To save money, a repair technician buys 4 defective AMD Ryzen 5 5600 processors that he wants to repair. During testing, he notices that 3 of the CPUs are actually not broken.
There are many offers for computer hardware online that is listed as defective. Besides electronic waste, for which outrageous sums are sometimes demanded, there are also some items that are not actually broken. Sometimes, sellers unknowingly or due to lack of time list their hardware as defective on platforms like eBay.
Such deals are very popular among hobbyists because they can save a lot of money with little effort and some luck. A repair technician is now reporting about his windfall when buying 4 broken AMD CPUs that are not all defective.
Save a lot of money by buying defective hardware?
What kind of purchase was that? A user reports on Reddit that he bought 4 defective AMD processors. He claims to have paid only about 64 Euros in total for the CPUs. The retail price per unit is currently about 118 Euros (via geizhals.de). So, for 4 new processors, he would have had to pay about 472 Euros.
He says he plans to test the AMD CPUs and try to repair them if they do not work. Assuming he can repair all AMD Ryzen 5 5600, it would result in a considerable savings of more than 400 Euros compared to the retail price.
The user claims to be a repair technician. He looks for offers with supposedly defective hardware to repair it and then resell it for as much profit as possible.
How did his test go? The technician checked the processors one by one for functionality. He was lucky because, with 3 of the 4 AMD CPUs, his system reportedly booted up without problems. Only one of the Ryzen 5 5600, according to his statement, showed no signs of life.
A second test in his main computer with a current BIOS version reportedly yielded the same result. In this scenario, again 3 CPUs provided an image and allowed the hobbyist to access the BIOS menu of his PC.
What do others say? The Reddit community does not trust the positive outcome. Some users are convinced that the 3 processors cannot be considered fully functional without further detailed testing.
Non-obvious defects may only show after longer and more intense use of the hardware. They may then lead to, for example, unstable operation or a complete system crash.
Shoinipantes says, for example:
If they seem fine at first glance, it doesn’t mean they are fully functional. Every CPU should be thoroughly tested and stressed to confirm it works.
Shoinipantes on Reddit
The repair technician is advised that he must test and stress the CPUs much more intensively. If the processors continue to run smoothly afterwards, he can indeed consider himself a lucky guy who saved a lot of money. He himself sees the initially positive test only as the first step of the verification process and confirms that further tests will follow.
A user wanted to make a similarly good deal when buying an Nvidia RTX 4080. But a small detail made him uneasy, and he asked others for advice: Player finds RTX 4080 cheap on eBay, has doubts about the offer – Community explains why his concerns are justified
