Hacker News Reader

Comment by atmanactive | Hacker News Reader

How do you confirm that the GPU you bought from eBay is really in 100% working order? CPUs are clear case: they either boot up or they don't. If they do boot up, they are 100% ok. RAM, you do memTestx86 and it's all clear. But MBDs on the other hand ... I had ~50% failure rate from eBay where a MBD would boot up and would look like it is working correctly, only to discover that there is something somewhere that's not working as expected months later. Hence, I'm curious about your approach to GPUs.

View on HN

> CPUs are clear case: they either boot up or they don't. If they do boot up, they are 100% ok.

Not necessarily. I had a Xeon once with a single bad core. It would boot fine and run for a while, but under heavy loads it would produce bad results, leading to a kernel panic due to a detected inconsistency. Disabling the defective core made the problem go away, so I eventually had the CPU replaced which fixed the issue.

I also had a Core i7 system recently that was experiencing inexplicable slowdowns while rendering video for a month or two. After replacing literally every other component in the system without resolving the problem, the CPU finally died and I was forced to replace it. The slowdowns went away immediately, so my conclusion was that the CPU was on the way out and that was causing the performance problems.

Interesting. That never happened in my experience. Which generations were those defective ones? I mean, yes, overclocking and/or overheating the CPU could damage it, but I thought Intel had every possible self-defence protection enabled in the CPU.

The defective Xeon was in a 2009 Mac Pro, so it would have been a Westmere-era processor. Even though I was certain the problem was a bad core, the guy at the Genius Bar refused to believe it was the processor. He finally grudgingly agreed to replace the processor if I really wanted, but assured me it wouldn’t solve the problem. Unsurprisingly though, it did.

The other processor was an i7-14700K, and it was about eight months old when the problems started to manifest. The processor was never overclocked, and had a pretty chunky heatsink (with no fewer than three fans) so I’m pretty sure it was never run out of spec. Intel ended up RMAing the processor without too much hassle, so I get the sense that what had happened was not entirely uncommon, and they really want to avoid any bad press relating to it.

I’m not convinced Intel’s thermal protection is all that effective these days, after reading reports of people claiming their processors have become physically warped. Apparently a popular PC mod involves replacing the “flip-down” CPU bracket with one that screws in at all four corners, supposedly to help prevent warping.

Most Intel 13/14 series processors had instability flaws that caused them all to die over time. Basically every processor that was run before the fixes were finally released was likely permanently damaged.

https://www.techradar.com/computing/cpu/intel-finally-confir...

Thank you.

Yeah, the latest overvoltage scandal notwithstanding. That's a bug. Hopefully, Intel learned their lesson.

In my experience, that CPU Contact Frame mod is the best thing since sliced bread. It is obvious to me now that it should become standard on all motherboards. Mechanical benefits are numerous, but 10 degree Celsius better temperatures make it a clear winner. I installed two so far, one on 14th gen and one on 12th gen, and I'm never doing a build without one again.

Thanks for your question.

That was a real concern of mine, for a long time. Business Wise: 1. eBay has a really good buyers protection. I've had items that were not delivered or dysfunctioning, and I got a full refund. No questions asked. 2. Make sure to check the sellers rating. - pcprice.watch also includes the sellers' rating.

But I understand that you are more asking about my approach for a GPU to work hardware-wise? Technical testing for GPUs: 1. I do PCB inspection, and I check the power connectors PCIe contracts. 2. I found out GPU-Z to be useful 3. And maybe the most telling gaming benchmark suite: 3DMark or gaming sessions

So far I haven't had any incidents that had made me lose money, and I do flip PC's quite often :)

Ah, so you are willing to tinker with it. Sure, full inspection and testing cycle could reveal if the item is 100% ok. But, in that case I'm wondering if the price difference is worth it, considering the time spent. Then we could also call it "Refurbished", no?

Reply on news.ycombinator.com