899 right now but we got one for my parents for $850. 512 SSD, a decent i5 and a 1660 super. Best of all: NO CRAPWARE.

 

[John Dirk]

If anyone is looking for a PC that 'just works' out of the box and has enough oomph for light gaming including decent FPS scores I highly recommend this HP Omen from Best Buy.

https://www.bestbuy.com/site/hp-omen-gaming-desktop-intel-core-i5-10400f-8gb-ram-nvidia-geforce-gtx-1660-super-512-ssd-black/6416475.p?skuId=6416475

It's 899 right now but we got one for my parents for $850. 512 SSD, a decent i5 and a 1660 super. Best of all: NO CRAPWARE.

Best Buy. No crapware. What's that again?

 

[jcroy]

I don't think I ever got a prebuilt pc which didn't have crapware coming with it.

Most of the time, the crapware was easy to disable (or delete) by hand.

The most annoying crapware I had to deal with, were trial copies of mcafee antivirus which would repeatedly spawn every time I killed the process. It took some elbow grease to finally get it to not respawn at all.